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

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Example: crowns. This happened in quick succession. Probably around 1438-40. The crown is the key. From king to emperor.

I agree that the crown matches the Habsburg model (triangular points with serrated margins, optional arch with cross on top).  And I see that as good evidence that whoever drew the crowns was in a country whose king/emperor/whatever wore that type of crown.

But I don't follow the rest of your conclusions.  It seems that you agree that at least some of the crowns were added some time after the main drawing.  The dispute is how long after.

The crowns themselves give no clue about that.  Accepting the above hypothesis, they could have been drawn any time between the early 1400s and whenever that crown stopped being used, which I guess is at least centuries later.

But on practically every illustration, including that one, there are interventions in that same ink that reveal gross misunderstanding of the original drawing.  Like mistaking a nymph's leg for a barrel.  I see that as strong evidence that those interventions -- and thus, probably, the crowns -- were made when the Author and the original Scribe were no longer around.  Moreover, the primary goal of those interventions seems to have been restoring parts of  text and drawings that had faded or been damaged (like that Sh turned into a weirdo on page f1v, that I posted recently). 

All the best, --stolfi