(11-03-2026, 06:03 PM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (11-03-2026, 12:42 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As mentioned, the copy is smaller (how much in percent?) than the original.
Although I am relatively confident that I measured/calculated the sizes with the given measurements + pixel counts roughly correct, it would put my mind at ease if someone else were to re-check to make sure I haven't made any obvious mistakes.
Now that Fabrizio has given the dimensions of the copy parchment, it's much more possible.
Matching the height of the cover of the Voynich MS to 235 mm, I get that the text in the Voynich MS is roughly 9% larger.
[
attachment=14565]
(11-03-2026, 05:17 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (11-03-2026, 03:59 PM)Fabrizio Salani Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This document was put up for auction, but I only learned about it years later. I'm posting it in the hope that someone can provide me with information, as I haven't found anything online. It would be interesting to know its content. I think it could be of great importance for my parchment, too.
I tried to contact the auction house in 2019 to have more information about, but never received a response (the auction was in June 2013)
"Ad dominum Marcum Marci Cronolandensem Epistula de manuscripto..." was a fake made as a joke and/or to promote a business. Massimo Gatta takes responsibility for it in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (p.168, footnote 38):
Quote:Quale cultore degli pseudobiblia anni fa creai, con l’amicale collaborazione di Fabio Massimo Bertolo, direttore allora della casa d’aste Minerva Auctions di Roma, un ‘falso’ storico in forma di opuscolo attribuito a Kircher, nel quale era presente una lettera da lui inviata appunto a Marcus Marci, nella quale gli indicava le proprie considerazioni in merito al codice ricevuto, compresa una sua teoria ermeneutica.
È noto, al contrario, che il celebre gesuita non rispose mai alle richieste che gli giunsero da Praga in merito al codice. Il nostro ‘falso’ aveva il chilometrico titolo Ad dominum Marcus Marci Cronolandensem Epistula de manuscripto notis arcanis exarato ab eodem misso, in qua secreta illius scriptionis usque ad praenses tempus inviolata omnibusque investigationibus elapsa aperire atque in lucem proferre conatus est Athanasius Kircher, Roma, Typis S. Congr. de propag. Fide, 1669. Minerva Auctions 2013; Gatta 2008; Gatta 2009; Gatta 2010; Gatta 2013;
Gatta 2015.
Machine Translation:
As a devotee of pseudobiblia, some years ago I created, with the friendly collaboration of Fabio Massimo Bertolo, director at the time of the auction house Minerva Auctions in Rome, a historical 'forgery' in the form of a pamphlet attributed to Kircher, in which there was a letter supposedly sent by him to Marcus Marci, in which he set out his own thoughts regarding the manuscript he had received, including his hermeneutic theory concerning it.
It is well known, on the contrary, that the celebrated Jesuit never replied to the requests that reached him from Prague regarding the manuscript. Our 'forgery' bore the kilometrically long title Ad dominum Marcus Marci Cronolandensem Epistula de manuscripto notis arcanis exarato ab eodem misso, in qua secreta illius scriptionis usque ad praesens tempus inviolata omnibusque investigationibus elapsa aperire atque in lucem proferre conatus est Athanasius Kircher, Rome, Typis S. Congr. de propag. Fide, 1669.
Minerva Auctions 2013; Gatta 2008; Gatta 2009; Gatta 2010; Gatta 2013; Gatta 2015."
I remember the episode, because when it was announced I believed it was authentic.... I think we discussed this on the forum, but I cannot find the old posts at the moment.
Thank you, I didn't know it was a fake... too bad, I was hoping it could be helpful. I never stop learning!
(11-03-2026, 04:12 PM)Fabrizio Salani Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (11-03-2026, 03:39 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:[*]A buyer of antique furniture buys a wardrobe at an antiques fair in Narni.
The wardrobe contains a mix of old documents.
Fabrizio, and did you see that wardrobe and another documents? Do you know who was the last owner of the wardrobe?
