The claimed Voynich page

[Fabrizio Salani]

Fabrizio, is this summary of the provenance correct?

• A buyer of antique furniture buys a wardrobe at an antiques fair in Narni.
  
• The wardrobe contains a mix of old documents.
  
• The buyer contacts you spontaneously to ask if you are interested in any of the documents.
  
• You buy the parchment and he sends it to you.
  
• You had the pigments tested and they contain some components that might be modern (not sure about this, Rene wrote this on the forum 10 years ago).
  

I am curious about this fascinating object, and like Rene I am convinced that you are honest and genuinely believe in it. Might I ask how you knew the seller? Why did he decide to contact you - were you known as a collector? Were you interested in the Voynich manuscript before, or manuscripts in general? Do you think the seller's story of the wardrobe is 100% reliable?

Yes the steps are correct. I met this seller because I have been collecting antique prints as a hobby for 30 years, (among the most important finds: The parchment print of Raphael's "Madonna of the Fish" of which there are only two copies in the world, mine included, and the one from the English collection was exhibited at Yale Univ. during the exhibition of Marcantonio Raimondi's parchment engravings, the "Salani sheet" so defined by the MIBACT, the only known copy of "The Rescue of Moses" taken from a work by Paolo Caliari known as "Il Veronese" is the oldest known print of the subject; a gold-ground illuminated initial, dating back to the second half of the 14th century, which represents St. Michael in the ancient Byzantine connotation, without archangel wings but with court dignitary's clothes and the scales for weighing souls (psychostasy), with his feet on a grotesque representing the devil, the very rare woodcut by A. Durer "Cain killing Abel", I cite (Just a few of the most important ones). I frequent art fairs, museums, and antiquarian bookshops throughout Italy and France, and by doing so I meet many people—collectors, antique dealers, booksellers, etc.—who contact me when they have something they think might interest me.
- Regarding analyses in the UNIMORE laboratories, tests (Raman spectroscopy and X-ray) revealed (but only on X-ray) minimal titanium Ti contamination, only in a few areas of the green, which for the majority of the findings is ultramarine blue (lapis lazuli), contamination or late watercolor overpainting. The seal and glue were found to be organic in nature.