MOLMENTI, POMPEO GHERARDO. - Writer, historian, and parliamentarian, born in Venezia on 1 Sept. 1852, died in Roma on 24 Jan. 1928.
He practised law, then devoted himself to teaching and literature. Municipal councillor of Venezia in 1889, deputy to Parliament for the constituency of Brescia and later of Salò in 1890; senator in 1909. In 1919-20 he was the first Under-Secretary for Fine Arts (in this capacity he clashed with Nathan over the Capitoline redevelopment and Piazza Colonna). Of liberal sympathies, he criticized the electoral abstention of Catholics. Besides the two novels Dolor and Clara (1875), he published Carlo Goldoni (1875), La storia di Venezia nella vita privata, dalle origini alla caduta della Repubblica (1879 and 1927), La dogaressa di Venezia (1884), Carpaccio e il Tiepolo (1885), Sebastiano Veniero e la battaglia di Lepanto (1892), I banditi della Repubblica veneta (1898).