I wonder if your seller wasn't building some legend 
The seller, whom I had known for years, was an elderly gentleman with a great knowledge of antique furniture and a restorer, who passed away years ago. The parchment was mixed in with what I thought was a collection of paper documents and parchments spanning the 16th to 18th centuries (notarial deeds, property transfers, inheritances, boundaries, various letters, many with seals of various types), and it seemed to me that the whole thing had been collected more for the seals than for the information on the sheets. I didn't ask to see the piece of furniture because I have absolutely no knowledge of antique furniture, ceramics, ivory, silver, or carpets.
I want to be clear that I am not questioning your acting in good faith, I'm just trying to understand the sequence of events here.
Did you see the collection of documents in person, or did he send you a list and/or photos of them?
Were you attracted to this particular item because you recognized the text as being in (roughly) the same script as the Voynich Mss.?
If so, even if you weren't interested in buying any of the other associated documents why didn't you ask for/make a list of them (dates, associated names & locations), or even ask for photos?
If not, when/how did you make the connection? After you made the connection did you contact the seller to try to obtain more information about the other documents?
I'm trying to wrap my head around what looks like a really surprising lack of interest in the context in which the page was found.
(11-03-2026, 06:22 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Matching the height of the cover of the Voynich MS to 235 mm, I get that the text in the Voynich MS is roughly 9% larger.
Excellent!
I estimated it would be ~10%. Interesting trivia - the Renaissance portraits Hockney & Falco claimed to have been created with the help of a concave mirror were also estimated to be a 90% magnification, so 10% smaller than the original.
Quote:In July 2000, Falco and Hockney published "Optical Insights into Renaissance Art" in Optics & Photonics News, vol. 11, a detailed analysis of the likely use of concave mirrors in certain Renaissance paintings, particularly the Lotto painting. Experiments with a concave mirror (which technically is also a lens) of the calculated properties indeed produced a projected image that was bright and sharp enough to be of use to a painter. They also measured the distances between pupils in 12 examples of portraits with a "photographic quality" from between 1450 and 1565 and found that the pictures all had a magnification of ~90%, and the depicted heads and shoulders all stayed within a circumference of 30 to 50 cm, which corresponded with the sizes of sufficiently clear images projected with the mirror lens.
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Optics really isn't my field of science so I'm unable to assess if a mirror lens setup would be feasible to make a copy of a VM page. According to the paper, an area of about 30 x 30 cm was considered the upper limit for usable lens projections, otherwise aberrations become too large. So that neatly fits a VM page. It still begs the question of - why? The artist clearly put much more emphasis on the drawing and layout than the text.
(11-03-2026, 09:15 PM)kckluge Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (11-03-2026, 04:12 PM)Fabrizio Salani Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (11-03-2026, 03:39 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Quote:[*]Un acquirente di mobili antichi acquista un armadio a una fiera dell'antiquariato a Narni.
L'armadio contiene un miscuglio di documenti antichi.
Fabrizio, hai visto quell'armadio e altri documenti? Sai chi è stato l'ultimo proprietario dell'armadio?
Chissà se il tuo venditore non si stesse inventando una leggenda.
Il venditore, che conoscevo da anni, era un anziano signore con una grande conoscenza di mobili antichi e restauratore, scomparso anni fa. La pergamena era mescolata a quella che pensavo fosse una raccolta di documenti cartacei e pergamene che coprivano il periodo dal XVI al XVIII secolo (atti notarili, passaggi di proprietà, eredità, confini, lettere varie, molte con sigilli di vario tipo), e mi è sembrato che il tutto fosse stato collezionato più per i sigilli che per le informazioni sui fogli. Non ho chiesto di vedere il mobile perché non ho la minima conoscenza di mobili antichi, ceramiche, avori, argenti o tappeti.
Voglio essere chiaro: non sto mettendo in dubbio la tua buona fede, sto solo cercando di capire la sequenza degli eventi.
