Month names collection / metastudy

[Koen G]

It's interesting data, even though it somewhat clashes with expectations. The impressions I've been getting from people studying the handwriting (which includes myself) is that the month names are still 15th century but later than the marginalia. The standard narrative is that someone added them afterwards, potentially to order the sheets.

But is that absolutely necessary? I think not, though it's still the most likely in my opinion.

Do the month names fit in the spaces left by the images, or do the images try to take the month names into account and work around them? The former seems most likely, given the month names' irregular placement in the circles. Which does give them the appearance of "later notes" rather than instructions for the artist or proper labels.

And if they are later notes, we might expect a bit of distance between the section's completion and their addition.

I wonder if the many octembres that weren't added to the sheet (because their other months aren't interesting) follow the same trend?

Edit to add: I would always compare octembres in absolute numbers, since the number of Octobres is basically infinite.