Was the paint added later? And is the artist also the scribe?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

An interesting point on this topic is "paint instructions". This seems to be the general consensus on what they are so I'm just going with that. 

Not my consensus. 

There are herbal manuscripts out there with such painting instructions.  But, on the VMS, AFAIK there are only two short scribbles on plants that have been conjectured to be that.  

But then 99.99% of all colored details were painted without such instructions.  Why did those two details need them? 


One of those cases is a Latin capital "F" on a flower on f4r.  An alternative theory is that the Scribe copied the plant (or just the flowers) from some other herbal, and, without thinking, copied an "F" that was on that source.  Possibly a painting instruction, but also possibly a key to a legend in the source manuscript.

Another case is read as the German word "rot" = "red", on the stem of the same plant.  But the letters are crooked, and do not look quite like handwriting from the time.  Maybe the sleepy Scribe copied that word too from whatever herbal he was using as a source.  But there is another explanation that seems to make more sense: the word was not there originally, but was added by a [censored] who misinterpreted some faint smudges as effaced writing, and "restored" them.

And the details with those "painting instructions" were in fact left unpainted, while most of the plant was painted (including with red paint).

Are there any other "painting instructions"? 

All tne best, --stolfi