The Voynich Ninja

I must admit that the early print period is not something I know much about. But I can imagine there was a transitional period, where printed works were still somewhat sparse and you still have people around used to manual copying. 

Imagine a scenario where person A has a book that was printed last year in Germany, but he's now in France and his friend B wants a copy. I assume they are not going to typeset the thing, nor do they have the woodcuts. So this might be exactly where these quick copies come in. 

The reason for color annotations is basically always the same: the original work will no longer be present on the desk when the copy goes on to the coloring stage. 

• because the painter is someone else, maybe in a different location, who'd prefer a quick note?
  
• because leafing through the source MS while painting the copy is inconvenient?
  
• because time with the source MS needs to be limited, so painting is done when the copyist no longer has it available?
  

For this reason, we also most often see color annotations where they matter: the color of a plant's blooms, or heraldic insignia. But not for generic stuff.

(08-07-2026, 08:19 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.An important nuance to keep in mind is that we are not supposed to see color annotations. ... So we only see them when a MS is unfinished or finished somewhat carelessly.

Or maybe when the Draftsman thought that they would be covered by the paint, but the Painter instead used a semi-transparent paint (which seems to be the case in those examples).  Or maybe the paint was originally opaque, but became semi-transparent as it aged, or the binder decayed and the pigment was mostly worn off.

All the best, --stolfi

(08-07-2026, 12:09 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Imagine a scenario where person A has a book that was printed last year in Germany, but he's now in France and his friend B wants a copy. ... the original work will no longer be present on the desk when the copy goes on to the coloring stage.

Maybe

• because A felt that, if B was not satisfied with the color codes alone, then B should pay for the painting.
  

All the best, --stolfi

(08-07-2026, 12:09 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For this reason, we also most often see color annotations where they matter: the color of a plant's blooms, or heraldic insignia. But not for generic stuff.

This would make sense, but is it really the case? Are the color annotations found where it matters the most? Most flowers don't have color annotations, but some leaves do. They're green, duh. Was the red for the root important? The annotations appear completely arbitrary to me, but maybe there is a pattern.

I was thinking the "everything green" annotations were to distinguish between woody stems and herby stems mostly. So a note at the root might indicate a red-brown (woody) stem. But I haven't checked this in detail so could be wrong. A systematic check would only be partially informative, since many instructions written at the top of the page were clipped off.