[split] Jorge's Retracer Thread: darker ink, retracing of text and drawings

[Jorge_Stolfi]

The whole "retracing" theory has a bit of a problem: under the best-possible enlargements/zooms is nothing of the original words visible anymore.

But in fact there are examples where the "original" strokes are visible under the "new" darker strokes. Here are some examples (all from the Sagittarius page, with coordinates relative to the Beinecke "full jpeg" scan):

  

•   You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Sagittarius 1600,1290 inner band nymph at 11:00
  
•   f73v Sagittarius 1280,1870 inner band nymph at 08:00
  
  In both cases, note that the original drawing had the left breast outline, and only half of it was retraced or completed in dark ink. 
  

•   You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Sagittarius 1240,2300 outer band label at 07:30
  
  (This label is almost upside-down.) Note how the retracing converted two common glyphs, still visible in "normal" ink, into two invalid ones: an "e" into a reverse "i" with serif, and a "ch" into an incomplete infinity symbol.
  

•   f73v Sagittarius 2000,1520 inner band label at 01:30
  
  Note how only the stem of the "r" was retraced in dark ink, while its very faint plume, still in "normal" ink, was apparently missed.
  

•   You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Sagittarius 1820,980   inner band label at 12:30
  
  Here we have the opposite: a plume was retraced but not the glyph where it was originally attached to, leaving it floating in mid-air.  (It is hard to tell what the original label was; perhaps "or y"?)
  

I would say that the Retracer was very careful when retracing the labels, although he/she apparently did not know the alphabet. He was less careful when retouching the figures, and had fun adding details like the "showercaps", crowns, and right breasts.  Perhaps because he guessed that (as in European astrological diagrams of the time) the drawings were only ornamentation, and the only important parts were the labels?

All the best, --jorge