# Epistola Christofori Colom (A Letter of Christopher Columbus), Plannck's corrected Latin edition > Stephan Plannck - After 29 April 1493 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/stephan-plannck/columbus-letter-plannck-1493/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-07 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Stephan Plannck - **Date:** After 29 April 1493 - **Medium:** Letterpress print on paper; unillustrated quarto pamphlet - **Dimensions:** [8] pages; 20 cm (4to); one gathering, signed [1] superscript 4 - **Object type:** Printed book - **Period:** Italian Renaissance, fifteenth century (incunabula period) - **Current location:** Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Washington DC - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A plain, unillustrated eight-page pamphlet, printed in Rome by Stephan Plannck within weeks of Columbus's return to Spain in 1493, in the corrected Latin state that credits Queen Isabel alongside Ferdinand of Aragon. This copy has belonged to the Library of Congress since 25 January 1946 and is the exemplar the Library digitized as World Digital Library item 90.It is not the copy of this same edition that was stolen from Florence's Biblioteca Riccardiana, passed through a Swiss collector and a 1992 Christie's sale, sat undetected in the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2016, and was then forensically exposed and returned to Italy. That is a different physical copy of the identical Plannck printing, and its story belongs to that copy, now back in Florence, not to this one.The distinction matters because this exact edition has been targeted for theft and forgery at least four times in half a century, at four different libraries on two continents. Establishing which specific object a digitized plate depicts is not a formality here; it is the whole problem. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1493** Printed by Stephan Plannck, Rome `[documented]` (origin) Corrected Latin state of the Rome printing of Columbus's letter, produced after 29 April 1493, translated by Leandro di Cosco from the Spanish original printed weeks earlier in Barcelona. - **-1946** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, dealer or collection is named for this specific copy between its 1493 printing and its 1946 accession by the Library of Congress. The binding, signed by Riviere & Son, was presumably added at some point in this interval but is not dated in the catalog record. - **1946-01-25-present** Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Washington DC `[documented]` (acquisition) Acquired under accession no. 1035E1, per the Library's own catalog note. Digitized as World Digital Library item 90. This accession date, thirteen years before the earliest documented date (1990) in the separate, unrelated Riccardiana theft chain, is the primary evidence that this copy is not the stolen-and-returned Riccardiana exemplar. ## Open questions - Exactly when was the Riccardiana Library's copy of this edition stolen and replaced with a forgery? The library's own former director proposed around 1950-51; forensic findings reported elsewhere suggest a different, unresolved timeframe. - Who donated the Riccardiana copy to the Library of Congress in 2004? The US ambassador to Italy declined to name the donor while the federal investigation was active, and no source consulted names them since. - Was anyone ever criminally charged with the original theft from the Riccardiana Library or with manufacturing the forged replacement? No source consulted names a suspect or reports a prosecution. - Did the Galata Sea Museum in Genoa succeed in its 2016 request to take custody of the returned Riccardiana letter for public display, rather than see it return to the Riccardiana's holdings? The outcome is not recorded in the sources consulted. - What is this Library of Congress copy's own provenance before its 25 January 1946 accession? The catalog record gives an accession number and date but no earlier owner, dealer or collection. - How many genuine copies of Plannck's corrected ('second') edition specifically survive, as distinct from his first edition and the other 1493 Latin printings? Published totals in secondary sources (approximately 30, or 'about 80' across all editions) are not consistently broken out by state. ## Sources - [1] Library of Congress, catalog record for 'Epistola Christofori Colom...' (World Digital Library item 90, LCCN 46031077), consulted via an Internet Archive Wayback Machine capture after the live loc.gov page returned a bot-detection (Cloudflare) block to direct and header-varied requests. - [2] Library of Congress, catalog record for 'A letter of Christopher Columbus' (LCCN 2018657915), the 1816 Edinburgh Review English reprint bound together with the object in the same volume, consulted via an Internet Archive Wayback Machine capture. - [3] Wikimedia Commons, File:A Letter of Christopher Columbus WDL90.pdf, description and licensing page. - [4] Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, Work Catalogue 'Columbus, Christophorus' (lists GW 7171-7179, all 1493 editions of the letter with printer, place and format). - [5] Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, GW07177 (census record for Plannck's corrected Rome edition). - [6] US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 'HSI repatriates rare 15th century Columbus letter to Italy' (archived press release). - [7] The History Blog, 'US returns stolen Columbus letter to Italy', on the Riccardiana theft, forgery and May 2016 repatriation. - [8] Biographical and career detail on the printer Stephan Plannck (dates, Rome workshop on the Via Mercatoria, decline of Roman printing by 1490), drawn from German Wikipedia and related reference aggregation; a tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a specialist incunabula-printing history such as Konrad Haebler's work on Roman printers. - [9] On the translator Leandro di Cosco and the role of Bishop Bernardino Carvajal in commissioning the Latin translation; drawn from aggregated bibliographic and exhibition sources including Indiana University's 'Rethinking the World' digital exhibition materials. Flagged as secondary; a specialist study of the letter's translation history would strengthen this claim. - [10] Fox News, 'Genoa maritime museum seeks possession of Columbus letter', on Maria Paola Profumo's request to Minister Franceschini and confirmation the letter would return to the Biblioteca Riccardiana. - [11] Rare Book Hub, 'Stolen Columbus Letter Found at the Library of Congress Returned', on the Riccardiana volume of 42 incunabula, the 1990/1992/2004 chain and the $330,000 Christie's price. - [12] Rare Book Hub, 'The Columbus Letter, History and Forgery', on survival numbers, the October 2023 Christie's sale, and Paul Needham's sewing-hole identification method in a related case. - [13] CBS News / 60 Minutes, 'Rare, million-dollar copies of a letter written by Christopher Columbus replaced with fakes', on the investigation team (Jay Dillon, Paul Needham, HSI special agent Mark Olexa, AUSA Jamie McCall, Carabinieri Captain Giovanni Prisco) and the foxing-match detection method. - [14] The History Blog, 'Another stolen Columbus letter returned to Italy', on the Vatican copy, David Parsons, and the 2018 return. - [15] Archaeology Magazine, news item on the Biblioteca Marciana (Venice) Plannck first-edition copy, missing 1985-88 and recovered from a US private collection in 2023, described as the fourth such recovery. - [16] Smithsonian Magazine, 'Christopher Columbus Letter Describing Journey to the Americas Sells for $3.9 Million', on the October 2023 Christie's sale of a different, Swiss-held copy of the edition. - [17] Wikipedia, 'Columbus's letter on the first voyage', for general print-history background on the seventeen 1493-1497 editions and the two Plannck states. Tertiary source, flagged for replacement with a specialist bibliographic study. - [18] Wikimedia Commons, File:Palazzo medici riccardi, facciata su via de' ginori, biblioteca riccardiana.JPG, description and licensing page. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.