FORGING THE MOON
--------------
John Pazmino
NYSkies Astronomy Inc
nyskies@nyskies.org
www.nyskies.org
2015 November 14
Introduction
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November 11, 2015, was Veterans Day, a holiday from work. Altho
the day is observed nationally, there were listed in NYC Events for
November 2015 several interesting events. I planned to attend two, the
SatCon satellite industry show and an astronomy talk.
The plan was to do the SatCon in the afternoon, take supper, and
sit the lecture in evening. This left me the morning to reflect on my
late father's military service for World War II, for whom I hold many
artifacts from that era.
When a few days before the 11th I went to sign up for SatCon I
found that I missed a little-noticed deadline for the free ticket.
This deadline may have been at end of October, slipping notice for the
November NYC Events.After the deadline, this ticket would cost $50.
I passed up SatCon and took a late afternoon train to the City for
the evening lecture, 'Forging the Moon: How to spot a false Galileo'.
It described the detection and exposure of a forged Galileo 'Sidereus
Nuncius' by Nick Wilding of New York Public Library and Georgia State
University.
The talk was at the City University Graduate Center starting at
6PM. The Center hosts many astronomy and science presentations. The
Center for me on a regular work day is a short walk from my office.
Today it was a train ride to, yes, the very station I normally get off
for work!
I arrived at the Center at about 5:30PM, munched on a few fruit
bars from my shoulder bag, and was seated in the lecture room for the
6PM talk.
Sidereus Nuncius
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When Galileo wrote up his initial findings, he issued about 550
copies of his book. They were a sell-out within a couple weeks, mostly
to other scholars and scientists. Historians accepted that all of the
copies were accounted for as held in collections, lost, or destroyed.
When an authentic Nuncius comes into the book-selling world, it is
carefully documented to update its paper trail of record. Prices for a
genuine Nuncius are in the high hundred-thousand to a million of
dollars.
Sidereus Nuncius is a small book, about 65 pages, written in latin
with cuts or engravings of his eyepiece views of the stars. The star
fields, like Beehive cluster and Orion nebula, are stylized with pop-
art five-pointed stars. The Jupiter moons are are big asterisks..
His drawings of the Moon are most intriguing, with details of the
craters and terminator shadows.
Internet has very good digital editions, reproduced from a real
printed copy of a library. Such digital versions allow any astronomer
to obtain a 'reading copy', altho not at all looking real or having
any bibliophilic value.
In 1964 a modern replica edition of Nunciusn as the book is
commonly called for short, was published that at least looks and fells
like the real book. Close inspection reveals its present-day vintage.
The New York Nuncius
------------------
Wilding opened the talk by describing the appearance of a 'new'
copy of Nuncius in New York! In 2005 Richard Lan, of the Martayan Lan
antiquarian house on Manhattan, came to him about a Nuncius valued
for, uh, $10 million. This is quite ten times the current assessed
value for real Nuncius copies.
The book was offered to Lan by two Italians, Mario De Caro and
Filipo Romolo, who showed papers shwoing that book's owner wanted to
sell it off as surplus. All of this mateial was later proved bogus.
Wilding sent images of the book to other wxpertes for anique
books. The inital opinion was that this new book was genuine and had
extra features that could justify its astronomical price.
Lan negotiated with the agents and eventually purchased the book
for, uh, $500,000. This was 1/20 of tis claimed value.
In the antiquarian circles this book is usually cited as SNML' for
'Sidereus Nuncius, Martayan Lan'. Because his store is in New York,
and the story broke into the public news in the City, the book is also
called the 'NYN', for 'New York Nuncius'. I here refer to it by either
name.
As it ultimately turned out, this book is a forgery, an excellent
one, but one foiled by historical goofs. I can not go thru all the
ways the fake was detected, there being several lengthy discussions in
the book-collection webs.
