I don't remember reading about the reddish lines added to two of the You are not allowed to view links.
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EDIT: there's a comment by Nick Pelling You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view.. If I understand correctly, he believes the reddish lines are not a later addition but were made before the rest of the drawing.
Quote:one page (f55r) still has the (unfinished) red lead sketch-lines, so that’s probably how all the drawings were done – a master making a (pencil) sketch and then a scribe tracing & finishing them, before rubbing off the red lead.
My guess is that the marking up for the text was similarly done in red lead, which was similarly then removed by the scribe. I don’t know if there’s any literature on red lead markings, though: that might be a scribal practice local to certain areas. Something to think about, anyway.
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It certainly wasn't a lead tip. It would be grey. Just like the circles.
From the smudges, it looks like coloured chalk.
Nick mentioned it.
‘glair (eggwhite) and calcium carbonate (chalk), I’m pretty sure..’
I was thinking of You are not allowed to view links.
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pencil, it might have been chalk.
Yes, in that way. Liquid or solid. Although I don't know in what fineness such writing tools were available. I'm thinking of the thickness of a charcoal for drawing. That would perhaps be too thick for such lines.
I'm guessing liquid with a nib.
The hypothesis that a 'master' sketched all the drawings while scribes finished them might explain their overall similarities and common elements that are very hard to argue if different people created the drawings independently.
However I see a problem with this as well. Koen has clearly shown the distinction between 'alpha' and 'beta' plants and there is a certain correlation between drawing style and scribal hand. For this to work out, the scribes would have needed to strongly modify the original sketch.
Indeed we see on You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. that the red sketch was not used in the final drawing at all, it doesn't make any sense as it adds some sort of petals to the bottle-shaped calyx. I am not really sure if these red sketch lines really pre-date the drawing but I am not qualified to judge. To me it rather looks like a child doodled on that page without much concern.
Interestingly, below the leftmost calyx we see another bottleneck-shape drawn instead of alternating round and triangular petals. Still the red sketch makes no sense at all, even for VM flower standards.
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Bernd, this reminds me of something: this particular folio is one of the major exceptions against the rule that red is only used in Herbal A. It's likely "transitional", whatever that means. The plant is Beta (grass, leaves to one side...) but red is Alpha. The verso, You are not allowed to view links.
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Login to view. , is B-language but the plant has a structure I associate with the Alpha style, and a distinct overall vibe.
It may not be a coincidence that we see this weird action around red, exactly in the spot where we'd expect red to start disappearing. No idea what it means.
Also the flower style of You are not allowed to view links.
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A multispectral image of You are not allowed to view links.
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I am curious why you associate You are not allowed to view links.
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I can't check my notes right now, but all leaves connecting to one point along the stem is quite alpha, if memory serves.
I agree that those bottle-shaped parts are important to compare on all plants that have them. There's part of the story we're missing.
From your compilation, I also noticed now that these are some of the plants with root parts that return in the small plant section. I will illustrate this when I'm home.
I quickly slapped together some madman mood board. There appears to be some connection between reappearing in the small plants and having this particular brand of weird flowers. At least an indication of some folios being connected to others in strange ways...
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It would be great to have a diagram showing which parts of large plants reappear in the small plants section. and a table with the bifolio number, scribe and plant part (flower/leaf/root).
However if we take apart roots and look for root shapes in leaves, things will become very subjective at some point.
An interesting question would be - do B large plants pre-date A small plants? Were the small plants copied from the large ones or from a common source?
Not sure how to make a solid argument for any of these hypotheses though
