How a professor spotted forgery in University of Michigan’s Galileo manuscript

Galileo forgery

The University of Michigan Library recently concluded through an internal investigation of the findings of Georgia State University professor Nick Wilding that its Galileo manuscript is not a document written by Galileo himself in 1609 and 1610, but a 20th-century fake executed by well-known forger Tobia Nicotra.Photo provided | University of Michigan Library

ANN ARBOR, MI - Nick Wilding couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off while researching documents for a new biography on Galileo Galilei.

Wilding, a Georgia State University professor and historian, was examining a single-leaf manuscript housed at the University of Michigan Library that was supposedly written by the famed astronomer and physicist in the early 1600s.

Described as one of UM Library’s “great treasures” and a “jewel” of its special collections, the document was thought to include the world’s first observational data showing objects orbiting a body other than the Earth, via diagrams drawn by Galileo of what turned out to be Jupiter’s moons that he viewed through a new telescope.

Wilding has sniffed out forgeries before, including a special copy of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius he determined to be a fake in 2012. And, the closer he examined the document housed at UM, the more things didn’t add up, leading to Wilding contacting UM Special Collections Librarian Pablo Alvarez to voice his serious doubts about the document’s authenticity.

“I knew the document well but had never understood it,” Wilding said. “I always thought that this was my problem, but then wondered whether it might be the document’s. Historians’ accounts of what the document said just didn’t make sense to me.”

Wilding’s hunch was correct, with UM recently concluding thorough internal investigation of his findings that its Galileo manuscript is not a document written by Galileo himself in 1609 and 1610, but a 20th-century fake executed by well-known forger Tobia Nicotra.

In the two separate letters, Galileo notes the potential use of the telescope and his observations of Jupiter’s moons. The first thing that stood out about the texts, Wilding said, was that the ink and quill seemed similar throughout, despite being written months apart.

That was never the case Wilding said, based on his examining of various other manuscripts Galileo had written in the course of more than one day. He also noticed that some of the letter forms in the manuscript were wrong and that there was a break between letters that was not typical of Galileo’s writing.

But perhaps the most noteworthy evidence the manuscript was a forgery, Wilding said, was that the paper it was written on was “very clearly” from a period much later than the document.

UM’s experts reached the same conclusions as Wilding after they were contacted in May 2022. Wilding, on the other hand, tracked down another forgery in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City that had a similar paper that had been securely dated to 1790.

“You can see this as soon as you see the watermarks - the forms of the letters are late 18th century,” Wilding said. “It’s like seeing a Coke logo in a Leonardo.”

The forged manuscript arrived at UM in 1938 after it was bequeathed by the trustees of the fund of late Tracy McGregor, a Detroit businessman and avid collector of books and manuscripts.

According to UM, McGregor acquired the manuscript from the American Art Anderson Galleries, which was selling it as part of the library of the late Roderick Terry, a wealthy collector of manuscripts. The auction catalog, UM noted, was authenticated by Cardinal Pietro Maffi, the Archbishop of Pisa, who compared the leaf with a Galileo autograph letter in his collection.

“Anybody who looked at it since it’s been around has just been looking at other known Galileos,” UM Library Director of Communication & Marketing Alan Piñon said. “The handwriting matches, because Nicotra was good. It wasn’t until actually looking at the paper itself that some things started to maybe not make sense.”

Piñon said when UM Library’s curator received a message from Wilding he was skeptical, only because the library has gotten those those types of inquiries before. Wilding’s reputation as a spotter of Galileo forgeries, however, got UM Library’s attention.

“It was quite a shocking thing to try to think through how we could have missed it,” Piñon said. “But pretty quickly, we turned to, ‘This is just something that happens and we need to let people know and learn from this.’”

The true version of the letter is in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia and the notes on the moons of Jupiter are part of the Sidereus Nuncius Dossier at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze in Italy.

Recognizing the manuscript housed at UM is not the real deal, Piñon said there are still applications for people to learn from the forgery.

UM Library has updated its catalog record for the letter to reflect the new information and it will continue to keep the item in its collection for researchers, Piñon said.

The curator of the document has said he has already seen requests to use the item by professors to explain various issues about paper making, ink composition, paleography and watermarks.

“It was not something we wanted to discover was a fake, but we’re glad that it was discovered because we certainly don’t want to be propagating anything that’s not true,” Piñon said.

With a track record of spotting forgeries, including those executed by Nicotra, Wilding said a common element has been the use of genuine old paper using “period tools” like a real quill, not a pen, while noting Nicotra also had “a great eye and hand” in executing forgeries.

“Let’s not forget that this was a very, very good forgery,” Wilding said. “Were it not for the mistake with the paper, it would be quite hard to prove. The main thing it lacks is a good backstory, but that’s true of a good many genuine documents, too.”

The important thing to remember, Wilding said, is that Alvarez and UM understood what was at stake and actively helped in the investigation, presenting evidence to the Dean of the Library, who has embraced both transparency and the publicity that has come from the discovery.

“He went out of his way to help,” Wilding said. “I’ve found librarians to be amazingly supportive, helpful and knowledgeable. They’re also interested in curating the truth of their collections, not hiding lies.”

READ MORE:

University of Michigan president addresses antisemitic fliers found off-campus

Mural project highlights under-represented student voices on University of Michigan campus

Take a look inside the $140M University of Michigan School of Dentistry renovation

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.