The Spirit-Writing of Gino Fanciullacci

“For the Spiritualists [in Florence] are many, and we have a few but very good mediums, principal amongst them the psychograph, Signor Fanciullacci…”

– from “A Letter from Florence: The Protestant Bishop of Mexico and Spiritualism” by Giovanni Damiani (1886)

Much like Quattrocento and Cinquecento Florence, the Florence of the Victorian age was all aglow with luminous spirits, both fleshly and ghostly. It was a time when, to paraphrase Leon Favre, then Consul General of France, most so-called “learned” persons were “Spiritists”. As an international hub and refuge for well-to-do artistic, scientific, and literary types, Florence inevitably became the perfect vector for those with interests in the nightside of nature. “There is not a house in which the subject has not been discussed,” said one contemporary writer.

To better explore the borderlands of mind and matter, select individuals, such as Elizabeth Browning, Thomas Trollope, and Isa Blagden teamed up with local aristocrats and either set up or joined cliques and formal associations in Florence proper and Fiesole. Their séances–like the cloistered workings of medieval monastics–were conducted in picturesque, Gothic gloom, often in a patron’s ancestral manor. These occult labours were not fruitless. Apparitions did make their presence known, sometimes with bravura performances on a nearby piano.

 As the spiritualists continued to witness anomalous manifestations, their faith became contagious. A climate of frenzied conviction dominated (influenced, no doubt by the Italian residency of the Scottish medium Daniel Dunglas Home), and word soon spread of their secret transactions with discarnate entities. 

Into this milieu stepped a seventeen-year-old named Gino Fanciullacci. Described by a correspondent to The Spiritualist Newspaper as a tall, “handsome young fellow” with “very scanty education”, Fanciullacci worked as an assistant to Auguste Riblet, a wealthy French art dealer based on Borgognissanti street, a stroll away from Savanarola’s former headquarters at San Marco. Fanciullacci’s correspondence indicates that he also maintained links with an antiquary who worked on 22 via Serragli in Florence’s “evangelical district”.

Home to a thriving American evangelical Christian community, the neighbourhood  boasted a Waldensian seminary (described by one observer as a “school of the Prophets”) and printing press. As the Waldensian’s main publishing outfit, The Claudian Press produced numerous tracts and pamphlets on theological topics. It’s possible that Fanciullacci, who sometimes listed the Serragli address as his own, was influenced by his Waldensian compatriots. Indeed, their missionary activities–by most accounts–were difficult to ignore.

In 1880 Fanciullacci brought out a Dantesque epic poem entitled Pellegrinaggio nei Cielo (“Pilgrimage in the Heavens”). An instant hit, it was roundly lauded by members of the Florentine spiritual community, but their excitement grew tenfold when the young author revealed that it had been dictated to him “by a spirit”.

“No one ever thought him capable of writing poetry,” wrote one reviewer, “and how he could possibly have written these hundred cantos is a riddle and a phenomenon worthy of investigation.” Nonetheless the same critic went on to say that Fanciullacci’s ability to produce physical phenomena would “do good to the cause”.

Everyone seemed to agree. Writing in a February 1886 issue of Medium and Daybreak, Giovanni Damiani, a Sicilian-born paranormal researcher, called Fanciullacci “principal” among Florence’s “very good mediums”. Likewise, in an August 1881 article in the The Spiritualist, Chiaro Chiari, a colleague of Fanciullacci, admitted that he was “immeasurably” superior to all the city’s mediums. Fanciullacci, he claimed, had also communicated with Boccaccio, Lucretius and Confucius. Chiari stressed that the medium’s main shtick was his ability invoke musically inclined presences:

“In Gino Fanciullacci’s house, in which we hold our sittings, there is a piano, a large horizontal one, and for several evenings this said piano, being locked up, has given out sometimes on the ivory keys, but oftener on the chords  themselves, pieces of music generally of a religious character; or imitated storms with wind and thunder like a crescendo; or formed a concert as of numerous bells with notes now acute, now bass, and all with such precision and perfection that it appears to us impossible for even our very best musicians to reproduce.  It is the more remarkable to hear such masterly touches, when we consider that the piano is shut up hermetically, and that the harmony is produced in a direct manner through the chords within.”

As for his own thoughts on the efficacy of his vatic powers, Fanciullacci in 1889 told a correspondent of Light that during his séances he and his sister had produced the “most beautiful phenomena”. He wrote: “Spirits played every sort of instrument, especially the pianoforte, upon which we have heard veritable concerts carried on by invisible hands.”  

But Fanciullacci was not in it just for the siddhis–the signs and wonders so treasured by ordinary experimentalists. Rather, he professed that the “philosophy” of Spiritism gave him the “force to combat” his grief. Critical of the sectarianism and belligerency of  both the Catholic and Evangelical churches, the poet also believed that his religion represented true universalism. 

“Spiritism is able to give that which no religion has been able to give up to this day;” he explained, “it has no repentance of divinity, no oppression, no condemnation for eternity.” Echoing the sentiment of the Renaissance-era Dominican philosopher, Giordano Bruno, he continued:

“It teaches love, the solidarity of all the souls that live under the empire of the suns, solemn accord of creation, unity in the infinity of forms, progress in the eternal journey, truth in knowledge acquired. Every star is a dwelling·place in which live souls, in the infinite desert of space, whither we shall go to fulfil the mysterious designs of the unknown God.”

Not much else is known of Fanciullacci’s later life, but Riblet, his patron, employer, and book distributor, continued to expand his fortune by selling rare artworks in and outside Italy. Whereas Fanciullacci faded into obscurity, Riblet (who no doubt turned a profit from his assistant’s upper-class and globe-trotting admirers) left behind an extensive estate. The
Palazzo Riblet, a hotel located on Via della Scala, is one of the businessman’s last remaining properties.

*This article first appeared in Issue #12 of Godfrey's Almanack.