Hai visto la raccolta di documenti di persona o te ne ha inviato un elenco e/o delle foto?
Sei stato attratto da questo particolare oggetto perché hai riconosciuto il testo come scritto (più o meno) nella stessa scrittura dei manoscritti Voynich?
In tal caso, anche se non eri interessato ad acquistare nessuno degli altri documenti associati, perché non ne hai chiesto/fatto un elenco (date, nomi e luoghi associati) o addirittura chiesto delle foto?
In caso contrario, quando/come hai fatto il collegamento? Dopo aver fatto il collegamento, hai contattato il venditore per cercare di ottenere maggiori informazioni sugli altri documenti?
Sto cercando di capire quella che sembra una sorprendente mancanza di interesse per il contesto in cui è stata trovata la pagina.
[*]
Certo, capisco perfettamente; oggi sono domande legittime, ma 13 anni fa il contesto era molto diverso. Ho visto la sfilza di documenti in foto e, tra tutti, questa piccola pergamena con un bellissimo disegno di una pianta e un antico sigillo mi ha colpito. Personalmente, sapevo molto poco del manoscritto Voynich; non mi ero mai immerso nella sua storia completa; tutto è venuto dopo. I documenti erano di vario tipo (per lo più legali, a quanto ricordo: trasferimenti di proprietà, eredità, confini), su carta e pergamena, quasi tutti con sigilli e con date diverse che abbracciavano tre secoli (le date erano la cosa più evidente perché erano scritte a caratteri cubitali, disegni schematici di case, alberi con frutti, contorni di confini, parlo di una decina di fogli, a quanto ricordo, che non ho letto approfonditamente perché non mi interessavano). Nessuno ha stuzzicato la mia curiosità come quella piccola pergamena, che all'epoca non consideravo così importante (ammesso che lo sia) ma semplicemente bella e presumibilmente antica, quindi l'ho acquistata. Non ero attratto dal testo, ma dal disegno e dal sigillo, tutto qui, molto semplicemente. Quando ho approfondito la mia conoscenza del manoscritto, poi mi è venuta la curiosità di saperne di più e da lì è iniziato tutto, con il pensiero: e se fosse così?
(11-03-2026, 06:39 PM)Fabrizio Salani Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Thank you, I didn't know it was a fake... too bad, I was hoping it could be helpful. I never stop learning!
This was an interesting event. The truth came out after the involvement of Nick Wilding, famous for the exposure of the Galilei fake, and a bit less well known for his involvement in the digitisation of the Kircher carteggio, years before that.
In my opinion a noteworthy feature in Fabrizio's copy is the symbol :
[
attachment=14569]
It appears in numerous places of VM. Unlike much of the manuscripts text, where this symbol seems to be deliberately obscured or changed so that the ignorant cannot read, here it is precisely written, suggesting to be read as plaintext indicator.
I can add a curious fact, which has nothing to do with research: when I showed the parchment in person to those who had only seen it in digital images, they all said, "It's much more beautiful and fascinating in person than in photos." Perhaps that's my fault, as I scanned it at 300 DPI at the time. In the next few days, I'll scan it again at 600 DPI (at my business's point of sale in France, I have a professional multifunction printer with CIS system) and publish it on this site. I hope it will be more useful to everyone.
[
attachment=14572]
Sometimes it really seems as if you're being taken for a fool.
Something normal simply turned upside down.
(11-03-2026, 06:22 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Matching the height of the cover of the Voynich MS to 235 mm, I get that the text in the Voynich MS is roughly 9% larger.
That's awesome, thankyou! I got similar results.
Depending on my exact lines, I got ~9.5% height difference, and ~7.5% width difference. The exact numbers depended on the exact rotation and choice of where to draw the boundaries. A stray word, longer space or including downwards tails/flourishes somewhere skews the numbers slightly. Using the top loops of the
p and the top crossbar of the
p makes a difference etc etc
But the copy is always clearly smaller than the VMS.