A LARGE ITALIAN SILVER COVERED WINE CUP, ISRAEL VITALE, ALESSANDRA (PIEDMONT), CIRCA 1830

The following is the history of the cup according to the consignor: 

“The Artom family, which this silver comes from, came to Italy about 1550 (cf. Artom, Elena Rossi, Gli Artom: Storia di una famiglia della Comunità ebraica di Asti attraverso le sue generazioni : 16.-20 secolo, S. Zamoroni, 1997—in Italian). They were originally from Spain or Portugal, and seem to have come through France before ending up in Asti, Italy (in Piedmont, about an hour outside of Turin).                          

The most famous member of the Artom family is probably Sen. Isacco Artom (1829- 1900), who was, successively, the private secretary to Count Cavour during the unification of Italy, then Italian Ambassador to Denmark and Austria, Secretary General of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, and finally an Italian Senator. (A biography from the Jewish Encyclopedia, in English, is here: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1836-artom-isaac) He was the brother of our great-great-grandfather, Israele Artom (I can’t remember his birthdate off the top of my head, and the information on genealogy websites is mixing him up with his brother, but he died about 1890). Israele had three sons: Baron Alessandro Artom (1867-1927), who was an early inventor of things connected to radio (notably the concept of a directional antenna) and was ennobled by the King of Italy, Vittorio Artom, and our great-grandfather, Sen. Ernesto Artom (1868-1935).

To help complete your documentation, here is his biographical page from the Italian Senate: part of his home, Via XX Settembre, 3, is still owned by my sister and I (it’s been divided into about 30 condos), and you can point to his daughter (listed under “figli”), Luisa Artom Ginzburg (1910-1999), our grandmother, listed on the webpage. https://notes9.senato.it/web/senregno.nsf/5bc690c66eeab5f2c125785d0054c11b/63bf866aca9958234125646f00586edb?OpenDocument

Sen. Ernesto Artom died in 1935. Our grandparents, Luisa Artom and Nicola Ginzburg (1899-1985), married in 1936, and our father, Vittorio Artom Ginzburg (1937-2018) is whom these items come from. Nicola Ginzburg was a Russian émigré (his parents had a summer house in Italy that they came to at the time of the October Revolution). In 1938, the Italian Racial Laws were passed (I’m attaching a photograph of the document registering our grandfather as a Jew—it mentions our father and grandmother by name), and our grandfather, who was a mechanical engineer who worked for the Assicurazioni Generali insurance company in Trieste, lost his job. Having no income, they moved back to Rome, where my grandmother was born and where her brothers still lived in the family palazzo on Via XX Settembre. Nicola Ginzburg’s younger brother was Leone Ginzburg (1909-1944), who was a partisan leader (and the husband of the writer Natalia Ginzburg, 1916-1991). (Leone has a Wikipedia entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leone_Ginzburg)

Having no job, and having a warning from his brother that his young family was in danger because of Leone’s partisan activities, Nicola, Luisa, and our father, Vittorio emigrated to the United States shortly after WWII began (October 1, 1939).