Colors

[Anton]

Anton,

Shortage of colours isn't such a good argument when considering the fifteenth century. Colours didn't come pre-mixed in tubes, and if one had a red and a blue, using just a little of each to create a mauve or purple would be one way to make both go further - but this wasn't done.  Another way to make paints go further would be to thin them - easily done but again we find that some of the pigments have been applied thickly, which would seem to me to indicate either an environment unlike what we find in the usual Latin scriptoria and ateliers, or an intention to use only the colours which are used.  Not accident but intent.

Well, this may have been one way or another, it's really difficult to say. I think that "thinning" the paints is what we see in the "zodiac" section. And painting/creating different sections of the MS may have been separated in time, so that e.g. one began with no lack of paints, but somewhat later experienced the shortage.