Matthias Buchinger must have been some kind of genius. A draftsman, calligrapher, magician and musician, he traveled all over Northern Europe to entertain kings and aristocrats as well as hoi polloi with amazing feats of physical dexterity. Buchinger was especially noted for elaborate drawings featuring biblical passages written in letters too small to be read by ordinary naked eyes.

Along the way, he married four times and fathered 14 children. All this he managed despite having been born without hands or legs: His arms ended at about the elbows and his lower extremities were truncated at the upper thighs. Promoted in his time (1674-1739) as “The Greatest German Living” and “The Little Man From Nuremberg,” he had the torso of a grown man but stood just 29 inches high.

While contemporary reports marveled at his talents as a performer, we’ll never know for sure how good Buchinger was at magic or music. But we can see for ourselves his extraordinary prowess with pen and ink as the Metropolitan Museum of Art presents 16 of his graphic works in “Wordplay: Matthias Buchinger’s Drawings From the Collection of Ricky Jay.” Mr. Jay, the actor, magician and historian of magic, has been tracking down pieces by Buchinger for more than three decades. And he has chronicled that pursuit with scholarly flair in a new book published on the occasion of this exhibition, whose full title reads, “Matthias Buchinger: ‘The Greatest German Living’ by Ricky Jay, Whose Peregrinations in Search of the ‘Little Man of Nuremberg’ Are Herein Revealed.”