The Voynich Ninja

There's a lot of uncertainty about the paint in the manuscript. 

Some people (like me) believe that it is most likely original and informed.
Some people (probably most notably Nick Pelling?) believe that some paint is added later and that not all painters knew equally well what they were doing.
Some people (like Stolfi) believe none of the paint is original/reliable.

Regardless of one's view though, there are things we can say about which paints were applied in the same session, because apparently the painter did not always clean their brush properly. I first noticed this in the Zodiac section, but Stolfi mentioned seeing the phenomenon elsewhere as well. 

This is most obvious on the Libra page. The central emblem is first painted in blue. Then the brush is not completely cleaned when the painter switches to yellow, and the first star (1) comes out very blue. The blue components remain in the brush for a bit longer, but eventually fade out.

[attachment=12846]

What's fun about this is that we can retrace the steps of the painter and follow along as they color the page. I believe it may even be possible to expand this to the whole foldout, where blue is a major part of all the central emblems, and a switch to yellow occurs when the last one (scales) has been done. I quickly drew on some arrows to indicate the general direction of coloring;

[attachment=12847]

This teaches us that:
* Yellow and blue were applied in the same session. Blue first, then yellow.
* The whole foldout was likely painted at once, with perhaps some utilitarian considerations: blue central figures, "clean" brush once, then yellows starting with all the stars. (This part is more speculative).

Are there other places like this in the MS?

(07-12-2025, 02:58 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Stolfi mentioned seeing the phenomenon elsewhere as well. ...Are there other places like this in the MS?

There are many examples in the herbal section.  On You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. already, one of the ocher leaves starts green and then progresses to yellow through dirty ocher.

On f5r, as the Painter switches between the "pure" green and olive green, there are places with a gradient between the two colors. 

On f5v, I ca't tell whether the Painter started the with the yellow or with the green, but he seems to have painted with various mixes and gradients, even with the brush-cleaning water, and went back more than once on the same leaf.

There are many more examples, and also in other sections. but folks are calling me to lunch...

All the best, --stolfi

Ones off the top of my head
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is one I questioned previously, where it looks like this may have happened. 
f70v1 - weird light green headwear at 3 o'clock
f67v1 - Various yellow, green, to mucky yellow-green stars

I'm guessing there's a lot, if people really look. The main thing for me was trying to decide if green (not mucky green) "skin" meant "serpent-like" in animals - snakes, lizards, dragons and so on. I don't know where I stand for original or much later, but there was very probably more than one painter in my opinion, and also reasons to believe they were not the same person as the drawer/scribe. The reason why this might be interesting is paints getting mixed "The Unwashed Paintbrush", if green seems very neat and blue messy, maybe the dirty green is "blue guy" doing yellow too, rather than green, which would point to multiple. 

Don't know really, but an interesting topic. My intuition is that much older talk of "the dark painter" (Bob ross is batman?) probably has some truth to it and there are multiple painters, of which maybe we can see who did (/messed up) what. Your example shows this blue might = yellow painter well.. the annoying thing is mucky green could be caused by green+yellow or blue+yellow.. it is interesting there seems to be very little orange though via this dirty paint brush.