A work that can be seen-just with a microscope. The Madonna and Child by Ignatius Muligin

The only known application of Galileo Galilei ’s (Pisa, 1564 - Arcetri, 1642) microscope on a work of art concerns a work ... apparently unsuspected. Indeed, in the Diego Costantini Collection is preserved a Madonna and Child that, looking at it superficially, and perhaps even lingering on the figures, does not seem to conceal anything strange. But it actually holds an interesting secret that hints at the experiments of the century of science. The work is dated October 1642 (or perhaps 1692: the third figure in fact is not clearly distinguishable) and is signed, “Ignatius Moliginus scripsit anno 1642.” It is apreviously unpublished work, presented for the first time as part of the exhibition The City of the Sun: Baroque Art and Scientific Thought in the Rome of Urban VIII (in Rome, at Palazzo Barberini, from November 16, 2023 to February 11, 2024, organized by the Galileo Museum in Florence and the National Galleries of Ancient Art in Rome).

A curious Baroque work that takes us directly into the cultural temperament of the central years of the seventeenth century, at the time when the scientific method was being elaborated, at the time when the passion for Wunderkammer, the collections of curiosities that the wealthiest collectors sought all over the world without sparing any expense, was widespread throughout Europe. It might seem strange today, but at the time even Galileo’s microscope was seen almost as an oddity, so much so that the first person to use the mycroscopion (the name is credited to an academician of the Lynxes, Giovanni Faber, who named the instrument after him in 1625) for scientific purposes was the eclectic scholar Athanasius Kircher, a collector of bizarre objects, who used the instrument to study microbes. But evidently the microscope lent itself to other uses as well.

The Madonna and Child signed by Ignatius Moliginus preserves a peculiarity: on the entire surface of the drawing there is a calligram, namely a figured composition (that is, one in which the words of the text are arranged to form a figure), which in this case can be read only by making use of the microscope, otherwise it could not be seen: therefore, there are also those who call this type of writing micrography . The surface of this work, made in pencil, ink and gold dust on parchment, is in fact crisscrossed with a number of horizontal lines that can barely be seen with the naked eye, but which become intelligible again if they are magnified with the lens of a microscope. And it will turn out that they reproduce an entire book of litanies, namely theOfficium Beatae Mariae Virginis, a liturgical text, widespread at the time, that had been reformed in 1631 by Pope Urban VIII, as well as an additional set of prayers.

The secret of Ignatius’ Madonna and Child is actually highlighted well by theinscription that runs along the edge of the work: we might call it the instructions for use. The inscription lists everything inside the work ("TheOfficium Beatae Mariae Virginis, seven penitential psalms, theOfficium defunctorum, all the vespers and litanies of all the saints,“ and so on), with a warning: ”it must be observed that it is necessary to read under a microscope“ (Latin ”Hoc tamen animadvertendum est ut debeat legi cum mycroscopion"). It is as if a book of about 500 pages were given in full on a sheet of paper. It sounds incredible, but the Ignatius Moliginus who signed the work succeeded in this feat. Helping himself precisely with the microscope. Without it, it is not possible to distinguish the words with the naked eye.

Diego Costantini, who signed the card in the exhibition catalog that constitutes the first publication of the work, suggests, albeit with a question mark, the hypothesis that the Madonna and Child with its micrograph may have been conceived as a "mirabilia to amaze Urban VIII.“ It is hard to say, not least because it is still unclear whether the sheet was filled with inscriptions before the Virgin and Child Jesus was drawn (and in this case, the text might even have an independent birth from the figures), or whether the inscriptions come after the drawing, and thus someone had the precise idea of ”disguising", in some way, the text. In any case, it is quite likely that the work was produced in Barberini circles: the image is in fact taken from a painting by Pietro da Cortona, now in the Louvre, the Virgin and Child with Saint Martina, which the Tuscan artist painted in the 1740s for Antonio Barberini, who perhaps donated it to the French monarchy. The work was widely circulated, thanks also to engravings, such as that of François Spierre , who, during his stay in Rome between 1660 and 1663, was specifically commissioned to translate Pietro da Cortona’s work, which had for the latter’the latter, moreover, a very special significance, since the artist from Cortona was very devoted to St. Martina due to the fact that her remains were found during the renovation of the church of Santi Luca e Martina that had been promoted by the Barberini themselves.

Who, finally, was the Ignatius Moliginus who signed the work? We have some information about him. He was a Swedish-born calligrapher who on other occasions had signed his name, Ignatius Francis Muligin: we are left with a few of his works, including a drawing (a portrait of Maria Anna Christina of Bavaria in triumph), probably made by the French painter Pierre Mignard, which bears another calligram by Muligin(Il trionfo d’applausi e di glorie figurato di purissime lettere di sua altezza reale Maria Anna Christina Vittoria di Baviera delfina di Francia, in which are contained li seguenti versi, da leggereersi nella figura con il microscopion). This work was acquired in the spring of 2023 by the Huntington Library in San Marino, California: “Royals throughout Europe were accustomed to poets celebrating their greatness with hyperbolic verse and artists skillfully depicting them as divine,” the museum explained at the time of the acquisition, “but this masterpiece is unique because it was explicitly designed to be read with a new scientific instrument: the microscope.” It is, explained Joel Klein, curator of the Huntington Library, a work that stands “as a testament to the essential interdependence between art and science,” and a drawing that “is also a technological achievement and an object of wonder, demonstrating the potential of the microscope to reveal hidden details and new perspectives.”

Muligin, between 1683 and 1689, was in the service of Cardinal Angelo Maria Ranuzzi, apostolic legate at the court of the king of France, and was a friend of the French poet Gilles Ménage (Angers, 1613 - Paris, 1692): the poem in honor of the dauphin Maria Anne Christine of Bavaria, which consists of about 6,800 verses, is dedicated to him. Muligin is also the author of a poem glorifying King Louis XIV, which was offered to the king in 1686, and of a liturgical text accompanying an Immaculate Virgin of 1702, with a dedication to Ferdinand de’ Medici, recently passed at auction by Drouot.

If, therefore, we are certain that, in the Madonna and Child, the texts were written by Muligin, who was therefore a specialist in calligrams (although it remains obscure: we know him only because he signs his name in the dedication to Ménage, otherwise perhaps his name would not even have reached us), for the drawings there are still no certain names: it is safe to imagine, however, that Muligin used expert artists to create his bizarre sheets. Of course, much remains to be studied about the tools and techniques Muligin and his collaborators used to put such astonishingly detailed manuscripts on their sheets. That of seventeenth-century micrographs is a field of study yet to be explored.

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