Georgia State Historian Nick Wilding informed the curators of the university’s collection about the forgery. While working on Galileo’s biography, he doubted the manuscript’s authenticity and embarked on a search that led him to a famous counterfeiter of the 20th century.

what is known

The manuscript page claims to be the outline of a letter from Galileo to the Duke of Venice, dated 24 August 1609, describing his observations with a telescope he had built. The letter itself is preserved in the Venice State Archives.

When Nick Wilding began to study the manuscript, he found the shapes of some of the letters and even the choice of words odd. Also, even though these chapters are supposedly written months apart, the ink on the top and bottom halves is very similar. The historian then sent the library an email requesting information about the document’s origin and an image of the watermark. In this way, it was possible to trace the hand-to-hand transmission of the document back to its likely creator.

• The University of Michigan Library received the manuscript as a bequest from Detroit businessman Tracy McGregor in 1938.
• McGregor had bought the manuscript four years ago at an auction from wealthy collector Roderick Terry.
• According to the auction catalogue, the manuscript was authenticated by Cardinal Pietro Maffi, Archbishop of Pisa. The cardinal had two other documents allegedly signed by Galileo in his collection, and he used them for comparison.
• Nick Wilding discovered that there were no Michigan manuscript records in the Italian archives.
• Also, Muffy In the early 20th century, he bought two documents from the famous counterfeiter Tobias Nicotra, which he used for comparison.. This cast doubt on the cardinal’s conclusions.
• In general, no trace of this document is found before 1930.

Who is Tobia Nicotra?

Tobia Nicotra was a real person. Newspapers of the time called him “the cleverest impostor in history”. He began selling fakes as early as 1920 to support many of his mistresses and wives. It is assumed that there are 500-600 forged letters and manuscripts attributed to prominent figures such as George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Marquis de Lafayette, Martin Luther, Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, Gluck and Handel and others.

On November 9, 1934, Nicotra was sentenced to two years in prison and then disappeared. However, his fake works still circulate in collections around the world.

The investigation itself

The Michigan lab began examining the document after Nick Wilding’s reports and accepted the findings.

Posted with a fake watermark. The thing is, in the paper press era, paper manufacturers often used distinctive watermarks to identify their papers. The watermark on the “Galileo Manuscript” – a circle with a three-leaf clover and the monogram “AS/BMO” – refers firstly to the manufacturer of the paper and secondly to the Italian city of Bergamo as the place of manufacture. But the problem is that this paper wasn’t produced until 1770.

Thus, Galileo was unable to write his draft on paper, which would be released only 161 years later.