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+--- Thread: What's the evidence that the colors were added later? (/thread-4955.html)
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later? - Jorge_Stolfi - 27-12-2025
(26-12-2025, 10:47 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is often said on this website that the painter had no clue what he was doing and was using totally random colors.
Not entirely random. In the herbal section, he would normally use green for at least half of the leaves, brown for the roots, and other colors for the flowers. He (or they?) used light yellow for the sun and nymph's hair, red for their lips, red sprinkles for their cheeks, blue or green for water flows, showers and pools, blue for starry skies...
Quote:But for me the case of Gemini shows that sometimes he knew what he was doing:
There is apparently some line of tradition that in Gemini man is green and woman is blue and he follows this tradition.
Good eye spotting that. But surely the Painter must have been influenced the tradition of his place and times. Like the original Scribe was, when he drew the nymphs' hairdos, hats, and dresses, the sun with wavy rays, used a nebuly line for the boundary of the sky on f68v3, drew dragons(?) next to some roots, drew castles with Ghibelline merlons, etc.
Whatever the origin of the VMS, by 1600 it was in Prague. We can guess that, for some part of the previous 200 years, it was somewhere in Central Europe, in the area of "German" culture. I suppose that the painting occurred in that time span, or at most before Marci sent it to Kircher. I can't imagine it happening after it was in the Jesuits' hands.
The VMS may well have been traded before it got to Barschius. Then the painting may have been done in order to made it easier to sell and/or increase it price -- since it seems that people at the time expected herbals to be colored.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later? - Jorge_Stolfi - 27-12-2025
(26-12-2025, 10:58 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I find it hard to imagine that certain illustrations should have looked like this:
It looks strange to us who have spent a billion hours looking at the color scans of that page. But otherwise that basicallu is how the Scribe would have drawn it.
The Zodiac diagrams after Taurus and several Cosmo diagrams, including f86v3, have very little color -- but we don't think they are "unfinished", because we have always seen them like that. There is no colored water in the pond at the top of f80r, but we dont find that strange because ditto ditto.
Maybe there were some ripple lines in that area, but they would have been erased by the paint. In the bottom pool of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. there are flow lines that enter the pool area, but were all but erased by the paint.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later? - Jorge_Stolfi - 27-12-2025
(26-12-2025, 11:10 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And again don't know if it was discussed but here and for example You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. there are some parallel "stripes". I am not sure if the artist:
- didn't know it is a rainbow
- didn't care to colour it properly
- lacked paint or time
- other
It is the other way around... In the original pen drawing, those were not rainbows but water conduits, as indicated by the water flowing out of their ends. It seems in fact that each "rainbow" is two parallel tubes (or maybe two channels, or may be a single open conduit with a square "U" section.)
The Painter, for some reason, decided to paint one tube green and one tube yellow. Then we compounded the confusion by interpreting those arches as rainbows...
By the way, that is one case where we can see some ink drawings (water flows into the pond) that were all but erased by the green paint. The pool also looks like it should have contained something else besides green water...
All the best, --stolfi
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later? - Rafal - 27-12-2025
Quote:In the original pen drawing, those were not rainbows but water conduits, as indicated by the water flowing out of their ends.
It can be both. Look at the top of f82v. Here rainbow/tube is painted with red and yellow and connected to clouds. And water is falling from it.
Forgive me for stating the obvious but rainbows are connected to water and rain, right?
From Wikipedia:
Rainbows can be observed whenever there are water drops in the air and sunlight shining from behind the observer at a low altitude angle.
Because of this, rainbows are usually seen in the western sky during the morning and in the eastern sky during the early evening.
The most spectacular rainbow displays happen when half the sky is still dark with raining clouds and the observer is at a spot with clear sky
in the direction of the Sun.
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later? - bi3mw - 27-12-2025
(27-12-2025, 02:03 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It looks strange to us who have spent a billion hours looking at the color scans of that page.
I don't think that's the reason. I also enjoy looking at medieval sketchbooks, where the illustrations are complete even without color. That's not the case with VMS. As @Rafal already wrote, it seems unfinished. Part of the “message” it is supposed to convey is lost without color. For example, I don't think it's purely decorative that the pools in Quire 13 are colored green and blue. The illustrator wanted to say something with this, we just haven't understood what it is yet. In any case, it's very unlikely that someone added a pictorial narrative later as an overlay, so to speak.
