The 40th William F. Church Memorial Lecture: Nick Wilding (Georgia State University), “False Impressions: A History of Print Forgery”
Date and Time
March 10, 2020
05:30PM - 05:30PM EDT
Location
Smith-Buonanno Hall, 106, Brown University, Providence, RI
Brown University Medieval & Early Modern History Seminar
https://blogs.brown.edu/memhs/
Prof. Nick Wilding is a historian of early modern Italy, of the book, and of science. A recipient of many awards and fellowships, and author of many works, most notably Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and the Politics of Knowledge (2014), he also became visible internationally when in 2012 he exposed a grand fraud. Wilding proved that a proffered copy of Galileo’s famous treatise on the use of a telescope to observe the stars, Sidereus Nuncius (1610), purportedly including Galileo’s own watercolors of the moon, was a clever forgery. It helped to bring the director of the Girolamini Library in Naples, Marino Massimo De Caro – part of the Berlusconi network – to justice. (De Caro was also found to have embezzled many hundreds of books from the library he oversaw.) Wilding also featured prominently in the PBS documentary about how the fraud was exposed, “Galileo’s Moon” (which premiered on July 2, 2019).
Free and open to the public. A reception will follow the lecture.
https://blogs.brown.edu/memhs/
Prof. Nick Wilding is a historian of early modern Italy, of the book, and of science. A recipient of many awards and fellowships, and author of many works, most notably Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and the Politics of Knowledge (2014), he also became visible internationally when in 2012 he exposed a grand fraud. Wilding proved that a proffered copy of Galileo’s famous treatise on the use of a telescope to observe the stars, Sidereus Nuncius (1610), purportedly including Galileo’s own watercolors of the moon, was a clever forgery. It helped to bring the director of the Girolamini Library in Naples, Marino Massimo De Caro – part of the Berlusconi network – to justice. (De Caro was also found to have embezzled many hundreds of books from the library he oversaw.) Wilding also featured prominently in the PBS documentary about how the fraud was exposed, “Galileo’s Moon” (which premiered on July 2, 2019).
Free and open to the public. A reception will follow the lecture.