The Voynich Ninja

Once again, I'd like to try and raise the fundamental issue of methodology in approaching a fifteenth century manuscript whose place of manufacture remains uncertain, and whose content remains largely unread, after a century and more.

My view is that the chief reason for lack of substantial advance is a general absence of 'reality checking' when treating aspects of the manuscript other than linguistics and cryptography.  Since 1921 we have seen a remarkable absence of such cross-checking  when it comes to ideas that have been, and are, promoted as 'theories' about art, historical exchanges, and cultural practice.  

For example, O'Neill did not bother to present any reasoned argument by considering actual examples of pre-1600 images of the sunflower when urging his highly-imaginative interpretation of one botanical image in the Vms.

My recommending objective tests as 'reality checking' doesn't imply a necessarily negative critique; it could add solid weight to an otherwise hypothetical scenario.   The methodological difference is this: instead of hunting the historical record for support for a theory, and only within parameters defined by the theory, we first check that the theory itself is compatible with the wider bodies of relevant scholarship: codicology, palaeography, historical, technical and cultural studies.  (Had  O'Neill applied such method, his paper would have never seen print, and we should have been spared the lingering consequences).

LAUBER
I this case I'm recommending a paper by Scott (et.al) because it may help add more weight to recent comments about  Lauber's workshop. See e,g.

Koen Gheuens, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., (blogpost dated Sept.12th., 2018) 
Nick Pelling, 'You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.' (blogpost dated 10th September 2018)

The paper I mean is this:

David A. Scott, Narayan Khandekar, (et.al.)., 'Technical Examination of a Fifteenth-Century German Illuminated Manuscript on Paper: A Case Study in the Identification of Materials', Studies in Conservation, Vol. 46, No. 2, (2001), pp. 93-108.  Available through JSTOR

That paper  gives technical and nicely specific information about works which came from Lauber's atelier, and names some of the artisans who worked there.   I'll quote a bit with original footnote numbers retained: 

Quote: Diebolt Lauber is known to have been a book-seller and miniature painter active in Hagenau in the region of Alsace from 1427 to 1467. Known in the art historical literature as a prodigious publisher (as many as 50 manuscripts have been attributed to his atelier), Lauber is thought to have had as many as 16 draughtsmen and five scribes working simultaneously in his studio [7]. In an advertisement that  appears in a manuscript now in the British Library, Lauber declares the versatility of his workshop:

'....

The scribe of our manuscript ends the text with the date 1469. It has been suggested that the illuminator was one of the better-known artists working in Lauber's atelier, Hans Schilling, or an associate of Schilling [8, 10]. A number of compositions can be compared to engravings dating to 1461, 1466 and 1467 by the Master E. S., a Swiss engraver whose work had a far-reaching effect on artists in this period

Investigating such topics as pigment analysis and  lineage of works ascribed to a given draughtsman may add weight to a 'Lauber' hypothesis or it may suggest a need to revise it, but in either case it can only be helpful to our better understanding. 

As someone once said,  'scientific method' is almost a tautology for Science IS nothing but its method

Thaks, Diane, I will certainly look into this when I get home.

Now Lauber himself is likely too late for direct VM relevance, but he is only the most prominent name in an older Alsatian tradition. The workshop of 1418 which preceded him, also in Haguenau, might be of greater interest. Unfortunately it is somewhat shrouded in mystery.

There was almost no information on the Web about Lauber's workshop 10 years ago—just the briefest of mentions in German in one or two papers on Google books, and the dedicated Website didn't exist yet.

As Koen points out, the earlier workshop is shrouded in mystery, as well. I made heroic efforts to try to figure out who Lauber's relatives, colleagues and predecessors were, hoping to uncover more about the earlier workshop, but didn't find much other than the vaguely defined relationship to Schiller.

Years later, there's still very little posted about either of them or the earlier workshop. There are, however, many more digitized books on the Web than when I posted about the palette and the drawing style in Jan. 2016, and this may eventually help uncover some of the missing links. Koen has found some good costume parallels in the illustrations. I'm actually quite optimistic that more information will be found.

JKP Yes, I agree he's too late in one sense, but a ball of string has two ends (unless designed by Mobius).

Koen: you have more faith in radiocarbon dating than the radiocarbon dating people themselves have. It is a technique whose results can easily be skewed (particularly forward) by confounding local factors - not by a whole century, sure, but certainly enough to make Lauber's workshop much more of a direct candidate than you seem to think. (And I understand the technical arguments for and against.) Which isn't to say that what we see in the VMs is a direct copy of a Lauber workshop original, but rather that we can't necessarily use the radiocarbon dating to eliminate copying 'routes' between mss over such a short timescale. Understanding Lauber better should really be our collective starting point here.