One excellent account is 'A very rare book' by Schmidle in the
2013 December 18 issue of New Yorker magazine. An other from the
antique book world is 'Faking Galileo' by Mazotti in LARB Quarterly
Journal, spring 2014.
Here I illustrate several features of antique books that can to
enhance your bibliophilic interest.They are helpful for examining
specimina offered at bookfairs.
Why make a fake?
--------------
Fake copies or fake originals of artwork is an ancient practice.
It occurs with annoying frequency in art collection and historian
circles. There are many reasons to forge a work, four detailed during
Wilding's talk.
The forger simply wanted to prove that he can fool the 'experts'.
His work, in our case a book, is crafted as perfectly as possible to
pass scrutiny by the experts and be accepted as an authentic work. The
book is introduced into the history and collection world by a
conspiring dealer who fronts for the forgerer.
The forger may want to pass off the fake to earn a sale for
himself. In this case the cost of making the fake, which can be many
myriads of dollars or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, is
recuped in the initial sale of the book. Once sold the forger fades
from the scene to enjoy his gain.
The fake book can be a replacement in a library for an authentic
book. Sadly, most victim libraries have crude means of curating their
collection. Altho the catalog notes the title page information about
the book, the replacement fake merely shows the same information on
its own title page. The library's property management system has no
way to verify that the book is a properly validated real one. The real
book is gone, stolen by the forger. The forger sells te real book to
an other collection.
The fourth reason is to modify history by inserting a fake that
adds false information about the author or his works. The fake book is
in fact an 'original' in that it doesn't copy a known good one. It is
presented as a 'new find' in some lost or obscure collection.
As example, and I'm making this up!, Galileo finds a star that
shifted position among the other stars. He follows it for several
months, until the drifting star is lost in evening twilight. Galileo
never published these observations. They were found in some box of
loose papers in an friend's house only in the 21st century. These
notes reveal that Galileo was observing Uranus, actually recognizing
it as a separate kind of star that moved like a planet.
Such a find would seriously modify the history of Galileo and the
rediscovery of Uranus by Herschel. I said this is a totally made-up
example, but for a while these papers are circulated in the history
world as a sensational newly-found artifact.
The SNML is like this fourth case because it claims Galileo had a
complete proof-copy of his final book, by which he engaged with
political figures probably to earn favor. We know this never happened
and the book was partially shown to be phony from this historical
glitch.
Prooff copy
---------
The NYN was claimed to be a 'proof copy' signed by Galileo and
presented to prince Casi of Venice. The book had a notation by Galileo
and a liber stamp of the prince, both real-looking.
In modern printing a single or a few copies of a book are printed
from the author's manuscript. it is done on cheap paper, often with
wells for the illustrations, and binded in paper covers.
The author, and perhaps his collaborators, make corrections in the
proof copy, from which a new prime original is built. In today's
electronic publishing there is no physical 'printing plate'. The
printing is driven by the manuscript's computer file.
When all is corrected the illustrations are added and the book is
published for it full number of copies. It is printed on the good
paper and binded in proper covers. The proof copies are discarded or
sold at steep discount.
In the 1600s, and into the early 20th century it would be
impractical to cut a few proof copies. A printing house usually had a
supply of type slugs and tiles for only a few pages at a time. After
these were done the type, laid out in the printing plate, was broken
apart, alphabeticly sorted, returned to its storage cases.
This type is used to make the next set of pages, or to run an othr
job. This process continues until all of the book's pages are finished
and the whole pile of pages is sent into the binding stage.
If the author had corrections in the first set of pages, the plate
for those pages is dismantled. The printing house would not want to
hold the plate intact for the corrections because it needs the type
for its other jobs. It would be silly to set up the plate all over
again with the corrections for the likely chance of creating new
mistakes.
The limits and practice of printing in Galileo's time made it most
odd that the NYN was a proof copy. It could be a regular press run
copy mistakenly called a proof copy.
