With respect to the green water in VMS people make a big deal about it being green bath water. I think there are a few other explanations offered here for discussion.
First possibility, the color isn't important because it was added later. I noted something in a few JPGs and decided to download some of the HI Res TIFF images. I looked at images 1006208.tif and 1006214.tif I tweaked tonal values plus contrast and found three places on the first image and six on the second where it looks like there may be labels, or at least glyphstrings, under the green tint. There is something on 1006215.tif too, but it looks more like transfer form another page to me. It's unlikely the original artist would have applied a color wash heavy enough to obscure information. So possibly someone used the VMS for a coloring book at one point and added colors they though should be there. This would also explain why some plant stems are painted and others aren't and why some leaves look like the paint job is really sloppy. It might also explain whe the "bath water" in 1006215 is green but the windows looking into the bathwater are blue.
Second possibility, The water is used to indicate various steps in a process designed to produce some result. So it's green when the process is, for example, aging the solution, and blue when it's being used to do something else like extract essense from the ingredients being soaked. The ladies in this scenario are ingredients in the process, each being a representation of a different ingredients or possibly essences alredy in the solution (the number of ladies goes up as the pages progress).
Third possibility, it's green because the blue tint was too heavy to use for the water in most places. The green might have been something that thinned better in water. 1006218.tif has a color wash that looks like it might be a mix of blue and green tints. Do they mix easily or is this tint a different tint from the other two? Perhaps it was blue originally but the cheaper blue dyes faded to green?
Finally, copper, Polmolive or whatever, maybe it is a bath and they did have green bathwater. I'm not big on this one since there's only one pic I can find where they do anything but sit. And the setup is pretty elaborate for a bath. Reverse flow processes and the importance of social bathing aside I don't know of any baths that had bath attendants flying arond in conch shells or women holding up big jeweled rings in the bath.
Of course most of these are not either/or. Some of the color could have been added later on some images. Some of the images may be metaphorical. Pigments could have been mixed for various reasons with various results. And there might even be a picture of a real bath or two in there just as an excuse to add more naked ladies to the manuscript.
First possibility, the color isn't important because it was added later. I noted something in a few JPGs and decided to download some of the HI Res TIFF images. I looked at images 1006208.tif and 1006214.tif I tweaked tonal values plus contrast and found three places on the first image and six on the second where it looks like there may be labels, or at least glyphstrings, under the green tint. There is something on 1006215.tif too, but it looks more like transfer form another page to me. It's unlikely the original artist would have applied a color wash heavy enough to obscure information. So possibly someone used the VMS for a coloring book at one point and added colors they though should be there. This would also explain why some plant stems are painted and others aren't and why some leaves look like the paint job is really sloppy. It might also explain whe the "bath water" in 1006215 is green but the windows looking into the bathwater are blue.
Second possibility, The water is used to indicate various steps in a process designed to produce some result. So it's green when the process is, for example, aging the solution, and blue when it's being used to do something else like extract essense from the ingredients being soaked. The ladies in this scenario are ingredients in the process, each being a representation of a different ingredients or possibly essences alredy in the solution (the number of ladies goes up as the pages progress).
Third possibility, it's green because the blue tint was too heavy to use for the water in most places. The green might have been something that thinned better in water. 1006218.tif has a color wash that looks like it might be a mix of blue and green tints. Do they mix easily or is this tint a different tint from the other two? Perhaps it was blue originally but the cheaper blue dyes faded to green?
Finally, copper, Polmolive or whatever, maybe it is a bath and they did have green bathwater. I'm not big on this one since there's only one pic I can find where they do anything but sit. And the setup is pretty elaborate for a bath. Reverse flow processes and the importance of social bathing aside I don't know of any baths that had bath attendants flying arond in conch shells or women holding up big jeweled rings in the bath.
Of course most of these are not either/or. Some of the color could have been added later on some images. Some of the images may be metaphorical. Pigments could have been mixed for various reasons with various results. And there might even be a picture of a real bath or two in there just as an excuse to add more naked ladies to the manuscript.