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He's then described as quote perhaps the cleverest forger on record. Some historians believe he may have produced as many as six hundred forgeries of letters, music, manuscripts, and other documents attributed to names like Mozart and Galileo before he got caught. So let's meet Tobia Nikotra. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarki and I'm Holly Frye. Not much is known about this Italian forger's life. Nikotro once claimed to be the
son of a botany professor. He also once wrote that he had graduated with a degree in music from a conservatory in Naples in nineteen oh nine. True or not, nobody actually knows. What historians do know is that he began selling his forgeries in the nineteen twenties. Nikotra produced inauthentic works of artists across many disciplines. One of his most notorious fakes that we'll talk about was mistaken as
a genuine Mozart by the Library of Congress. He also forged signatures and documents by Christopher Columbus Leonardo da Vinci, Abraham Lincoln, Martin, Luther, Michelangelo, and George Washington. The list goes on. You'll see Nikotra really did forge a bit of a lot of things. He forged a poem he
claimed was written by the Italian Renaissance poet Tasso. Some stories about him suggest he once nearly started a minor international incident when he created a fake Christopher Columbus letter in which Columbus identified his birthplace as Spain, not Italy, and that set off an uproar among Italians that prompted the mayor of Genoa to reaffirm Columbus's Italian ancestry.
He forged musical manuscripts by well known composers, not just forging the signatures, but composing the works themselves. Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, an early eighteenth century composer who died shortly after his twenty sixth birthday, was a popular target for forgery, and
Nikotra was one of his famous forgers. Begolesi's popularity grew after his death after a performance of his intermezzo La Serva Padrona That's the Servant Mistress, and that sparked the Carelle de Bauffon in Paris, a controversy over musical philosophies. Begolesi's small canon is small, and it is still today debated that in itself opened the door to all kinds
of inauthentic works being passed as genuine. With a small catalog of known compositions from a fairly young composer, it's been difficult for experts to verify what was and wasn't his original work. It's thought that Nikotra forged at least
four Pargolesi compositions. It was a piece called Agnes's Day that wound up in the collection of the Metropolitan Opera and ultimately was determined to be an authentic Christie's auction House described it in June of twenty seventeen as quote an intriguing forgery once thought to belong to the hotly debated Pergolesi cannon, clearly cited as quote created by the prolific forger to be a Nicotra. The known fake sold for three hundred and seventy five dollars.
In nineteen twenty eight, the Library of Congress purchased an alleged Mozart manuscript in Aria called Bacchi Amarosi Ekari, supposedly composed by the famous maestro at age fourteen, and they paid sixty dollars for it, believing it was authentic. In fact, though Nikotra composed the piece himself, but it would be years before library officials knew they were housing a fake.
According to Paul Alan Summerfeld, a music reference specialist at the Library of Congress, quote, it was so special because first of all, it was unknown, so it wasn't reported in any of the thematic catalogs of Mozart at the time.
Just the very next year, Nikotra became an author when he wrote a biography of New York Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Arturo Toscanini. Toscanini would have been around sixty two years old when this biography was published. It turned out, though, to be a story that was more fiction than fact. We don't know Toscanini's reaction to it, although we sure would like to.
We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsor. When we return, we'll talk about the one and only time Nikotra went to prison for selling his forged work and how his Galileo forgery ended up at the University of Michigan.
Welcome back to Criminaliam. Let's talk about what happened when a Nikotra forged Galileo manuscript was discovered at the University of Michigan.
Nikotro was arrested in Milan, Italy, in November of nineteen thirty four, after he sold a fake mozart autograph to the son of Arturo Toscanini, Walter Tuscanini. When Walter discovered the autograph he'd purchased for twenty seven hundred lira was not authentic, he tipped off milanaise A detective Giorgio Florita,
about the forgery and the identity of the forger. Police raided Nikotra's Milan apartment and he was arrested in court, they testified they had found him in his workshop busy working on forged autographs of Christopher Columbus and Lorenzo de Medici. He was also accused of composing historically plausible documents, musical manuscripts and letters supposedly written by the same people whose signatures he forged.
According to his trial coverage, as reported by The New York Times, Nikotre relied on the Milan Library for his forging work, but not for reasons you might initially think he wasn't visiting to learn or research more about historical figures. The library was his source for paper. He ripped blank pages and fly leaves from old books and created many of his forgeries on that authentic paper. In fact, later librarians in Milan testified that yes, Nikotra had destroyed dozens of books doing this.
