I am not convinced by the provenance history of the VMS

[Linda]

I am now convinced that the VMS is not a forgery but a honest transcription of a Chinese classic.

Out of curiosity, how would you reconcile the Chinese theory with the fact that the VMS Quire 13 (and other folios) contain very strong ressemblances to Mariano Taccola's De Ingeneis books III and IV, especially the original drawings therein such as the tubes, the bridge scene, the sun-face illustration, etc...

As far as we know, Taccola's sketchbook III-IV, of which to our best knowledge no copy has ever been made, was most probably in Siena for the majority of the 15th century. Nowhere near China.

Are you saying that some orientalist explorer or adventurer went to China, invented a totally new script, wrote 200+ pages of text and illustrations, and ALSO happened to be in possession of the exceedingly rare-to-come-by personal sketchbook of Taccola, so valuable that at some point it was even (alllegedly) intended to be given to the emperor Sigismund himself?

1. There is no need to reconcile it if it is not so that Taccola's sketchbook has anything to do with the vms. I am certainly not convinced.

2. AFAIK the Chinese theory includes the transcriber going back to Europe to make the parchment copy of the Chinese information, so why could it not include some things from Taccola once completed, if it is so that things were copied from it. It includes swallowtail merlons and European clothing etc so why would that be so hard to reconcile? If he didn't come back, he could have seen it before he left. Again not a problem.

3. From wiki: 

His drawings were copied and served as a source of inspiration by such as Buonacorso Ghiberti, Francesco di Giorgio, and perhaps even Leonardo da Vinci.[5]

Interest in Taccola's work, however, practically ceased some time after his death until the late twentieth century,[3] one reason perhaps being that his treatises circulated only as hand-copied books, with at least three of them remaining extant today.[11]