Humanist handwriting in the MS?

[MarcoP]

Thank you, Rene! I feel quite ignorant about this subject, but I do find it interesting.

Edited to add this excerpt I found You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
The first six lines in double quotes refer to  "what Toresella said".

From: "Jim Reeds"
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 10:51:40 -0400
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: Toresella

On Sep 10,  9:16, Dennis wrote:
about what I wrote about what Toresella said:


>    ....  What you had: "The VMS is, with certainty, authentic;
> not a fake.  It was manufactured in the period 1450-1460.  It was in
> France for a while: the month names
> on the zodiac diagrams are in French in a French handwriting.  The book
> itself comes from Italy; the mysterious writing is done in a round
> humanistic style found only in Italy in the second half of the 1400's."  
>
>       It would be interesting to know what specific "humanistic style"
> he had in mind; does it have a name?  It always puzzled me how T. could
> specify such a narrow time range, given the uncertainties here.  
>

The shifting of the date range from 1450-60 to 1460-80 is a bit bothersome.

The "humanistic style" question is easy to answer. In about 1450 a new kind of handwriting arose in northern Italy, consiously associated at the time with the Humanist movement (Petrarch, the recovery & revival of classical MSS & learning; the literary aspect of the Italian Renaissance). This handwriting was based on classical Roman models (some MSS, I think, but also on samples seen on stone monuments) and was a model for our printed "Roman" typefaces. Unlike the "textura" (aka "bastarda" or "gothic") handwriting common througout Europe in the period 1100-1400, which can be seen in Stofi's web pages), humanist hand is easy for us to read. It fell out of popularity in a few decades, however, being supplanted by the "Italic" hand, which is still in use. This brief period of popularity is what allows Toresella's puzzling narrow range of dates. Unlike the slanted Italic hand, the humanist hand is upright. Round letters seem equally round on both sides. The book by Tradechino I mentioned earlier this year is written in this kind of handwriting; there are samples in Bischoff's "Latin Paleography". (Which I don't have at the office, so I cannot check any of the details above.) After Toresella pointed it out to me I am completely convinced that the VMS script was written by a user of the humanist hand.

About page layout: the page transcribed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is from Pistoia, Biblioteca Comunale Forteguerriana, A.33.

The ms is described You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as "the earliest surviving autograph, the copybook written at the school of Master Antonio di ser Salvi da San Gimignano" (il primo autografo pervenuto, il quaderno scritto alla scuola del maestro Antonio di ser Salvi da San Gimignano). Latin verbs are annotated with the implied subject ([ipsi] viverent, [ego] docebo, [tu] costodi) and some spelling have been corrected ("mutus", mute, into "mutuus", in return).  

The marginal illustrations could well be the product of a smart schoolboy. The author was clearly familiar with the layout of luxury illuminated manuscripts (such as the Marginal psalters discussed by You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and mentioned by Koen above, or more common, but still luxury, Latin Psalters). What we have here appears to be a low-quality reproduction of a high-end layout. In this respect, these pages are amazing parallels for Quire 13.