05-10-2016, 11:52 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-10-2016, 12:11 AM by Diane.
Edit Reason: add
)
A last word:
The issue with the sensible-sounding idea that we should pay attention to experts is that the experts selected as preferred "authority" are usually just that: selected.
If one were to simply go with the numbers of expert opinions about the manuscript, we should have to say that expert opinion had it a work made in England.
One cannot presumes that one opinion cancels another simply because it comes later, but an opinion is worth as much or as little as the level of analysis and the appropriateness of comparisons and documentation.
It has been made abundantly clear to me that despite my formal qualifications, a thirty-five year career as a professional, and almost eight years spent in explaining and documenting in detail the reasons for my opinion, the ideas expressed by Sniezynska-Stolot and which are plainly uninformed by any prior, or in-depth or apparently by any later research into this particular manuscript, are preferred.
Take me out of the equation and consider how rarely we see it asserted that the manuscript must be southern Jewish - an opinion we have on the expert authority of Irwin Panofsky, and one all the more weighty because the history of medieval and renaissance art in Germany was his field of expertise!
Note also, that in representing Panofsky's opinion, Prinke says in the same note to the mailing list:
"Thus she [Sniezynska-Stolot] confirms the opinion of Panofsky (and my own amateurish feeling) that the VMS should be dated to mid-15th Germany/Poland/Bohemia."
Panofsky's expert opinion was that the manuscript was a Jewish product, influenced by Islamic culture, from "Spain or somewhere southern" and that it referred to Kabbalah. After 1492, Spanish and southern Jews took refuge in various parts of Europe, Germany included. But in fact, the only reason for having to argue the later date was the publication of an erroneous opinion that the manuscript included the New world's sunflower.. post 1492 by definition.
Rather than picking and choosing "names" to drop, in order to add an air of spurious authority to a theory about the imagery or place of manufacture, it is far better in my opinion to emulate the meticulous and analytical approach which we see habitually applied in studies of the manuscript's written text.
Then, whether a person is, or isn't, a professional in the field hardly matters: the evidence itself speaks. If permitted.
The issue with the sensible-sounding idea that we should pay attention to experts is that the experts selected as preferred "authority" are usually just that: selected.
If one were to simply go with the numbers of expert opinions about the manuscript, we should have to say that expert opinion had it a work made in England.
One cannot presumes that one opinion cancels another simply because it comes later, but an opinion is worth as much or as little as the level of analysis and the appropriateness of comparisons and documentation.
It has been made abundantly clear to me that despite my formal qualifications, a thirty-five year career as a professional, and almost eight years spent in explaining and documenting in detail the reasons for my opinion, the ideas expressed by Sniezynska-Stolot and which are plainly uninformed by any prior, or in-depth or apparently by any later research into this particular manuscript, are preferred.
Take me out of the equation and consider how rarely we see it asserted that the manuscript must be southern Jewish - an opinion we have on the expert authority of Irwin Panofsky, and one all the more weighty because the history of medieval and renaissance art in Germany was his field of expertise!
Note also, that in representing Panofsky's opinion, Prinke says in the same note to the mailing list:
"Thus she [Sniezynska-Stolot] confirms the opinion of Panofsky (and my own amateurish feeling) that the VMS should be dated to mid-15th Germany/Poland/Bohemia."
Panofsky's expert opinion was that the manuscript was a Jewish product, influenced by Islamic culture, from "Spain or somewhere southern" and that it referred to Kabbalah. After 1492, Spanish and southern Jews took refuge in various parts of Europe, Germany included. But in fact, the only reason for having to argue the later date was the publication of an erroneous opinion that the manuscript included the New world's sunflower.. post 1492 by definition.
Rather than picking and choosing "names" to drop, in order to add an air of spurious authority to a theory about the imagery or place of manufacture, it is far better in my opinion to emulate the meticulous and analytical approach which we see habitually applied in studies of the manuscript's written text.
Then, whether a person is, or isn't, a professional in the field hardly matters: the evidence itself speaks. If permitted.