Welcome to Historical Dramanauts, a series where we discuss individuals who would be considered dramapilled or who created and continue to create drama through their eccentricities and drama-tik behaviour! This will be the first (and probably last since I'm lazy) article in a series to revive the /h/istory hole.

WHO?

Not much is known about his (((early life))) although he might have been forging things since his teenage years. His first big catch was a fake biography of Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini that was more fiction than fact, containing persona entirely made up by Nicotra and imaginary conversations that seemed to have been inspired by his own life. It was a very popular book in the United States. In fact, in 1932, he returned to the United States leading a salon orchestra impersonating Riccardo Drigo, an Italian composer who had died in 1930.

His forgeries of composer autographs were described by Harry Haskell as "convincingly executed".  He achieved this by visiting libraries in Milan housing historical manuscripts, and tearing out flyleaves (blank pages at the front or back of books) on which he would then add autographs.  He wrote on said pages taken from those old manuscripts with a quill using iron-gall ink, which gave the forged documents an air of legitimacy by making them seem aged.

He also hoodwinked the U.S. Library of Congress into buying a fake Mozart manuscript in 1928.

In 1934, he was finally arrested by the Milan police, who found a virtual forgery factory in his apartments, strewn with counterfeit documents that appeared to bear the signatures of Columbus, Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette, Martin Luther, Warren G. Harding and other famous figures.

When interrogated about his motives for forging, Nicotra said “I did it,” “to support my seven loves.” In addition to forged documents of historical figures, investigators also discovered 'shrines' dedicated to seven of his mistresses. These included paintings, sketches and photographs of various 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 "frank earnestness" , investigators said.

That's right, not only was he on the grindset , he was also a coomer with seven waifus

Nicotra cast a wide net in the types of documents he counterfeited, and seems to have possessed real talent and learning. He forged a poem he claimed was by the Italian Renaissance poet Tasso, musical manuscripts by leading composers, and accidently started a major international incident by creating a fake Columbus letter identifying his birthplace as Spain, not Italy, prompting the mayor of Genoa to write a lengthy rebuttal reaffirming Columbus’ Italian ancestry.

On 9 November 1934 he was sentenced to two years in prison,  based on testimony by Arturo's son Walter Toscanini and librarians from Milan whose testimony described him ruining manuscripts in their libraries .

However this free bird still had some flight left in him.

In 1935, Nicotra was paroled early by the National Fascist Party led by Benito Mussolini, who were so impressed by his skills that they made him forge signatures for them, turning him into the official forger of Italy.

Recently, the University of Michigan Library announced that one of its most prized possessions, a manuscript said to have been written by Galileo around 1610, was in fact a 20th-century fake. The discovery of the fake Galileo leaves open the question of what happened to the many other forgeries Nicotra created, which he was quoted as saying could number as many as 600. Article.

What have you done to equal this guy, rdrama?