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The claimed Voynich page
- The claimed Voynich page
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RE: The claimed Voynich page
Koen G > 10-03-2026, 10:14 AM
(10-03-2026, 09:37 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My best guess is that this was an attempt by a "VMS fan" to create a sort of facsimile, but with emphasis on beauty rather than accuracy.
I agree. Let's not forget that VM pages show up in all kinds of works of art (comics, video games...). It's a fascinating object. In this case, I'm thinking a prop for an (amateur?) movie project, a play or an exhibition. Something with a bit of a budget, motivation to make it look authentic, but also creative freedom. Since prop makers are creative types, the changes are easily explained. Artistic preference, more page-filling, balance... It also explains why old parchment was sourced and then cleaned.
Without further evidence, I think many options remain open, but at least to me it feels like a creative project. The addition of the wax seals makes me think of a prop rather than a fan's passion project. -
RE: The claimed Voynich page
Fabrizio Salani > 10-03-2026, 07:15 PM
(10-03-2026, 10:14 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(10-03-2026, 09:37 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.My best guess is that this was an attempt by a "VMS fan" to create a sort of facsimile, but with emphasis on beauty rather than accuracy.
I agree. Let's not forget that VM pages show up in all kinds of works of art (comics, video games...). It's a fascinating object. In this case, I'm thinking a prop for an (amateur?) movie project, a play or an exhibition. Something with a bit of a budget, motivation to make it look authentic, but also creative freedom. Since prop makers are creative types, the changes are easily explained. Artistic preference, more page-filling, balance... It also explains why old parchment was sourced and then cleaned.
Without further evidence, I think many options remain open, but at least to me it feels like a creative project. The addition of the wax seals makes me think of a prop rather than a fan's passion project.
A prop or entertainment item, mixed in with a collectible miscellany of paper and parchment documents ranging from the 16th to the 18th century (notarial deeds, property transfers, inheritances, boundaries, various letters, many with seals of various types), kept in a drawer of an old wardrobe from a diocese of Narni and then (the piece of furniture), sold at an antiques market in Narni (2013) where the buyer, an expert in antique furniture (who sadly passed away a few years ago) contacted me asking if I was interested in any of those documents and for €110.00 (including shipping costs) I noticed that small parchment and purchased it. A consideration of mine: in these years, since I purchased it, I have shown it to all the most famous experts in the world on the Voynich manuscript and on ancient manuscripts in general (professors: Paolo Bensi, Pietro Baraldi, Renè Zandbergen, Raymond Clemens, Nick Pelling, Stephen Bax, Stephen Baxter, J.K. Petersen and I stop here just to name the most famous), and the peculiarity is that with the experience of all these scientists in the field of parchments, manuscripts and the Voynoch in particular, not one of them—excuse me if I repeat myself—not one of them has ever listened superficially or failed immediately to respond. On the contrary, they all debate and are always arguing about this parchment. These people are scholars who, just by looking at a document (like all great experts in any scientific field), know how to judge its interest or not, and they have all always told me: it is something very interesting and unique that deserves in-depth study. I imagine there must be a reason.
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I don't support any hypothesis; is it the last page of Baresch's booklet? Is it a copy made during the dark period of the manuscript's life? Is it a modern copy? Is it so hard to believe it's Baresch? Maybe so, also because I know that when something is too good to be true, it usually isn't. A copy from the dark period? Fascinating and would open the door to many other questions and hypotheses, but see above. The modern forgery hypothesis is simply the easiest of all, so why does it only convince a couple of people, and not even experts? I can't explain all this and I keep asking myself "what have I found"?
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RE: The claimed Voynich page
Koen G > 10-03-2026, 08:40 PM
I wouldn't call it a forgery, more like a creative tribute. But I definitely agree we have to keep all options open until we are more certain.
Can something be learned from the items it was kept with? Do you still have those? -
RE: The claimed Voynich page
Bernd > 10-03-2026, 09:49 PM
(10-03-2026, 09:37 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But you said later that you had to correct for perspective distortion? That is an important detail. Direct tracing (of the original, or, more likely, of a printed digital image) through a translucent vellum would of course introduce no distortion. Use of a camera lucida may introduce some perspective distortion, depending on the position of the original and the copy.
I'm not 100% happy with my solution, but here's a gif showing Fabrizio's original image and the way I had to distort and rotate it to fit the 2004 scan of the VM.