As far as the Lauber literature itself goes (which is more what Diane was asking about), we have a number of (admittedly not cheap) books which need to be raked over, e.g. Ulrike Spyra etc. My book budget has only just recovered from a historical-cipher-related splurge earlier this year, so her main book on Lauber should arrive here shortly.

In the meantime, here's a paper that Koen mentioned previously, if you haven't already seen it (along with the other uni-heidelberg webpages on Lauber):
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Right, Nick, but if there is continuous commercial printing in Haguenau from at least the second decade of the 15th century, then I'd say anything of interest we can learn about the "workshop of 1418" is as least as important as Lauber. I'm not sure what the current consensus is about the relation between "1418" and Lauber, but to me it looks like Lauber just took over the enterprise at some point, or at least their image stock and peculiar methods of producing a wide amount of illustrations from a limited set of examples. 

But well, you are right in that Lauber might be of significant importance if the MS appears to be on the late end of the radiocarbon dating or somewhat outside of it.

I spent countless hours researching the Haguenau manuscripts and I'm letting it rest for a bit now. But as you say there's still so much literature left to be explored. Unfortunately most of it is in German.

There is a scientific community involved in radio-carbon dating, who are continually reviewing their and others' work, improving methods, and exchanging ideas in symposia and through scientific journals. They are better aware than anyone else of the limitations of the method.

At the 2012 Voynich conference, both Nick and myself (with Philip Neal, Rafal Prinke, Jorge Stolfi, Rich Santacoloma, Stephen Bax and many others) saw a presentation by Greg Hodgins of the Voynich dating.
One of his slides was dedicated to a cross-check of C14 results, either between two labs or with independent evidence. This largely confirmed the validity of the estimated error margins.

While these experts are happy to make such comparisons with other data, all of the many doubts that have been expressed against the Voynich MS dating are based on MS hypotheses that clash with this dating. I am not aware of any evidence with some reliability that would invalidate it.

One may explore the possibility of a 1460 or later date of the Voynich MS, but one will be working in an area of low to very low probability.

The observations that have been made about the MSs from the Lauber workshop do not appear very strong to me. The fact that their illustrations tend to be bssed on earlier models reinforces this.

It isn't just costumes.

The palette is very similar. I've looked at thousands of manuscripts and it's hard to find palettes this similar. I have only found a few.

The way the little critter in the pond is drawn in the Lauber "mermaid" drawing is quite unusual, as well, just as the hind legs of the VMS critters are very unusual. I've collected thousands of medieval animals drawings and MOST illustrators "get" the notion that the hind legs point the other way. The VMS illustrator didn't have a good sense of three dimensions and did not understand joints/anatomy and mostly got this detail wrong. The same oddity is found in the critter in the Lauber pond picture, in addition to the general form. The drawing style is different (the Lauber illustrator could draw much better), but the form of it is unusually similar.

That's why I spent ridiculous amounts of time trying to find out about Lauber predecessors. This kind of oddity (a quirk of perception) sometimes runs in families, along with the fact that these kinds of businesses often stayed in families in the Middle Ages.

Thank you Rene, as a rule I do respect the date range in the early 15th century, which is why I usually express some doubt with the figure of Lauber himself. Although theoretically there is some overlap between Lauber's professional years ans the VM date range.

As JKP says, parallels between the VM and the Haguenau tradition are manifold. But there are differences as well, such as themes, artistic skill and preference for paper. 

But if it later turns out that someone took their stack of parchment to a Haguenau workshop to make some really weird bifolios with the available resources there, I would not be surprised.

JKP,

the argument about the palette of colours will be difficult to defend.
Leaving aside that many of the colours in the Voynich MS may have been added later (but we don't know)...

The Voynich MS is on parchment and all Lauber manuscripts are on paper. I strongly suspect that some if not many pigments are suited better for one medium.

More specifically, the Lauber manuscripts have several colours that are lacking in the Voynich MS: large areas of red orange and blue, while in the Voynich MS red and blue tend to be small patches, and are of a crystalline nature. This is obvious under the microscope, and can be seen in the Austrian documentary.

The yellow in the Lauber manuscripts is clear and present, while in the Voynich MS this was an organic yellow that has faded.

Indeed, the greens are very similar. Probably the same material was used (verdigris).