Binding
-----
The binding of books in the early years of publishing was still
imperfect. The covers, spine, page attachments were the weakest
feature of a book that after years of handling fell apart. The book
was then rebinded in a contemporary style. This is a normal practice
not considered an act of forgery.
I personally have several antique books with modern bindings. They
add to the lifespan of the book and are not claimed as authenticly
original. It's only if the rebinding is presented as part of the
original work that the phony business arises. An original binding in
quite new condition adds to the sale value of the book. The SNML, the
'proof copy' had the complete binding of a full book, not a cheap
paper wrap. Would Galileo trouble to give this book a regular binding,
knowing that it may have errors in it? And then give it as gift to a
high public official for favor?
Questions like these impelled the closer inspection of the
Nuncius, leading to its discredit as a fake book.
Type defects
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As type is used over and over for print jobs, the character tiles
can be broken, bent, deformed. Certain letters have missing or
distorted strokes. Prints from a given print house can be recognized
because its set of type suffered some specific damage.
The Galileo forgery had type that very nearly matched the set of
the Venice printing house Galileo used for the Nuncius.. Closer
inspection showed that certain letters in the fake book were bruised
differently from those of genuine work from the house.
Work from the house all had certain defects but the fake had
different ones. It's as if a new type case was used only for the New
York Nuncius and not used again.
Spelling errors
-------------
To make a fake book the forger starts with a known genuine copy to
fabricate printing plates. He photographs the pages of the good copy
and by photographic methods builds nw plates. The plates look much
like traditional ones assembled from tiles of type. This plate is used
in a modern replica of a traditional printing press, which is openly
available thru the niche field of antique book-making.
to Besides the press, the forger gets antique paper, ink, string,
fabric, &c and uses traditional book-making techniques to build the
book. These methods and materials are routinely used to make replicas,
short-run books for commemorative or artistic functions or simply to
keep alive the original arts and skill of early manufacture of books.
if the original good page has typesetting or spelling errors,
these will carry into the fake page. Unless the forger is diligent to
fix up his forged page, an investigator could recognize the error from
a prior experience with the genuine book.
In the NYN a word 'pepriodis' sits within text describing the
aspects of the Moon. it COULD be a Latin word made from a contemporary
other language. Latin can form nw words from other languages. But
'pepriodis' in all cases and declensions made no sense in the text
about the Moon. Wilding and his team found in real Nuncius copies that
the word is 'periodis,' ablative or dative for 'stages' or 'phases'.
The text was meaningful with this correction.
The team also found the mistake in an other good copy. In fact,
this other copy displayed the same other blemishes as the forged book.
The NYN page was duplicated from this other known genuine Nuncius.
Foxing
----
Older methods of manufacturing paper included chemicals,
unintentionally, that after decades form reddish brown patches. The
color reminds of the stereotype fur of a fox, whence the name for this
feature of antique books. The patches are harmless, tho they do
detract cosmeticly from the book. The main cause of foxing seems to be
traces of iron in the paper-making process that oxidizes to iron
oxide, which is reddish-brown.
There is no relief in the patch, it being level with the rest of
the paper. When a fake replica of the page is produced by a modern
photographic process, the foxing patches sometimes create false type.
That is, where a fox patch sits in the original, a raised blip is made
in the forger's printing plate, like an irregular shape of type.
The fake page gets the impression of this erratic type, of as an
irregular blotch following the contour of the original fox patch.
More over, the false patch is black, made from the black ink, and
not at all the true fox color. It would be heroic task for a forger to
hand color the patch to math real foxing.
An other clue is the mechanical indentation under it. Since the
mark was made by pressing the false type into the paper, there is a
relief within the patch.
This indentation is a give-away that the page may be a forgery. In
the case of the SNML, some investigators recognized certain of its
blotches as matching exactly the foxing on a known good copy of the
book.
Watermarks
--------
Form the earliest days of paper-making the paper mill put into his
product a watermark. While the pulp is still wet after rolled out into
sheets, a roller with an embnossed design is pressed over the pulp.
