Posted on 08/23/2022 4:16:16 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The university announced on Tuesday that the so-called “Galileo manuscript” – a one-page document that includes a letter accompanying the astronomer’s presentation of his telescope and his supposed notes observing Jupiter’s moons through his telescope in 1610 – was crafted by Tobia Nicotra, a well-known forger from Italy who was fined and sentenced to two years in jail for crafting fake Galileo documents in 1934. He also infamously produced fake autographs of Christopher Columbus and Mozart.
The possibility came to light in May when the Georgia State University professor Nick Wilding expressed “serious doubts about its authenticity”. Wilding found while researching Nicotra – who had a “forgery factory” in his Milan apartment – that the counterfeiter had “reportedly started selling fake letters and musical manuscripts to support seven mistresses”, the New York Times reported.
The university said the auction firm American Art Anderson Galleries sold the library of Roderick Terry, a wealthy collector, in May 1934, which contained the manuscript. It had been authenticated by Cardinal Pietro Maffi, who “compared this leaf with a Galileo autograph letter in his collection”, the university noted. Then a prominent Detroit businessman and philanthropist Tracy McGregor obtained the letter and his trustees gave it to the university after his death in 1938.
More than 80 years later, Wilding alerted university curator Pablo Alvarez about the manuscript’s watermark and provenance. The watermark on the paper featured the letters “BMO” for Bergamo, where the paper was supposedly produced. But the university found that “no other BMO watermarked papers” had been dated before 1770, roughly 160 years after the notes featured in the supposed Galileo manuscript.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
People, Nov. 19, 1934
Monday, Nov. 19, 1934
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,847344,00.html
I was also shocked to learn how many painting attributed to a famous artist were actually done by their students. Also the authentication process is very subjective. Like when a historian says things like “the boldness of the brush strokes” I also remind myself that most art value is derived from financial speculation and money laundering.
Seven mistresses? How did he find the time AND the energy to make all those fakes?
You can order paintings online from The Frederick Church School of Art, in various sizes of your favorite Frederick Church landscape, painted by one of the live students instead of the dead artist.
Whew!
Perhaps the mistresses had a lot of kids to occupy their time...
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