A manuscript initially believed to have stemmed from Renaissance astronomer Galileo Galilei in the 17th century is now believed to be a forgery that dates back to the 1930s, according to the University of Michigan.
The document, the copy of which contains a fraudulent copy of the sketch of the moons around Jupiter that was drawn by Galileo in 1610, was the first time someone had documented a celestial body orbiting a planet that was not Earth. The sketch had been housed at the University of Michigan since 1938.
1930S TIME CAPSULE DISCOVERED IN 18TH-CENTURY CHURCH
“After an internal investigation of the findings of Nick Wilding, professor of history at Georgia State University, the library has concluded that its ‘Galileo manuscript’ is in fact a 20th-century forgery,” the university said in a description of the document. “We’re grateful to Professor Wilding for sharing his findings, and are now working to reconsider the manuscript’s role in our collection.”
The University of Michigan said that a document that it believed was authored by Italian astronomer and physicist #Galileo Galilei in the 17th century is in fact a 20th-century forgery. https://t.co/J4cSgmNOm6
— i can’t go on, i’ll go on (@sbplama) August 22, 2022
Wilding, a history professor at Georgia State University, first suspected the document was a fake when he discovered the watermark on the paper contained the initials “BMO” for the site of construction, meaning the Italian city of Bergamo. No watermark of “BMO” had been used prior to 1770, over 150 years after Galileo would have created it, but has been used many times since. There was also no trace of the document prior to the 1930s, according to the website.
Wilding then suspected it was a forgery created by the 1930s forger Tobia Nicotra, who was sentenced to two years in prison in 1934 for creating forgeries, including forgeries of Galileo. Nicotra was also allegedly preparing fake autographs of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Martin Luther, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, among others, according to the Washington Post.
The manuscript was initially deemed a “great treasure” in the university’s library and was acquired from the estate of Tracy McGregor after the Trustees of the McGregor Fund bequeathed the manuscript to the university. The paper was authenticated by Cardinal Pietro Maffi (1858-1931), archbishop of Pisa, by comparing the document to the handwriting in letters the archbishop owned that he believed belonged to Galileo. However, it turned out that those letters were also forgeries of Nicotra’s, according to the Washington Post.
“This single-leaf manuscript is one of the great treasures of the University of Michigan Library,” the university wrote in a separate description of the document. “It reflects a pivotal moment in Galileo’s life that helped to change our understanding of the universe.”
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The document will remain in the university’s Special Collections Research Center and be available to scholars for research purposes, Alan Pinon, the director of communication for the university’s library, told the Washington Examiner.
“Our view is that the document still has research value, and there is much to learn from it, as it is a very good forgery that is seemingly connected to many other forgeries,” Pinon said. “We will make sure that the information attached to the document online and in our catalog makes it clear that this piece is a forgery, and we will include the suspected dates of creation, and we will make the item available for research as we would other pieces of our collection.”