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later? - Jorge_Stolfi - 27-12-2025
(27-12-2025, 11:52 AM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.rainbows are connected to water and rain, right?
Well, yeah, but I have never seen any suggestion that water would pour out from the ends of a rainbow. Rainbows often end on the ground, and anyone who has seen that would know that there is no water running inside tehm.
The only rainbow lore I know is that there is supposed to be a pot of gold where it ends. Which is a joke to catch fools, because by their nature one cannot ever get to the place where it ends.
(27-12-2025, 11:52 AM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It can be both. Look at the top of f82v. Here rainbow/tube is painted with red and yellow and connected to clouds. And water is falling from it.
Hm, yeah, I don't know how to make of that drawing. Clouds and a rainbow could be an interpretation, but, again, why is water pouring out of the rainbow?
And why is the cloud packed so tightly against the rainbow, and only on one side? Could that instead be a small pond held by an You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.?
Anyway, if that is supposed to be a rainbow, I think is further evidence that the paint was not applied as the Author intended. He would have demanded a least a few more colors...
All the best, --stolfi
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later? - Jorge_Stolfi - 27-12-2025
(27-12-2025, 02:00 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That's not the case with VMS. As @Rafal already wrote, it seems unfinished. Part of the “message” it is supposed to convey is lost without color.
First, what information is the green paint conveying, exactly? The unpainted outline already "says" that the area is a pond.
Second, it is indeed possible that the ink outline we see today is incomplete. The green paint would have washed away any ink that it was painted over. Wherever there is water flowing into the pond, one can still see traces of the flow line continuing well into the painted area: but very faint, so that we would not see them if it wasn't for the parts that were not painted over.
This is the case on this same page: at both ends of the "mug handle" channel on the left margin of the pond, and at the top, where the two feeding streams pour into it.
So maybe there were other details inked in the big area at bottom, that were painted over and thus washed away.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later? - bi3mw - 27-12-2025
(27-12-2025, 08:48 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.First, what information is the green paint conveying, exactly? The unpainted outline already "says" that the area is a pond.
To be clear: I don't know, and if anyone did, we would be a considerable step further. What is clear, however, is that e.g. the pools are either green or blue. In my opinion, this is not coincidental but is intended to represent a process. It could be, for example purely balneological, different types of water, or (my unproven favorite theory) alchemical processes. Whatever the deliberate use of colors means (not forgetting yellow and red), it is not simply decoration but, as I said, a pictorial narrative. It should therefore be seen as a visual commentary on the text. It is virtually impossible that the colored illustrations are nothing more than a kind of interchangeable ornamentation. The interpretation “a pond is just a pond” clearly falls short here.
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later? - Koen G - 27-12-2025
Also, I don't understand how this argument works : "I find this weird, so it was probably not part of the original plan". We are literally talking about the world's most mysterious manuscript...
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later? - Jorge_Stolfi - 27-12-2025
(27-12-2025, 09:39 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Whatever the deliberate use of colors means (not forgetting yellow and red), it is not simply decoration but, as I said, a pictorial narrative. It should therefore be seen as a visual commentary on the text. It is virtually impossible that the colored illustrations are nothing more than a kind of interchangeable ornamentation.
Well,I take issue with the "deliberate" here. Everything about the paint layer, from the "instrument" used to the general disregard for the outlines, tells me that the Painter did not know or care about the meaning of the illustrations, and saw his task as being just decorative. In particular, he seems to have picked colors at random, apart from some loose constraints like
- "leaves are often green"
- "roots are usually brown or ocher"
- "sun rays should be yellow"
- "nymph's hair is light yellow"
- "star cores are yellow (or, in the Starred section, alternating yellow and red)"
- "rain and running water is usually blue"
- "still water is green or blue"
- "sky is usually blue"
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is my idea of what the nymphs of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. actually looked like when the original Scribe was done with them.
Quote:The interpretation “a pond is just a pond” clearly falls short here.
I agree that we cannot assume "a pond is just a pond" in this section. Either the organs are metaphors for ponds, or the ponds are metaphors for organs, or both are metaphors for something else. On this question, I am still as baffled as everyone else.
But we should not expect that the colors will help us solve the riddle. I believe they are only noise, that adds to the confusion...
All the best, --stolfi