The Voynich Ninja

VViews posted an interesting resource about ink production in the library. I checked it hoping to find a clue to something that can be observed in the VM. The fact that the ink used for drawing and writing has faded considerably, but that certain other parts are still quite black.

Iron gall ink generally has the drawback that it fades over time. So is this unfaded ink from a different recipe? I found the following fragment about this:

"And note, that ink made with wine is good for writing books upon the sciences,
because, when books are written with it, the letters do not fade, and can hardly be scraped out or
discharged from parchment or paper. But if they are written with ink made with water, it is not so, for
they can easily be scraped out, and it may happen that the letters written with it will fade."

From the manuscripts of Jehan Le Bégue, composed in Paris in 1431, which are found in Original treatises, dating from the XIIth to XVIIIth centuries on the arts of painting, in oil, miniature, mosaic, and on glass; of gilding, dyeing, and the preparation of colours and artificial gems; preceded by a general introduction; with translations,prefaces, and notes. By Mrs. Merrifield. v.1, Merrifield, Mary P. (Mary Philadelphia), London, J. Murray, 1849, p. 68.

What I find interesting here is that apparently the "fading" ink was very easy to erase (!). Also, that non-fading ink was apparently of a finer (more expensive?) quality.

Some examples are quite striking, for example in the later Zodiac pages where "dark diadems" have been added. Everything has faded apart from these few black details and the month name (!)

[attachment=1175]

Does this mean that the person who added or traced the dark lines also wrote the month names? It looks like the same pen to me (line thickness).

Thoughts?

There are very many cases throughout the text which look like "tracing", so I think one is for sure - someone at some point of time tried to "fix" the portions fading out.

It's hard to know if the person who added the month names was the same person who touched up many of the drawings.

Whoever added the month names didn't care if their labels clobbered the drawings and wrote right over them in some parts. If the person cared about "fixing" drawings, it seems like an odd attitude to "break" some of them with sloppy overwritten labels.

I don't know. I suspect it may have been a different person who touched up the drawings, but maybe they used the same kind of ink as the person who wrote the labels. Maybe the manuscript was moved from one location to another where available inks or materials for inks were a little different.


From what I've read so far, inks were frequently home-made but they could also be purchased in the marketplace from vendors who mixed them in bulk.

I am still unsure about this one, here's why.
On the one hand, yes, it does look like what Koen Gh describes is a possibility, and many have noted the apparent presence of various touch-ups in the Voynich nymphs.
Yet based on ink color alone, especially when all we have to go on are scans, I don't think we can determine whether there might have been one or several retouchers.
On the other hand, I'd like to entertain a different hypothesis. To me, the black ink used in the diadems doesn't seem that different from the shade of some other elements on the same folio, such as the nearby nymph's hairline as well as some of the breasts and genital areas. Also as Koen Gh notes, these darker lines occur mainly in the later parts of the zodiac.
So, I wonder if it could be a matter of the ink that the artist used being either poorly mixed or having a tendency to separate, meaning that while the ink was homogenous when he began drawing the section, towards the end, he might get different concentrations of pigment depending on how he dipped his quill.

[attachment=4340]
Here is an example of different inks and manuscripts in the same book.
It is intended to show the possibilities of different inks even though it was written in the same place.
It can help to make decisions.

I'm no expert, but the tracing of the nymph's heads looks to be done with a finer nib than the writing of the month names.

To see ink differences you should look at the leaflet f67r1_f67r2.
Here you can see that different inks were used next to each other.
It would also explain the ink change, or new mixture in the zodiac sign October, November.
For me the ink became simply too thin by diluting it. So I had to get a new one.

@LisaFaginDavis
Question:
Would you say that there is a difference in handwriting as well as ink colour? f67r1_f67r2
I would be interested in your opinion on this.

Thanks

(10-05-2020, 01:20 PM)davidjackson Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I'm no expert, but the tracing of the nymph's heads looks to be done with a finer nib than the writing of the month names.

I often wondered how they did those incredibly sharp lines with a quill: same width at all angles. The writing is sometimes incredibly thin too. For example You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. starting line 15, with dark ink, at 3rd word qokeochy. Is there any example of such thin drawing and writing in any other medieval ms.?