Alchemical Symbolism in the VMS

[Jorge_Stolfi]

If the Voynich scribe was copying from another herbal, why would he think the color annotation is a Voynichese label? This is a bit awkward, since it assumes a document in Voynichese with German color annotations to begin with.

The theory is based on the previous theory that the plant drawings in the Herbal section are mostly fake, because Author had only the Voynichese text for each plant (at best). So he instructed the Scribe to make up the drawings, based on sketches and assorted herbals that the Author provided for inspiration.  Probably including one or more "alchemical" herbals, since the drawings had to look exotic.  These cribs would be in plain or encrypted European languages, not in Voynichese, but their text was to be ignored by the Scribe.

The new sub-theory is that one of those cribs was a German herbal, but the scribe did not understand German.  And he thought that the color key on the stem was Voynichese that had be copied too.

We have some evidence to suggest that not all colors were available in all stages of the painting process (see for example the lack of red in Herbal B pages.

Indeed, the Dark Painter's palette apparently had only green, blue, ocher, and rusty reddish brown.  Only 2-3 pages in the whole book show significant painting in a more vivid red; most red details (like the dots on the calyxes of f2r "Centaurea" and the cheeks of Zodiac nymphs) were applied with a quill pen.  Perhaps the red ink was expensive, or had to be borrowed from another Scribe...

I am not yet sure, but I see evidence that the transparent yellow color was applied by another Yellow Painter, well before the Dark Painter did his thing.

All the best, --jorge