La valeur du faux (note critique)

This review article looks back at the Sidereus Nuncius affair, one of the most notorious rare book forgeries of the 2000s, based on two recently published works: the collective volume SNML. Anatomie d'une contrefaçon (2020), and Nick Wilding's Faussaire de Lune. Autopsie d'une imposture, Galilée et ses contrefacteurs (2014). Several case studies of forgeries involving books and other texts, and of the careers and practices of the forgers themselves, have examined the motives behind these counterfeits, often in terms of individual behavior, motivated by a deliberate desire to falsify facts or invalidate existing knowledge, or by social ambition. However, when it comes to forgeries traded on the antiquarian book market, where value is determined as much by content as by material characteristics, we must ask broader questions. The configuration of knowledge at play in this particular case concerns the nature of "proof" at the border between the history of art and the history of science. It also reveals the links between experts and forgers, based on a mastery and savoir-faire that concerns not only the objects involved but also their respective practices, skills, and materials. A close analysis of this configuration reveals the porous frontier between the rare books market and the world of historical and archival knowledge.