The design is squeezed into the soft pulp, where it dries into a
weakly translucent mark when viewed by backlight.
The design identifies the mill and the type of paper. Watermarks
in fake books are easy to duplicate by making a new roller with a
copied real design. Altho the watermark looks authentic it could be
contextually or hisstoricly wrong.
It may be applied to a type of paper never made by the mill. The
mill may never have served the printing house. The paper of the SNML
had watermarks from a mill that was not in business when Galileo
issued his Nuncius.
Moon drawings
-----------
Because the NYN was described as a proof copy, Galileo left out
his engravings of the Moon, Their place in the book was fitted with
blank placeholder space to show the type in its final layout. In the
fake book these spaces were filled with watercolor drawings of the
Moon. The story was that this book was also a preentation copy to
Prince Casi which needed something to fill the blanks.
An initial inspection of the book concluded that the pictures were
authentic work by Galileo. As the book was further investigated the
drawings were found to be faked. For one thing, Galileo would not have
offered a proof copy, a book with reasonable expectation of having
errors, to a high official. He could have waited a week or so for the
corrected and finished book.
An other is that in real copies of the Nuncius, the lunar
terminator is always vertical. In the phony copy one or two had an
inclined terminator, as if to better fit the whole Moon into its space
in the page.
Closer inspection showed that the drawings did not contain all the
detail of the real engraved pictures, with no apparent logic for the
missing features. Given the skill and labor of making an engraving, a
drawing on paper would plausibly have MORE detail.
Liber stamps
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A liner stamp is a property mark showing that the book belongs to
its owner, such as a library. Today a library may call this an
accession stamp and a person, for his own books, a book plate. The
book plate commonly starts with the phrase 'ex libris ...' with a
fill-in space for the owner's name. I may write in '... Johaniis
Pazminii' making the complete phrase 'From the books of John Pazmino'.
I used here my modern Latiny name.
The NYN has a liber stamp from the Academia dei Linmcei, which
Prince Casi founded. When compared to stamps on other Academia books,
the Nuncius stamp looks newer with no worn spots. A real stamp shows
the wear and tear of repeatedly use of the stamping block.
More over, the Academia's histoical inventory has no Nuncius in
its collection. A book of such importance as one telling of new worlds
and celestial wonders would be carefully recorded in the collection.
And there is no paperwork for releasing of the SNML from the library
for sale.
Specks and beading
----------------
The printing plate is inked to coat the top of the type tiles. No
ink is supposed to drip into the land around the type or seams between
the tiles. It usually happens that a droplet of ink does fall on the
land or seams, causing a speck or beading in the printed paper.
Unlike the ink on top of the type, there is no pressure on these
bits of ink. The paper, squeezed under the press, may pick up a minute
bit of this extraneous ink, making a spot or line in the printed
sheet. The pattern is unique for each sheet in the print run, no two
being exactly alike.
These are recognized as defects by the absence of indentation, as
imposed by the press for the proper type. This indentation can be felt
by gently gliding the fingers over the printed sheet. The specks and
beading are level with the rest of the paper, having dried on its
surface in open air.
When the plates for the fake are generated by a photographic
process, there is no way for the imaging mechanism to tell a real ink
impression from type and an erratic speck or beading. It converts all
of these marks into raised type surfaces on the plate.
The forged page can be detected by a scholar recalling certain
blemishes in it march exactly those of a known genuine specimen. An
other way is to feel that the bogus marks are indented by pressure
from the printing press while duplicating the genuine page.
Paper
---
The printing house gets its paper from a paper mill, who offers a
variety of styles, sizes, composition, quality of paper. We know where
the Galileo printer got its paper via correspondence, news items, and
examples of printing jobs.
For some reason a detailed examination of the Nuncius paper was
not done until late in the forgery inquest. When inspected under a
microscope, the Nuncius paper showed it was made of pulp and cotton
mixture. While cotton threads were used in early 1600s paper
manufacture, they were not used in the specific paper for Galileo's
printer.