The master forger testified that he had sold the counterfeit autograph to Toscanini quote to support his seven loves. Now take it with a grain of salt. But as reported in some coverage of the trial, investigators did testify that they found what they described as a kind of alter
to seven women. An article about the trial printed in the American Weekly Hurst Publication in early nineteen thirty five described a room with quote, black velvet covered walls, with seven panels featuring paintings, sketches, and photographs of seven women, one of whom was said to be a novelty dancer and another an expert swimmer, with fresh flowers in front
of each. The pictures, in some cases, displayed their physical attractions with startling frankness but they were in general highly artistic. The American Weekly also noted in their coverage that quote, incidentally, he also had a wife.
There are no known photos of Nkotra. The best we have is a glimpse of him from a courtroom sketch that appeared alongside the story published by The American Weekly. In that sketch, he is portrayed as a thin, balding man with glasses, a mustache, and a goatee. Some accounts say that he was fifty three at the time of his trial, but a birth certificate suggests that he may have been only four. When you're talking about a forger, though, it can be hard to know what's real and what's not.
In addition to the signature forgery accusation, Walter Tuscanini also included in his testimony that Nikotra had visited the United States in nineteen thirty two posing as the musician Ricardo Drigo, and that while in the States, he was quote widely feded. It's unclear whether or not either man knew Drigo, who was an Italian composer of ballet music and opera, had died in nineteen thirty two years prior. To when this ruse may have happened. Regardless, no one seemed to care.
Of the trial. Walter stated that he quote wanted to restore the faith of foreign collectors in Italian dealers. On November ninth, Nikotra was convicted, primarily on Walter's testimony. He was sentenced to two years in jail and fined twenty four hundred lire. It was his only conviction for forgery.
It's believed Nikotre didn't serve much of his sentence. Some accounts suggest he may have been paroled early on behalf of Benito Mussolini and the Fascist Party, who wanted him to forge the signatures of their enemies during the Second World War, and then, unlike his forgeries, he just kind of faded into obscurity. Much of his work is believed to have gone undetected, but from time.
To time Nikotra pops up with possibly hundreds of forgeries in circulation. It's bound to happen, and he did recently show up at the University of Michigan. We can now add Galileo to the list of people he forged. Galileo was an Italian physicist, engineer, and notable astronomer. Though he wasn't the first to look through a telescope, he was the first to document the phases of Venus and the
stars of the Milky Way. So when a new Galileo manuscript appeared centuries after his death, it was of course really exciting.
It was a single sheet of paper. The top half of the manuscript was a draft of a letter Galileo sent to the Doge of Venice on August twenty fourth, sixteen oh nine, regarding a new telescope that was built that year. The bottom half of the document included notes and sketches allegedly made by Galileo when he used the
telescope to observe Jupiter's moons. Plotted from January seventh through January fifteenth, sixteen ten, it was the first time observational data showed celestial objects orbiting a body other than Earth. The manuscript debunked the theory held in Galileo's era that everything in the universe orbited our planet. It helped substantiate Nicolaus Copernicus's heliocentric theory and laid the foundation for modern astronomy.
The first appearance of the alleged Galileo document was in nineteen thirty four, when the American Art Anderson Galleries auctioned the library of Roderick Tis, a wealthy manuscript collector. It was part of his collection, but the origin story died with him. According to the auction catalog, it was authenticated by Cardinal Pietro Maffi, the Archbishop of Pisa, who had compared the writing against documents signed by Galileo. He compared
them to letters in his own personal collection. It passed the visual test, and the document was sold with a note of authentication. Tracy McGregor, a businessman from Detroit who had collected books and manuscripts, purchased it in May of
nineteen thirty four. Following his death, McGregor's trustees bequeathed the manuscript to the University of Michigan at ann Arbor in nineteen thirty eight in recognition of Hebrew Curtis, a professor of astronomy at the school, and it's been there ever since, said officials from the University of Michigan in regard to their Galileo Manuscript quote. It reflects a pivotal moment in Galileo's life that helped to change our understanding of the Universe.
I'm going to pause here for a word from our sponsor, and when we're back we will talk about how a professor at Georgia State University debunked the authenticity of the Galileo manuscript.
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about how the provenance of this document unraveled and how it began with a simple watermark.
