Forging the Moon 1

The first object to be mechanically reproduced with commercial success, besides coins themselves, was the printed book. We now tend to handle old books with reverence and affection, although once they were media's cheap upstarts, seemingly destined to a short shelf-life. The current value, or rather price, of old books depends on several factors: whether the title is generally considered to be important, how many copies survived, their physical state, etc. The rare book world, like many forms of collecting, is a conservative one, its favored titles generally well established, the location of potential copies carefully noted for future sale. One of the most profitable fields of book collecting in the postwar period, in terms of prices beating inflation, is the history of science.2 The dotcom boom has driven prices for canonical books in this field beyond the means of most institutional libraries, who are now, more than ever, reliant on the donation of private collections. It is uncommon, although not at all impossible, for wonderful new copies of very old books to appear; a dealer's reputation and fortune is largely built on his ability to create and fulfill a client's bibliophilic dreams. Consequently, knowledge of new sources is a prized possession, suspicion and skepticism ubiquitous.Rare books are just that, both "scarce" and "unusual," whence derives their agreed value. So when a new source, containing multiple copies, of very rare books, bubbles up, experts' senses become heightened, in a flux between excitement and incredulity. In the early 2000s, one such oasis suddenly sprang from Argentina, apparently unblocked by economic crisis. Centering on first editions of Galileo (1564-1642), a relatively large supply of highly desirable copies appeared on the European and American markets via various routes. Some of these had excellent provenances, others had interesting marginalia or ownership notes, and the stream continued to flow for several years. From the beginning, some dealers had misgivings about the origin of this new material. Rumors of theft and sophistication sullied the waters for some, although no charges were pressed. Amid this steady trickle of books, one item in particular shone out.In 2005, a very strange copy of Galileo's 1610 Sidereus Nuncius appeared, bought by the New York antiquarian book dealers Martayan Lan. An article in TIME Magazine claimed that the probable price tag would be over $10,000,000.3 What made the book so special was that although almost all of the 550 original copies printed contained five delicate etchings showing the phases of the moon, with around 24 lacking these, this one copy, uniquely, was hand illustrated (Figures 1 and 2). Lunar mountains and craters squirmed through the telescope into human view in dabs and strokes of soft brown bistre, a baroque sepia photograph. In answer to the question of the authorship of these observations was an inscription on the book's title-page: "Io Galileo Galilei f. [I, Galileo Galilei, made this.]" (Figure 3). Here, it seemed, after four centuries in hiding, was the author's copy of perhaps the most important book in the history of science.The renowned German intellectual Horst Bredekamp and the Galileo Professor of History of Science at the University of Padua, William Shea, examined the book, and their initial jaded doubts turned into a surprised "Eureka!": they announced the copy's authenticity at a press conference in Padua in 2007. Bredekamp then included an extensive discussion of the Martayan Lan copy in his 2007 book Galilei der Kunstler. Die Zeichnung, der Mond, die Sonne, 4 presenting detailed stylistic analysis of the sketches and favorably comparing them to Galileo's other scientific drawings. In 2011, Bredekamp edited a new two-volume study in English, called Galileo's O,5 dedicated to studying and authenticating the Martayan Lan copy, or SNML, as it had now become known. Bredekamp assembled a team of German, Italian, and American experts who subjected it to a wide range of tests. …