The Beinecke scans have some perspective distortion (that any image editor can correct for), but also a more irregular distortion from the vellum not having been flattened out for the imaging. As a result, the image is usually compressed to some extent near the binding gutter, or near the fold between two panels of a fold-out folio. Did you see any sign of the latter in your overlay attempt?
It required a lot of shearing to the left in the lower left corner. There's also some clockwise 3D rotation involved. Not sure what to make of that. Maybe a simpler solution could be found, I guess it should be possible to have software align key points of the two images in the most parsimonious way.
(10-03-2026, 09:37 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is evident that the copyist did not know the Voynich alphabet, and thus several glyphs were distorted beyond recognition.
I think an interesting observation is that the VM was created by a capable scribe who was a terrible illustrator while this copy was obviously made by a capable illustrator who was a terrible scribe. The lack of attention given to the text is baffling. Obviously the creator had no idea about the Voynich alphabet, but even beyond that he carelessly mixed up the letters and made very amateurish mistakes - on top of a questionable aesthetic quality of the text. In stark contrast to the vastly improved image. So far I have no idea when this could have been made, or how, or why...
He also seems to have struggled with the writing instrument, because the ink color varies inconsistently and the thickness of the strokes varies in an "unnatural" way.
In fact, the letters do not seem to be drawn with a quill pen, whose square tip creates characteristic traces. Maybe with a steel pen? -
RE: The claimed Voynich page
Fabrizio Salani > 10-03-2026, 10:31 PM
(10-03-2026, 08:40 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wouldn't call it a forgery, more like a creative tribute. But I definitely agree we have to keep all options open until we are more certain.
I have never owned them, because among all of them I chose only this parchment
Can something be learned from the items it was kept with? Do you still have those? -
RE: The claimed Voynich page
eggyk > 11-03-2026, 12:10 AM
(10-03-2026, 01:25 AM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The copy is too perfectly aligned for a freehand work, even by a skilled copyist. However it is not perfectly aligned. Or rather, the whole page is an improvement over the original.I don't know if the parchment is transparent enough to see the original page through it well enough to trace it.
As far as I can tell, the copied page's content is noticeably smaller than the original VMS page, so it surely couldn't have been a direct tracing in such a way.
It would have had to be some kind of projection tracing, which is likely the source of the distortion and the size difference. It would also explain the extremely well done copying. This would be remarkable if it was done freehand. -
RE: The claimed Voynich page
Dana Scott > 11-03-2026, 01:51 AM
(11-03-2026, 12:10 AM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(10-03-2026, 01:25 AM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The copy is too perfectly aligned for a freehand work, even by a skilled copyist. However it is not perfectly aligned. Or rather, the whole page is an improvement over the original.I don't know if the parchment is transparent enough to see the original page through it well enough to trace it.
As far as I can tell, the copied page's content is noticeably smaller than the original VMS page, so it surely couldn't have been a direct tracing in such a way.
It would have had to be some kind of projection tracing, which is likely the source of the distortion and the size difference. It would also explain the extremely well done copying. This would be remarkable if it was done freehand.
More examples of Voynich Free Hand Art:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. Eleonora Matarrese
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Regards,
Dana Scott -
RE: The claimed Voynich page
Fabrizio Salani > 11-03-2026, 09:40 AM
(11-03-2026, 06:14 AM)BessAgritianin Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Based on my analysis, the Fabrizio's parchment of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. exibits a higher degree of textual fidelity, than the Bynacke copy.
My first impression (I won't discuss various translations because I'm not an expert in them) was and is that whoever copied it assumed that some glyphs were letters of the traditional alphabet and wrote them that way. I'll give an example of some of the more obvious characters. Whoever copied it was certain it was a language unknown to him but existing and similar in character to the Western script of the time (which time?). An expert forensic graphologist told me that "it's immediately obvious that whoever created it had considerable difficulty writing the text compared to the drawing, because the curved lines of the more elaborate letters (?) are more uncertain and shaky compared to the curved lines of the drawing, which are clean and without imprecision. This means that (the expert was unaware of the existence of the Voynich manuscript, and I didn't mention the manuscript or even that it was a copy) it's a work from which he had to constantly look away in the text, while in the drawing he was more comfortable with his gaze on what he was doing rather than elsewhere." I think this means that he hadn't "practiced" the copy by doing any tests beforehand, but this is just my hindsight conclusion.