Isacco Garsin
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Isacco Garsin
Amedeo’s grandfather
Another person from the Garsin family who was fundamental for the young Amedeo's education came on the scene after his birth, after the financial crisis that had also struck his mother's side of the family.
In 1886, Isaac Garsin, Eugenie's father came to live in the Modigliani home in Livorno. He would have a big influence on his grandson.
A man of great literary and philosophical culture (he spoke Italian, French, Spanish and Greek fluently and also spoke English and Arabic), he was the archetypal cosmopolitan Sephardic Jew.
Amedeo loved his grandfather's eccentricity, as well as his Talmudic culture and his never-ending stories about the family's origin that was said to go back to Baruch Spinoza, the great Sephardic Jew philosopher from Amsterdam who lived in the second half of the seventeenth century.
The young Amedeo spent a lot of time with his grandfather in those years, listening to his stories and doubtless partly absorbing his refined culture. The path between the canals is linked to the long walks that grandfather and grandson took, as they walked slowly down to the sea, chatting all the while.
(source: http://www.usserorivista.it/?p=589)