13-08-2019, 05:41 AM
What a great question. I never thought about that.
There are hints that the VMS was never finished (like the blank for the rubricated initial and the lack of "labels" in some of the small-plants folios), so it might be hard to judge. I'm sure it's possible that a painter could miss a few annotations but how would we know?
I guess it depends partly on whether the person making the annotations and the person painting were different people (which was usually the case in medieval studios, but this is the VMS). Assuming they were different people, it seems very likely that a small initial almost nearly hidden in a root could be missed.
There are hints that the VMS was never finished (like the blank for the rubricated initial and the lack of "labels" in some of the small-plants folios), so it might be hard to judge. I'm sure it's possible that a painter could miss a few annotations but how would we know?
I guess it depends partly on whether the person making the annotations and the person painting were different people (which was usually the case in medieval studios, but this is the VMS). Assuming they were different people, it seems very likely that a small initial almost nearly hidden in a root could be missed.