Not everyone agreed the Galileo document was genuine. Enter Nick Wilding. Wilding is a historian and professor of history at Georgia State University and is often called in to verify the authenticity of rare manuscripts. He's also famous for his work uncovering Galileo forgeries, including exposing a forge draft of the Siderius Nuncius, which was galileo first publication of his celestial observations, as being an authentic.
According to Wilding, he quote got a little spidey sense when he heard about the document in Michigan, suspecting it could be a forgery. He emailed Pablo Alvarez, curator at the University of Michigan's Special Collections Research Center. Said Alvarez, who recognized Wilding for his work on covering forgeries, quote, I had a sinking feeling when I saw Nick Wilding's name on an email. Wilding first asked to see an
image of the document's watermark. Amy christ Book and Paper Concertor at the library used a special light table to locate the mark. It was a circle with a three leaved clover and the monogram read as slash BMO.
Experts can date paper by its watermark because often the watermark is linked to a particular paper mill that manufactured during a particular period. For instance, the watermark on the alleged Galileo manuscript contains monograms for the paper maker's initials that's the AS and then the site of production that's the BMO. The watermark caused Wilding to have quote serious doubt.
As he researched the watermark, he found another example. Another Galileo document at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York had a slightly different watermark, but the same monogram, said Wilding of the find quote. When that document in the Morgan Museum in New York revealed similar AS and BMO monograms, I realized that the ann Arbor and the Morgan document were siblings and both must be forgeries. Part of the monogram the BMO that he discovered was a
reference to the Italian city of Bergamo. He also discovered that no document with that mark exists before the year seventeen seventy, more than one hund undred and fifty years after Galileo had supposedly written the manuscript. Though it was commonly used after seventeen seventy two, paper experts independently dated the paper to the end of the eighteenth century Galileo he died in sixteen forty two.
When it came to clues about the forgery, Wilding also noted the handwriting quote. The document was supposed to be a draft, but in this draft Galileo had on his Sunday best a formal hand. At that time in Europe, most people had different styles of handwriting to suit different purposes. There were other anomalies that only a Galileo scholar would see,
including even how he crossed his t's and dotted his eyes. Literally, According to handwriting experts, Galileo had a habit of letting the crossbow of his t's dip into the letter E if an E followed. That detail was missing in the forged document. Also were the pen and ink that were used the ink was not right, and the quill was, as Wilding explained, quote, a quill that Galileo never used.
And then there was the content. So the bottom half of the one page manuscript included Galileo's signature along with five watercolor paintings charting Jupiter's moons. That was notable because Galileo had only used etchings in other known versions.
And then there was the cardinal's examination of the manuscript. He compared it to two documents that were believed to be genuine Galileo works. But long after his death in nineteen thirty one, it was Wilding who tracked them to the cardinals archives in Pisa, and from there he discovered that they too were fakes, donated to the archbishop by a man named Tobia Nikotra. Ni Kotra was a name
Wilding was familiar with his forgeries. According to Wilding filled gaps quote they are things that might have existed and now do of him. Wilding has said, quote, he seemed to have sold directly to individual collectors rather than to dealers, and this cut down on the chance of being caught, as dealers talk to each other a lot.
And as if we really needed more evidence there was no record of such a Galileo document ever existing prior to the nineteen thirties. At least, there's no record of such a thing in the extremely thorough twenty volume National Edition of Galileo's Works, published between eighteen ninety and nineteen oh nine. That's a work that is still today considered the reference material for all things about Galileo.
University of Michigan Library Director of Communication and Marketing Alan Pignon said of the work, quote, anybody who looked at it since it's been around has just been looking at other known Galileos. The handwriting matches because Kotro was good. It wasn't until actually looking at the paper itself that something started to maybe not make sense.
According to Wilding, quote, 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. Donna Hayward, interim Dean of the University of Michigan's libraries, told The New York Times at the time of discovery, quote, it was pretty gut wrenching when we first learned our Galileo was not actually a Galileo. The university did not hide
the mistake. Instead, they decided to announce their findings to the public as an act of transparency, stating, quote, after an internal investigation of the findings of Nick Wilding, the library has concluded that its Galileo manuscript is, in fact a twentieth century forgery. After our own experts studied his most compelling evidence about the paper and providence and re
examined the manuscrit, we agreed with his conclusion. The statement continued, quote, We're grateful to Professor Wilding for sharing his findings and are now working to reconsider the manuscript's role in our collection.
