But he was so drastically altered as a personality that colleagues could scarcely recognise him.
Those who watched England play in a snow-covered Eternal City two years ago will scarcely recognise the place this weekend.
What is certain is that were Galeotti alive today, he would scarcely recognise the fashion house he helped to create.
But if United are the paragon of the Premiership's faith in the free market, Exeter symbolise a democratic spirit Malcolm Glazer would scarcely recognise, and exemplify what can be salvaged from the wreckage of financial disaster.
When he greets us at the gate looking tanned and rumpled, a bowl of homemade soup in one hand, the other pointing to eagles overhead, I scarcely recognise him.
Rich racehorse owners treat their friends to bucketfuls of champagne to celebrate winning prizes that can exceed £100,000 ($165,000), before summoning their chauffeurs to ferry them home.At Southwell and Wolverhampton, two dirt tracks in England's industrial Midlands which also hosted race meetings this week, you would scarcely recognise it as the same sport.
In 2006, Susan Faludi returned to the seminal feminist book that made her name, Backlash, and wrote a new prologue for the 15th anniversary: "In the years since feminism's revival in the early 1970s, American women have sped across so much ground that we can scarcely recognise the lives our grandmothers lived … Yet as women near the finish line, we are distracted.
Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled.
There were those with whom I hadn't enjoyed liaisons, but I could scarcely recognise any.
