The RECEPTIO-Rossi Affair IV: My "Accusations"

Continuing from this morning's post, the second part of the PDF recently uploaded to Prof. Rossi's Academia.edu page is titled: "Response to Mr Kidd's accusations on his blog".

If I fail to adequately address her claims below, please let me know. Again, I follow her numbering:

"1. In his blog post, Peter Kidd quotes two passages from the introductory part of your book that are very similar to passages from his blog. How do you explain this similarity?"

[Answer:] "We are both quoting Sotheby's 2017 sale catalogue"

First, it is notable that Rossi admits that in her book she is "quoting" the Sotheby's catalogue. And yet she does not cite it as a source.

Second, the Sotheby's description ends: "More than 20 of the miniatures are reproduced online as 'The Courtanvaux-Elmhirst Hours'": this refers to my page here, titled "The Courtanvaux-Elmhirst Hours", as would be immediately obvious to anyone who attempted to Google it. So although the Sotheby's description does not name me, it does allow "credit where credit is due".

Third, one reason that I am not named in the Sotheby's description, is because I wrote it. I thought it would be immodest to implicitly praise my own work by explicitly citing myself as its author.

"2. Did you consult Mr Kidd's blog during your research?"

This question does not get its own answer, but is covered by the answer to the next question:

"3. In a journal article on the same manuscript (TCLA 6/1, Aug. 2022, p. 25), you mention the blogger and his work in relation to the Roucy manuscript. Why is the reference to the blog missing in the book?"

[Answer:]

"Simply because the blog was brought to my attention when the drafts of the book were closed, but I mentioned it in the Journal. However, I must honestly say that as the blog did not add anything new or original to what was already being gleaned from the auction catalogues, I did not feel, in the Journal, to quote it on a particular issue. I regret that my secretary succumbed to Kidd's insistent and unpleasant e-mails, which left no room for dialogue, and responded rudely without questioning me. The whole thing happened while I was travelling for the Christmas holidays and she had permission to answer my mail. We never imagined that such squalor could happen."

I leave readers to make up their own minds about whether they find this credible.

Let's look at the second part of that statement: "I regret that my secretary succumbed to Kidd's insistent and unpleasant e-mails, which left no room for dialogue, and responded rudely without questioning me. The whole thing happened while I was travelling for the Christmas holidays and she had permission to answer my mail."

To provide some context, I will explain that in the days before Christmas, I tried to contact Prof. Rossi using the general RECEPTIO email address, info@receptio.eu, pointing out some apparent examples of text and images being re-used from my blog in her book. Someone claiming to be "Noemi De Santis" responded, and I exchanged a few messages with her. On 23 December I wrote to carla.rossi@receptio.eu as follows:

"Dear Prof. Rossi,

I was previously unable to find your email address, so I have sent a series of messages to [ name removed ] who contacted me in August, and to the general address at info@receptio.eu, to which Noemi De Santis responded.

Since I have not been able to contact you directly, I wanted to make sure that you are aware of the correspondence being conducted by Ms De Santis on behalf of Receptio, since she makes a number of legal threats and tells a number of untruths. 

Best wishes,

Peter Kidd"

Even using this email address I got a response from "Noemi":

"Dear Mr Kidd,

Please note: I am Professor Rossi's secretary, who is not aware of our correspondence. I manage this mail account.

Best,

Noemi"

Questions 4 and 5 do not concern "accusations" of mine, except insofar as I have already addressed the issue of Swiss funding.

"6. Peter Kidd states on his blog that he was the only one to include a colour scan and publication permission for a section of the manuscript ("miniature depicting St Mark"). He says you originally published this image in its coloured version (fol. 5r)."

[Answer begins:] "I obtained a bw image of St. Mark's miniature from the German dealer Hartung and not from Kidd’s blog.

I did NOT get a colour picture from Hartung, but we first worked with the publisher's graphic designer to colourise the black and white pictures using the "Colorize picture" application, as you can see on page 253 of my edition."

It is true that RECEPTIO had a black & white image of the leaf from the German auction house Hartung (as did I: I put it on my website several years ago, and it is still there). But I also later added a colour version of the image.

Does any reader really believe that a "Colorize picture" application can correctly guess all the colours -- including the figure's clothes, the areas of blank background, and the plumage of the bird in the border -- in an image like this?:

to produce this:

so accurately matching the original, which looks like this:

Personally, I think it stretches credibility beyond breaking point, especially as Rossi has now admitted that (despite earlier denials), she was aware of my blog site.