It can be really easy and it can be really difficult to expose a forgery, according to wild In, quote, hindsight makes most forgeries look shoddy, but there's nothing obviously wrong materially or texturally with most of Nikotra's forgeries. The Michigan document is good because it's so presentable, so photographable. It's a made for reproduction image, possibly because it was made from photographic facsimiles.
Ultimately because the forgery was based on actual works by Galileo. If you're looking for the real deal, you can see them. The genuine letter from Galileo to the Doge of Venice, that's the top part of what Nikotri used in his forged manuscript, is today held in the Archivio de Stato di Vini. The genuine notes and drawings from the bottom of the document are part of the Sidarius Nunkius dossier
at the Biblioteca. And as you're now Centrali di ferenze to give Wilding the final word quote, now we can get on with what we know to be true. You know what I know to be true A good drink. I love a cocktail. That's the truth. There's no getting around it. The thing that stuck out to me in this particular story, it echoes a thing that's come up several times now, is the stealing of paper from books.
That to me has really stuck out as well. I didn't realize until we started this season that this was a thing. Capital t.
Yeah, it's very common. So that made me think of an existing cocktail called a paper plane. I don't know if you're familiar with it. It's a fairly recent cocktail. It was invented in either two thousand and seven or two thousand and eight. By named Sam Ross and it's
variation on another cocktail called the Last Word. But I thought it would be fun to make something that looks like a paper plane but is not, and since it's not as commonly known as some of the others we've talked about, even though it's very popular right now and a delicious cocktail. A paper plane is three quarters of an ounce each of the following four ingredients. So amorrow nonino apparol, wild turkey, one O one bourbon, and fresh
lemon juice. It's a bourbon and bitter orange drink and that's normally shaken and served in a chilled cocktail glass. And it's very pretty.
How do I not know about this drink? Because this is right up my alley.
It is so up your alley. It's so up your alley. But I made something that looks like it, but it does not taste at all like and I'm calling it stolen paper. I wanted to do equal measures for it, but it didn't quite work, so we had to twist things around a little. So it's half an ounce of raspberry liqueur, an ounce of passion fruit liqueur, three quarters of an ounce of gin, and then three quarters of an ounce of fresh limon juice. This looks very much
like a paper plane. You shake it and with ice and then you strain it into a chilled cocktail glass. And it's one of those things where I made it trying to match the color, and then I was like, I don't know what this is going to taste like. And then I took a sip and was like, real good. I think the exact words were hot damn right now. Yes, the stolen paper in honor of.
The librarians of Milan.
Oh my goodness, and everywhere else that have had their books ruined by people trying to forge things. If you would like to make a mocktail version of this, I will say for the mocktail, we're diverging a little bit because often what I sub for gin is like a flat tonic water or something along those lines. I don't want to do this time, and I'll tell you why. What you're going to use for thetail is syrup. So you're gonna use half an ounce of raspberry syrup, an
ounce of passion fruit syrup. You're gonna use that three quarters of an ounce of fresh lemon juice. Then you're gonna just put like two ounces of ice cold club soda in it. Okay, this is the peppiest, yummiest. It's still got the sweetness of the fruit because there is a lot of syrup, but the club soda just makes it simpable. And you can even add more. If it's too sweet for you. Still, you can up the club
soda and get something really nice. I will say the lemon juice is high enough in volume to the rest of it that it cuts that sugariness quite a bit, so it's not for me. It didn't taste cloying, but it was just the most refreshing, crisp, delightful, super yummy. Raspberry and passion fruit together are always very yummy anyway, And for this one, I just so that's stolen paper. Don't steal paper, don't tear leaves out of books, particularly old books.
Goodness.
This is where I tell you that one of my jobs many moons ago, was repairing old books in a library, not with an eye towards conservation, but just towards getting them back into circulation, because they were books that needed to be available to students. So I often encountered poor, sad books, not necessarily that had been used for forgery purposes,
but just that just didn't get treated very nicely. You got to save those other people need that information potentially, So we hope if you make a stolen paper it's delicious.
It's such a strange sentence to him her.
Drink a stolen paper. Drink a stolen paper yum and numb and numb is. We will be right back here next week with another forgery and more drinks that look like other drinks that hopefully are delicious. Is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.