Guy de Cointet’s “A Captain From Portugal” (1972)

French artist Guy de Cointet (1934–1983) once made a series of enciphered artworks, one of which found itself uploaded to imgur (by user “drpoopandpee”, *sigh*) in 2020, triggering a brief flurry of interest on Reddit from user Doc_Skeef.

Once Klaus Schmeh posted about it, it didn’t take his readers long to realise that it was (in part) a simple substitution cipher. For example, the ciphertext at the centre of the cover image looks like this:

This can be transcribed as:

     A CAPT
     AIN FR
     OM POR
     TUGAL. 

How can you tell this? The cipher alphabet used for the above appears on a different page:

Here you can see the “=” glyph at the top (for plaintext ‘A’), with the ‘<‘ glyph immediately below it (for plaintext ‘C’), etc, which should get you started reading “A CAPTAIN…” on the cover page. A nice piece of work by Klaus’ commenter Armin!

“Bands of pigmentation”

But one of the other pages, once correctly decrypted (by commenters ShadowWolf and Matthew Brown) offered up a mysterious plaintext for which nobody had an explanation:

like bands of pigmentation in the zebra, the ridged elevations formed on the shell of the argonaut and on the giant cactus of the west present …

I can now actually reveal that this text came from “Finger Prints, Palms and Soles: An Introduction to Dermatoglyphics“, a 1943 book by Harold Cummins Ph.D., and Charles Midlo M.D. I’ll transcribe the full section (“Other Patternings In Nature”, pp.34-36), simply because the OCR of the original book is so bad (which may possibly explain why nobody found it before).

There are numerous parallelisms in nature of dermatoglyphic configurations and of minutiae of individual ridges. The analysis of what might be termed the geometry of biology is a field in itself.

One of the most striking illustrations of dermatoglyphic parallelism is the form and arrangement of stripes in some animals, the zebra being a familiar instance (Fig. 32). The bands of pigmentation in the zebra, and in a negative fashion the light stripes separating them, show remarkable resemblance to the configurations and minutiae of epidermal ridges. The stripes have ends and forkings which simulate minutiae and there are triangular consolidations of stripes which resembled triradii. The several areas presenting unlike directions of stripes might be likened to configurational areas in a palm or sole. In some zebras there are regional organizations of strips that may be likened to dermatoglyphic patterns and vestiges.

Hair arrangement also is suggestively similar to dermatoglyphic configurations. Hairs are projected at a slant from the skin. In a restricted region of the body the hairs slant in a common direction (fig 33) but adjoining regions may present quite different slants as exemplified by the parting of the hair of the scalp and the occurrence of one or two whorls on the crown. Other regions of the body likewise present local [p.35] distinctions of hair arrangement, and though that arrangement accords with a common general topography, there are individual differences. The areas in which the hairs point uniformly in one direction may be compared to open fields of the dermatoglyphics. The crown whorl and similar configurations elsewhere are patterns, and the irregularities localized at the points of juncture of three or four areas of different hair slants correspond to triradii.

Like bands of pigmentation in the zebra, the ridged elevations formed on the shell of the argonaut and on the giant cactus of the West present bifurcations and ends resembling the minutiae of eipdermal ridges. Inanimate nature is not lacking in similar illustrations. Sand whipped by wind or waves, may show ridges conforming with surprising exactness to the characteristic of epidermal ridges, with forkings, enclosures and ends (Fig. 34). Similarly, some cloud formations exhibit bands with ends and [p.36] forkings. Periodic precipitates (Liesegang rings) resulting from diffusion into a gel of a substance reactive with another substance contained in the gel, behave under some conditions like the lines of cellular proliferation which produce epidermal ridges. If the gel is contained in a capillary tube of uniform bore and no disturbing factors modify the reaction, the passage of the diffusing solution is marked by a succession of regularly spaced discs of precipitate which on edge view are seen to be perfectly plane. Variations in caliber of the tube or sudden changes in temperature produce warping and other irregularities of these discs which as shown in figure 35 are in edge view curiously like the irregularities of epidermal ridges.

The physical principles responsible for the configuration of wind swept sand, banded clouds or of periodic precipitates are probably simpler in their operation than the factors which underlie the production of dermatoglyphic configurations and ridge minutiae. Nevertheless, the forces concerned may prove to have more in common than mere outward resemblance of their effects.

But What Does It All Mean?

OK, I’ll cheerfully admit that I have no idea. But Cummins and Midlo’s book is all about fingerprinting, so I went off a-hunting to see if I could find a Portuguese captain who was historically connected with fingerprinting in some way. Though I found nothing even slightly of interest, perhaps others will have more luck than me. But it’s a start!