User:Artchivist1/drafts/Sybille Pantazzi

Sybille Oltea Yvonne Pantazzi (April 2, 1914, Galați, Romania - July 23, 1983, Toronto) was a librarian, bibliophile and author.

Early Life
Sybille Pantazzi was born in Galați, Romania, on April 2, 1914, to Commander (later Admiral) Vasile Pantazzi (1871-1945), a Romanian naval officer and occasional diplomat and Ethel Sharp Greening (1880-1963), a Canadian author and committed feminist. Her father was a collector of 20th century illustrated books and old maps, while her mother assembled a collection of Anglo-North American books about Romania.

In her early years, defined by World War I, Sybille Pantazzi followed her family in their trans-continental peregrinations. She spent the period of 1916-1917 in Odessa, Russia, where her father installed the Romanian Senate and some Ministries in exile, owing to the German invasion of Romania. Then came the Russian Revolution. After a brief spell in Romania, the family moved to Paris where Commander Pantazzi was a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. At the end of 1919, the family removed to North America where he established the first Romanian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and the first Romanian Consulate in Canada, in Montreal. In 1933, the Pantazzi family returned to Romania, settling in Bucharest and at Budila, in Transylvania. Until World War II, there were visits to Canada.

Career
On the outbreak of World War II, Sybille Pantazzi joined the Romanian Red Cross as an ambulance driver near the front lines.

In Spring 1946, Sybille and Ethel Pantazzi were granted by the new, Communist government, an exit visa for a visit to Canada. Neither knew that a return would prove impossible. Once in Toronto, after a period as the Librarian of the Board of Trade, she was hired in Fall 1948 as Librarian at the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario), where she remained for the rest of her working life. While working, she obtained a B.A. and a M.A. in Romance Languages at the University of Toronto. Over the course of her career, the library collection increased from a few hundred books to over 25,000 volumes. She retired as Chief Librarian in 1980.

One of Sybille Pantazzi's main interests was in the printed image and its permutations. This was by no means exclusive and competed with other subjects, such as early travel guides, artist's libraries ((Pantazzi, Sybille (1975). "The Library of a Canadian Artist: Books from the Library of Robert Holmes." Journal of Canadian Art History vol. 2, no. 1 (Summer 1975), pp. 34-41.)), Canadian prize books awarded students and book plates ((Canadian Collector March 1970, January 1975, July 1977, September 1981)) and stamps ((Canadian Collector July 1983)), often neglected areas which she pioneered and for which she is remembered. She launched an interest in 19th commercially bound books, on to the early work for publications by artists such as the Group of Seven ((Sybille Pantazzi, "Book Illustration and Design by Canadian Artists 1890-1940: With a List of Books Illustrated by Members of the Group of Seven." National Gallery of Canada Bulletin & Annual Bulletin vol. 7, no. 4 (1) (1966), pp. 6-24, 30-31)), the importance of artist's frames - a virtually untouched subject in Canada (("A Canadian Picture Frame", in Canadian Collector, vol. 110, no. 6 (November-December 1975), pp. 53-54; Also "A Picture Frame by J.E.H. MacDonald," in RACAR, vol. 4, no. 1 (1977, pp. 32-35.)), the fading reputation of Vernon Lee, to whom we owe the word "empathy", and others ((Michael Pantazzi donated her large collection of books by Vernon Lee with her research on the subject to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto.)).

A clear sentence about her influence as a scholar of Canadian book illustration. Such as "Sybille Pantazzi’s 1966 article in the National Gallery of Canada Bulletin is generally credited with establishing English Canadian book illustration as an important field of study for art historians."

At the then Art Gallery of Toronto and other institutions, from 1956 on, she served as a research curator particularly interested in Old Master paintings, drawings and prints. Along with organizing an exhibition of Alan Garrow’s collection of British 19th-century illustrated books and bindings which had been given to the Gallery, she supported many exhibitions with articles, bibliography or catalogue entries, as well as writing scholarly articles for magazines such as Connoisseur.

In the Canadian area of the collection, she wrote in depth about the Foreign Art shown at the Canadian National Exhibition ((Sybille Pantazzi, “Foreign Art at the Canadian National Exhibition.” National Gallery Annual Bulletin vol. 22 (1973), pp. 21-41, 43.)), allowing Curators of Canadian Art to tie down influences from art abroad shown in Toronto.

During her lifetime, she gave the children's books she collected to the Osborne Collection in Toronto, where an annual "Sybille Pantazzi Memorial Lecture" is held.

Her obituary in the Canadian Collector, often a vehicle for her articles, read as follows: “Miss Pantazzi's wide knowledge, experience and research skills influenced generations of researchers and Gallery Staff, many of whom went to become curators or directors of galleries and museums across Canada” ((Canadian Collector, vol. 19, no. 1 (January-February 1984), p. 34. It is not online. The obituary followed her last, posthumously published article, "Collecting Playing Cards," Canadian Collector, vol. 19, no. 1 (January-February 1984), pp. 32-34. Though not signed, the obituary was written by Marian Hahn Bradshaw.)) Alan Suddon, Head of the Fine Arts Section of the Metro Central Library in Toronto, wrote that the “library of the Art Gallery of Ontario is a monument to her intelligence and diligence,” (( McNeil, “Who Was Who: Biographies of Canadian Art Librarians,” arlis. />))

Archival Collections
Sybille Pantazzi's private correspondence with various scholars is at the following institutions:


 * Correspondence with Captain Eric Ditmar Tappe (1910-1998), the historian, from 1946 on, is at the Imperial War Museum, London, Documents.16287.


 * The nearly twenty-year correspondence and the library on "Art in Fiction" she formed with the American art-historian Ulrich Alexander Middledorf (1925-1981) is in Special Collections at The Getty Research Institute, Research Library, Accession no. 950004.


 * Correspondence with Mario Praz (1896-1982), the Italian art and literary historian who published some of her articles, is in the Mario Praz Museum, which is part of the Italian Galleria Nazionale in Rome.


 * Correspondence (about thirty letters with some inserted material, approximately 5 pamphlets/cards) with Leon Edel (1907-1997), the biographer of Henry James, is in McGill University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections, Leon Edel Collection, MSG 983.