The structure of the NYN cotton-pulp paper was far more developed
than what was available in the 17th century. The peculiar mixture was
first used in the late 18th century, some 150 years after Galileo..
This feature alone would have been enough to declare this Nuncius
as a fraudlent copy. There were plenty of other circumstances to prove
the fake already in hand but it would have been quicker and simpler if
the paper was looked at in the early stages of the inquest.
Who made the fake?
----------------
After rounds of investigation the SNML in 2012 was accepted as a
forgery. Richard Lan tried to get his money back from the Italian
agents, with no success as at the time of Wilding's talk. In the
meanwhile the book is circulated to workshops and conferences on
antiquarian forgeries as a testbed for scholars to exercise on. It was
during one of these sessions that the phony printing paper was
discovered.
In a separate episode in the antiquarian world Italian and other
police were tracking down Mario De Caro, a knoen forger of many
antique books. He bluffed his way to run the Girolanini Library in
Naples and began to loot it. He sold off genuine books from its
holdings on the pretense tht he needed the revenus to meet expenses of
the library. He pocketed the money and let the library lapse into
disuse and disarray.
He was finally convicted of several crimes, including the
forgeries, and sentenced to jail. Part of his sentence was commuted to
house arrest. During his trail he admitted to fabricating the SNML,
among many other suspected fakes.
In late 2012 the De Caro episode broke into general news and the
story of the New York Nuncius was complete. Since then several
articles and lectures, like Wilding's at the Graduate Center,
elaborated on the fake as a bibliophilic and New York history event.
Why wasn't the SNML treated as a forgery from the start, since it
was offered by a known forger? De Caro did sell genuine books, even
tho many were later found to be loot from libraries. At the time of
the Lan deal, it may have seemed that the Nuncius could be a real
Galileo work and the early look-over of it seemed to agree.
Latin lapses
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Wilding surely has to know Latin in order to conduct his duties at
the New York Public Library and his university. He was working on a
study of Mediaeval Italian philosophers, an era when litterature was
written in Latin. Yet he flubbed on three instances I can recall
during his presentation.
The library stamps put in books, to show property, are often
called 'liber stamps'. Wilding consistently said 'LIGH-berr'.. The
word is 'LEE-ber', Latin for 'book'.
When he described Galileo's notation on the forged book, he read a
word 'FEE-sitt'. This was the word 'fect', 'FAY-sitt', Latin for 'he
made, did'.
He wanted to refer to several Galileo Nuncius books and flubbed
trying to say the plural of 'Sidereus Nuncius'. After a couple
aborted tries, he used a work-around phrase.
The plural is 'Siderei Nuncii' but this would be bad speech for
Latin speech. The words are a slug in a book title, not declined in
proper prose. The grammatical function would be handled by a satellite
word like 'libri', 'libelli', 'specimina' as in 'Habeo tres libri
Sidereus Nuncius'.
I found this peculiar since Wilding pronounced Italian words and
phrases quite well, with crisp accents. Yet even then there was a
glitch. His account of De Caro called the man 'dee-KA-roh'. This word
I wrote in my notes as 'Dicaro' or 'Dicarro'. After the talk while
reading filler material I learned the right name.it's 'deh-KA-toh'.
Conclusion
--------
This was one fascinating lecture! I as a lover of books often
wondered how a fake could be positively found out. Once in a while the
general news coves a forged painting or sculpture. The account usually
says the item was after scrutiny discovered to be a fake, with little
insight into the unravelling of the forgery.
Wilding's careful step-by-step explanation of the SNML will help
me in examining potential antique books I may acquire. As far as I
know, none in my library are actual fakes, altho some were rebinded or
are replicas.
The features examined in the Nuncius for forgery clues are those
to look for when inquiring about an offered book at the next
antiquarian bookfair. Even just a banter about these features may earn
you a higher consideration from the book dealer