[split] Color annotations

[MarcoP]

the stem of VMS You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was not painted red (or any other color), even though that page does have some (rusty) red (applied with a broad quill rather than a brush).  I think that is already evidence against those letters being a color key by the VMS Author to the VMS Scribe (or to some Painter to be engaged later).

   

So you believe that the “rossa” (red) annotations in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. image 22 are not color annotations, since those parts of the plant were painted green. Those parts are painted red in the related You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Same for the unpainted parts of the drawings from LJS 419 discussed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

What do you think the annotations in the Vermont and LJS medieval herbals are?

From the illustrated manuscripts I have seen, these annotations are not terribly frequent. I guess they mean that the scribe didn’t have the time to do the painting immediately after tracing the drawings, or that he planned to hire a different painter at some later time.

When there are no annotations, coloring was probably handled differently, either it was left to the free choice of colors by the painter, or it was agreed upon verbally with the scribe or some other person (e.g. author or patron) directly instructing the painter, or the same person who did the drawings took care of paint.

Sometimes, when the painting did happen, the annotations were not considered. Either they weren’t understood, or they were just ignored: things didn’t go according to the scribe’s intentions. These cases can possibly tell us something about the painters, their relationships with the scribes, maybe the time of painting. But what the painters did tells us nothing about the scribes who wrote the annotations.

Note that there are only two or three such "color keys" in the VMS. 

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and at least some of the isolated letters (LET in the table) could well be color annotations.
All the COL annotations appear to be on Scribe 1 pages.

If they were indeed color keys, We would expect a lot more -- like, almost one key on every page with flowers (the part whose color is most important).

Why do you expect almost one on every page? Are your expectations based on color annotations from actual medieval herbals? The Vermont herbal doesn’t have color annotations on most pages: is this what you expect? How many color annotations do you expect for the whole Vermont herbal?

In the whole Historia Plantarum, Ms 459 of the Casanatense Library, I am only aware of the color annotations on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (G for “giallo”). Most pages have no visible color annotations. Is this what you expect?