Mirabilia graphica - Micrographic Calligrams of Ignazio Muligino

From June 18 to October 18, the Museo Galileo in Florence hosts an exhibition dedicated to the calligrams of Francesco Ignazio Muligino, a distinguished calligrapher active between France and Italy in the late seventeenth century.

The exhibition's centerpiece is a rare calligram, readable only through a microscope, depicting the Virgin and Child after a painting by Pietro da Cortona. The image is entirely composed of the text of the Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis, written in characters so tiny that they are invisible to the naked eye.

The exhibition explores the relationship between the birth of microscopy and seventeenth-century artistic production. Alongside Muligino's masterpiece, visitors can discover three additional calligrams by the artist, Federico Cesi's Apiarium, Matthäus Greuter's Melissographia, an eighteenth-century edition of the Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis, Chérubin d'Orléans' La dioptrique oculaire, and a selection of microscopes and optical instruments dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

An interactive touchscreen station allows visitors to explore the calligram in extraordinary detail by enlarging the image and reading the micrographic text that forms the figures of the Virgin and Child.

Curated by Filippo Camerota, the exhibition is a project of Museo Galileo with the support of Fondazione CR Firenze.