The Voynich Ninja

(20-02-2018, 01:09 AM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Searcher - 

the fifteenth century is rather later than we usually date the advent of eastern influence on Latin works.  The effects are seen from the late twelfth century in some areas, and some media but the usual dates are given as 1258-1350, by which time it is not at all uncommon.

I didn't mean advent, but prevalence.

Koen Gh,

Searcher shows another example of the marks, on 43r, and they display the same sort of edges, although the irregularities appear even more pronounced on 94v because of the layer of paint. It is not possible to determine if these marks and the ones in 94v were made with the same tool.
However, as you mentioned the paint on the roots with the scratches is definitely different: the darker paint on the right side ones appears to have been added separately from the left side, either because the original painter ran out of the first color (or chose to use a different color for a reason), or because a second painter later added this.

All in all I stand by what I said, we have NO evidence of when this scratching was done, or even of when or by whom the underlying dark paint was added.

As a side note, I have checked Nick Pelling's book and the word "sgraffito" doesn't appear in there at all.
On his website, however, he does talk about "chicken scratches", and considers them as marginalia.
In fact in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., he argues that there is reason to believe that they were added after one of the manuscript's re-bindings.
So there is no reference to Pelling's work that would reinforce the "sgraffito as evidence of provenance" theory proposed in this thread's title.

The so-called sgraffito on 49v is certainly an artifact of the manuscript's history, in the sense that it reflects something that happened to the Voynich at some point in its life, but it cannot be used as an indicator for provenance, simply because we don't know when it was made.

VViews,
Perhaps I expressed myself poorly;  I started the thread to discuss the issue of what would be implied for provenancing if the scratches in the paint were sgraffito - as I do think some are.


I am quite sure that it was Pelling who mentioned sgraffito quite a while ago, but I couldn't find it on his blog or on the old mailing list, and since you cannot see it in his book, then perhaps the only way to move from memory and guesswork to facts  is to ask Pelling, who may be irascible but his memory is excellent and whether he did or didn't, he'll tell the truth as best he can.


An interesting example of sancai in the McClung Museum.


You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Thanks to all for the responses.

Hunting through my archives, the only reference to sancai and sgraffito is on your blog, as far back as You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Darren Worley makes a passing reference to it in a comment on a paper he and MarcoP published on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but only in referencing a paper.

Back to sgraffito, surely this was only ever used in conjunction with gold or silver leaf in medieval manuscripts? Layers of ink would be impossible to scratch away in this fashion. It was done in paintings, but then the layers are of paint not ink.
When the ink in manuscripts is closely matched in two colours the technique was known as incidare (to incise), but this was not scratched away but instead carefully applied. See for example the Windmill Psalter. It created a highlight effect similar to that produced by sgraffito, but in reverse (ink is applied instead of being removed).

The Grove encyclopedia to medieval art and architecture has many mentions of sgraffito, but only in conjunction with metallic leaf when applied to manuscripts, as I said above.

I wish I had screen-clipped it, but I came across a detail in a 12th-century manuscript that looks like sancai if you look at it really closely. It's a drawing of birds, part of a medieval bestiary and the colors coincidentally match some of the most common colors in sancai ceramics and, because it's a water-based paint, it ran a bit, just as the glaze runs a bit in sancai pieces.

-JKP-

Was it a picture of a container of some sort?  And was it marked by vertical lines, and (not so vital) was blue included in the 'runny' bit?

If you find it again, I hope you'll come back to the thread and post a pic.  

You're right about the common colours for sancai (which means 'three colours' I believe), but the interesting things about the detail from the Vms is that there's no sign of runny paint; it's not watercolour in that sense.  And the colours include blue - which isn't one of the more common sancai colours.  I must check if it was used in the earlier phase of Byzantine-territory sancai.

On its own of course it would be nothing except another possibility.  When added to the - quite respectable - number of instances where the most elegant explanation is Asian influence, it does take on a certain depth of significance.

Which is why I thought it worth bothering everyone with.  If it is sancai being pictured, it melds perfectly with much else in the manuscript... as for example the form for the Phoenix, the inclusion of the unmistakeable 'lotus' motif on f.33v, etc.etc.etc.  I've been turning up this sort of pointer from the primary source now for almost a decade.  Naturally, the first few were passed over; the next lot dismissed as co-incidence, the following lot as a possibility worth further investigation... now it's got beyond rationalisation and clinging to the wreck of the 1912 diaster that was the Voynich story.  

Well, for me and a small number of people who read - or rather who admit they read  before parroting - the conclusions of my work.  

I guess in all about 5 people. 

(07-03-2018, 11:42 AM)Diane Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, for me and a small number of people who read - or rather who admit they read  before parroting - the conclusions of my work. 

I guess in all about 5 people. 

Can you please just stop?
Nobody on this forum is "parroting" your conclusions or your work.
If you have concrete accusations of plagiarism to level against specific people, feel free to create a thread where you will discuss them, or better yet, take it up with the individuals in question.
As you have been told countless times before, the sweeping generalizations and attacks demeaning others which regularly pepper your posts are baseless and insulting. 
If you would like more people to read your work, then one way you might achieve that is to be less offensive: it is really off-putting.