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+--- Thread: Do Herbal A and Herbal B correspond to differences in imagery? (/thread-3106.html)
Do Herbal A and Herbal B correspond to differences in imagery? - Koen G - 20-02-2020
With Lisa Fagin Davis' most welcome analysis of different handwriting in the MS, this question came to my mind again. Clearly, the herbal (large-plant) pages were somehow divided among two persons as far as the application of the text goes. But do language A and B (or scribe 1 and 2) pages also display differences in their imagery?
We know that there are different painting styles in the MS. This has been noted about the water, and JKP also wrote about how differences exist in the greens of the plants.
Sam G once noticed that the color red (or at least the brown that passes for red in the VM) is used almost exclusively on A-pages (over 30 instances) with only one clear use on a B-page.
With this in mind, at the end of 2018 I set out to digitally sample all colors used in the large-plant images. You can't trust your eyes for this, since our perception of color is always dependent on context.
I always sampled an area (as large as the image would allow) to avoid deviant pixels. I then noted the HSB values and gradually developed HSB ranges that correspond to particular colors. This was to a degree arbitrary since pigments are not always mixed the same so you get more of a continuum. Still I tried my best to distinguish meaningful differences. I used an online color namer to provide names. I did this in order to avoid bias.
The blue in this section is a mess, often with streaks of different colors going through it. When there was blue, I just sampled the blue and left the other colors alone.
The most difficult to categorize where the different kinds of tan/beige colors. I'm pretty happy with how the greens went.
I ended up with the following color palette:
You can see all my data here:
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The first page distinguishes all those shades; the second page is a reduced version with fewer shades.
I knew from the start that it was a risky undertaking and probably lots of work for nothing. Since I haven't worked on this for a while now and I'm not sure if anything good will come from it, I decided to just share it as-is.
RE: Do Herbal A and Herbal B correspond to differences in imagery? - -JKP- - 20-02-2020
I guess one of the difficulties with assessing this kind of data is that there are primary pigments (in the sense of those that are ground and put into a pot) and blended pigments (those created by combining paint in the main pots).
Some painters would work with a palette of four colors and get maybe 9 or 10 other colors by combining them. Other painters, really skilled ones, could get something that looks almost like a continuum.
So... I was thinking, part of the value of this kind of data is comparing it to other manuscripts, just as the style of the drawings or text might be compared to other manuscripts but... then one would need to separate out the primary pigments from those that are blended, since this process (and skill level) differs from illustrator to illustrator.
Even so, what you have so far is very interesting (and I commend you for the considerable effort). Every journey begins with a first step. Over time, it would probably be valuable to have a "paint profile" for each folio in the manuscript.
RE: Do Herbal A and Herbal B correspond to differences in imagery? - Koen G - 20-02-2020
There might be something in the data, but I don't have the statistics skills to find it.
One thing I was looking for is whether there is a pattern between A and B pages. In the screenshot below I corrected the amount of A folios as if there were as few as the B folios (A are almost 3 times as many so you can't compare absolute numbers). This is from the reduced set of colors.
The shade I called "rust" is what we perceive as red. Even with correction, it is still very prevalent in A and almost absent from B. Conversely, "ironstone" and "sepia" appear somewhat more common in B. For many other colors, the corrected numbers are almost identical between A and B.
Another thing I wondered about was whether a certain shade might be more prominent on certain bifolios. But an immediate complication was that probably both sides of the same folio cannot be painted at the same time, you would have to allow for one side to dry.
RE: Do Herbal A and Herbal B correspond to differences in imagery? - -JKP- - 20-02-2020
Yes, and it takes longer to dry than paper. But there's a fairly good chance both pages on a single sheet on at least one side might have been done around the same time.
RE: Do Herbal A and Herbal B correspond to differences in imagery? - Koen G - 20-02-2020
Is there a consensus that the painting was done before or after binding?
RE: Do Herbal A and Herbal B correspond to differences in imagery? - voynichbombe - 20-02-2020
Aren't there a few cases where not completely dried up paint transferred to the opposite sheet?
RE: Do Herbal A and Herbal B correspond to differences in imagery? - ReneZ - 21-02-2020
This is a very interesting approach. Some considerations:
The raw images are rather 'pixelised', so when sampling the colours of individual pixels, one inherits quite a bit of noise. A necessary (I think) and somewhat laborious initial step is to average a small area of pixels in order to get a better estimate of the colour in RGB or Hue, Chroma, Lightness. Or one can use more modern / professional scales.
The paint was applied before the latest (re-)binding, but not all paint may have been applied at the same time. It is one of the many open questions. In fact, the type of analysis you are trying to do might shed some light into this....
RE: Do Herbal A and Herbal B correspond to differences in imagery? - Koen G - 21-02-2020
Hi Rene, I used a function in photoshop that averaged out an area of pixels. Something like 5x5 would already give great results, but I took a larger area whenever possible (although some testing showed that there was usually no meaningful difference beyond 10x10).
I could probably have chosen a better color scale, but went with hue, saturation and brightness because mixing paints cam also be described in those terms. I was unable to find what would be the best approach when sampling scans of medieval manuscripts...
I wonder if the prominence of red in herbal A might point to such different stages of painting. Although the text was written after the images; so there are several possible scenarios.
RE: Do Herbal A and Herbal B correspond to differences in imagery? - DONJCH - 21-02-2020
(21-02-2020, 06:42 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Although the text was written after the images;Is that really the consensus?
RE: Do Herbal A and Herbal B correspond to differences in imagery? - Aga Tentakulus - 21-02-2020
When I look at the scripture, I must not look at the present order alone, as I now leaf through it. By the thickness of the ink and the tip of the nib I also have to look at the individual sheets before it was bound.
The best way is to look at the page order on Rene's website.
As it looks like some texts were written before binding. But the colour after binding, as long as the mutual impressions are not caused by humidity and time.