A museum in Paris, France, keeps a notebook of French painter Camille Corot (1796-1875). A page in this document is encrypted. Can somebody break this cryptogram?
Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875) was a French painter. He is mainly remembered for his landscape paintings in the neo-classical style. In addition, he created a considerable number of portraits. Corot was extremely productive and versatile. Even during his lifetime his paintings were in great demand, which made him a rich man.
To my knowledge, Camille Corot is not mentioned in the crypto history literature. As it seems, he was not interested in ciphers. However, there is one item that makes him interesting for crypto enthusiasts. The Musée Carnavalet in Paris, France, keeps a notebook of Corot that includes an encrypted page. Here’s a scan of it:
I am not aware of a solution of this cryptogram. Of course, it is not sure that this sequence of numbers is really an encryption – it might as well be a note referring to sums of money or other numbers. However, the museum website calls it “inscriptions et chiffres”, which means that they assume it’s a cipher.
If this note is an encryption, Corot might have used a codebook (or a nomenclator) to create it. Cryptograms of this kind are usually hard to break, unless the codebook used is known.
Can a reader find out more about the Corot cryptogram? Can somebody figure out the cleartext?
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Further reading: Who can break this enciphered letter written by Albrecht von Wallenstein?
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