Thanks for your insight, Lisa!
I think the important part here is that if the VM parchment was produced in an amateurish process and from inferior base material, we can rule out is was leftover / rejected scrap material in a professional setting like a workshop or scriptorium. You would not even find such material in this environment. Why would they have DIY parchment of bad quality to begin with? So the VM author(s) could not have stolen it or been given it for free as it was of no use. It simply would not have been there. If the quality was so bad that it was basically unsellable, we are indeed dealing with a DIY product, which fits the ink and pigments. And the overall quality of the VM work. I think this is important.
As far as I understood, Lisa does not agree with Wladimir D on the trimming / cutting of parchment pages. I believe we should look into this more and see if we can sort out this dispute.
Following Lisa's assessment of the parchment as basically scrap, I wonder why someone would even go through the process of making 100+ bad parchment sheets, which obviously was a lot of work. Why not use paper? I see several scenarios:
1) Lack. The VM was created in an environment where parchment / paper simply was not available. Secluded in a rural place or during a severe crisis, in exile, ...
As Lisa suggested, the author or a community may have produced all materials including ink and pigments DIY style. This is however hard to reconcile with the necessary reference imagery, unless the artist drew everything from memory. Which might explain some (but far from all) oddities. On the other hand, some imagery looks to have been copied relatively faithfully.
2) Allegory. The author determined, the purpose or content of the VM required it to be written on this poor material for religious, philosophical or magical reasons, even if he could have used better quality parchment or paper. The author took this seriously and also used poor ink and pigments. Almost impossible to test as hypothesis.
3) Hoax. The VM was deliberately created on the poor quality parchment to give it a certain old and mysterious look. Especially in combination with the hypothesis that the text contains no meaning, this should not be ruled out.
I think the important part here is that if the VM parchment was produced in an amateurish process and from inferior base material, we can rule out is was leftover / rejected scrap material in a professional setting like a workshop or scriptorium. You would not even find such material in this environment. Why would they have DIY parchment of bad quality to begin with? So the VM author(s) could not have stolen it or been given it for free as it was of no use. It simply would not have been there. If the quality was so bad that it was basically unsellable, we are indeed dealing with a DIY product, which fits the ink and pigments. And the overall quality of the VM work. I think this is important.
As far as I understood, Lisa does not agree with Wladimir D on the trimming / cutting of parchment pages. I believe we should look into this more and see if we can sort out this dispute.
(17-04-2026, 10:49 PM)Jorge_Stolfi wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In spite of his hardships at the time, the Author must have known better times, since he probably was educated and owned some number of "scientific" books -- like Taccola's, Oresme's, the Balneis, etc.I agree with the rest of your assessment, Jorge, but I would rule out that the VM creator personally owned these - or any - reference books. Illustrated manuscripts would have been worth a fortune and unless a compilation including all VM imagery sources existed, he would have needed a small library, something one would not find with any average man, especially a poor one who had to resort to making bad parchment and ink. And then there's the 'elephant in the room' - BNCF Palatino 766, Taccola's personal notebook De ingeneis III-IV created for Emperor Sigismund of which no known copies exist. In contrast to the other VM references, (and Taccola's other works), as far as we know, this was never a book one could simply acquire as a copy, even when putting a huge amount of money on the table. In fact, we do not even know if this specific book ever reached a wider audience. It even widens the gap between the necessary quality of the illustration source and the DIY character of the VM.
Following Lisa's assessment of the parchment as basically scrap, I wonder why someone would even go through the process of making 100+ bad parchment sheets, which obviously was a lot of work. Why not use paper? I see several scenarios:
1) Lack. The VM was created in an environment where parchment / paper simply was not available. Secluded in a rural place or during a severe crisis, in exile, ...
As Lisa suggested, the author or a community may have produced all materials including ink and pigments DIY style. This is however hard to reconcile with the necessary reference imagery, unless the artist drew everything from memory. Which might explain some (but far from all) oddities. On the other hand, some imagery looks to have been copied relatively faithfully.
2) Allegory. The author determined, the purpose or content of the VM required it to be written on this poor material for religious, philosophical or magical reasons, even if he could have used better quality parchment or paper. The author took this seriously and also used poor ink and pigments. Almost impossible to test as hypothesis.
3) Hoax. The VM was deliberately created on the poor quality parchment to give it a certain old and mysterious look. Especially in combination with the hypothesis that the text contains no meaning, this should not be ruled out.