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[split] Darker ink, retracing of text and drawings
- [split] Darker ink, retracing of text and drawings
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[split] Darker ink, retracing of text and drawings
Bernd > 03-06-2025, 10:11 PM
(03-06-2025, 04:47 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.many years later another person (the "Retracer") went through the manuscript, retracing many faded glyphs and figure details in a distinctive very dark ink. He may have been the same who retraced some lines of page f67r2 with red ink. But this Retracer also added some fancy details that apparently were not in the original (such as the crowns and multi-lobed "shower caps" on some of the Zodiac nymphs, e.g. the outer one at 05:30 on Scorpio).
Is there any way to establish how much later this could have happened? -
RE: Pisces (Folio 70v) and the New Year on the 1st of March in the Republic of Venice
Jorge_Stolfi > 04-06-2025, 12:02 AM
(03-06-2025, 10:11 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is there any way to establish how much later this [retracing] could have happened?
No idea. Except that it must have been decades later, because the obvious motivation was that the original writing had faded out to the point of becoming almost illegible.
Also, the original Scribe must have known the Voynichese alphabet and must have been supervised by the Author who invented the script (if they were not the same person); whereas the Retracer seems to have worked independently and did not know the alphabet. The Retracer was generally very careful while retracing the text, but, IIRC, there are a few cases where he/she mangled a glyph into an invalid squiggle. -
RE: Pisces (Folio 70v) and the New Year on the 1st of March in the Republic of Venice
Jorge_Stolfi > 04-06-2025, 12:40 AM
I think I saw someone in this forum, possible in this thread, asking for a statistical summary of the nymphs and stars in the Zodiac section. Maybe You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. can help. It is (or was meant to be) a verbal description of every page of the VMs. I started this project back in 2000 or so, but it is still incomplete. The Zodiac pages should be complete, though.
I don't know how useful this file could be to Voynichologists, but, for me, writing it was and is very useful -- because it forced me to really look at every detail of each page, like how many leaves each plant has, what each nymph is doing with her hands and feet, etc. -- and thus notice many things that I had missed before.
PS. That file is in the ISO Latin-1 encoding, and unfortunately the WWW server of my univ does not like that and turns all Latin-1 characters that are not ASCII into a black question mark. You will have to download the file (say. with "wget") and read it with a suitable editor. -
RE: Pisces (Folio 70v) and the New Year on the 1st of March in the Republic of Venice
Aga Tentakulus > 04-06-2025, 07:16 AM
(04-06-2025, 12:02 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(03-06-2025, 10:11 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is there any way to establish how much later this [retracing] could have happened?
No idea. Except that it must have been decades later, because the obvious motivation was that the original writing had faded out to the point of becoming almost illegible.
Also, the original Scribe must have known the Voynichese alphabet and must have been supervised by the Author who invented the script (if they were not the same person); whereas the Retracer seems to have worked independently and did not know the alphabet. The Retracer was generally very careful while retracing the text, but, IIRC, there are a few cases where he/she mangled a glyph into an invalid squiggle.
Actually, there is not much difference in time.
The theory is flawed.
1. the dark colour in the ink on the scorpion You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is already used on page f75r.
This already invalidates a longer time.
2. if you know how difficult it is to achieve the same colour tone when mixing the ink again, it is confirmed.
See example.
The most likely scenario is that he has simply stirred the ink again so that the suspended particles are released from the bottom of the inkwell.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version) -
RE: Pisces (Folio 70v) and the New Year on the 1st of March in the Republic of Venice
Aga Tentakulus > 04-06-2025, 07:33 AM
Addendum:
A difference can be recognised after just a few days. -
RE: Pisces (Folio 70v) and the New Year on the 1st of March in the Republic of Venice
Koen G > 04-06-2025, 08:04 AM
I agree with Peter here. At some point in the history of Voynich research, it was fashionable to envisage a parade of successive owners messing with the ink and the paint. (Nick Pelling often argues something along those lines). I think that's pure fantasy. Darker ink may have been from a different batch prepared the same day for all we know. -
RE: Pisces (Folio 70v) and the New Year on the 1st of March in the Republic of Venice
Aga Tentakulus > 04-06-2025, 08:37 AM
You can see it even better on page 115r.
The second part is lighter in colour. I am not thinking of a new mixture. I also rule out diluting it a little more with water, as it wasn't particularly dark before either.
It is clear to me that the time it takes for the pigments to settle is the main reason why the ink appears lighter.
This would have to be tested.
How does it change after a few days if you don't stir it?
1 day.....2day....etc. -
RE: Pisces (Folio 70v) and the New Year on the 1st of March in the Republic of Venice
oshfdk > 04-06-2025, 08:37 AM
What is more, there has been a discussion recently (can't find it now, but I think ReneZ was involved) about the specific properties of the iron gall ink and how some of it becomes much darker over time via some chemical reactions with the vellum. This process depends on the composition of the ink and it's not very easy to predict which parts will get much darker if the ink is not very evenly mixed. So, when the scribe initially inked the text, the text may have looked much less pronounced and the scribe may have felt the need to strengthen some of the outlines.
I think I saw a proper paper on this, but I can't find it either, so here's a link to a reddit thread: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
There it's claimed that the ink on a page gets darker within the first 30-90 seconds, but then can get darker still within a day or so. However, I assume this is talking about modern inks made with modern technology. I vaguely remember reading in the past that authentic medieval recipes produce inks that take much longer to darken and are much less predicable in this. -
RE: Pisces (Folio 70v) and the New Year on the 1st of March in the Republic of Venice
Jorge_Stolfi > 04-06-2025, 01:40 PM
Yes, I am well aware of the changes in darkness due to mere variations of ink flow. Like suddenly darker after dipping the pen in ink, then gradually lighter as the pen runs out of ink. Or when the Scribe him/herself goes back and corrects some mistakes. Or when he/she presumably mixes a new batch of ink halfway through a page. But those are easy to spot because (1) the hue of the ink does not change, and (2) the sequence makes sense considering the way he/she must have operated.
And I am well aware of the chemistry of iron-gall ink.
However, the retracings by the Retracer are quite distinctive in both counts. The ink is not just darker, but has a different hue and appearance: almost black, tending to purple rather than yellow -- as one would expect from iron-gall ink. And it is applied in an unsystematic manner: either on parts (text or figures) where the original ink had clearly faded with time, or to add details that clearly were not there initially, like the crowns and "lobed showercaps" in the Zodiac pages.
Of the images you posted, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and the starred parags section are examples of the former. Whereas You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. clearly shows the difference between normal ink flow effects (e.g. in the text rings) and the Retoucher's work. The former can be seen, for instance, in the middle text ring at about 02:00: note how the traces become gradually fainter, then suddenly darker but with the same yellowish brown hue.
In contrast, note how the darker labels are uniformly dark, while the lighter ones, by comparison, are uniformly light apart from normal ink-flow variations. On higher resolution images, as one can download from the Beinecke site, original faint yellowish brown strokes can be seen in places under the dark labels; for instance, the "feet" of the k gallows on the okedal label in the outer-band at 07:00.
On the figures, note how the darker strokes cannot be explained by ink flow variations or the original Scribe going back to fix mistakes and accidental faint strokes. The darker ink was applied to the right breast of almost every nymph, and to the left breasts, nipples, eyes, eyebrows, and other details of some of them, apparently at random. Check the left thigh of the outer nymph at 05:30, the right thigh of the one at 07:30, and the right arm of the inner nymph at 11:00. All three are (wrongly) retraced over a light yellowish brown trace, which the Retracer apparently did not notice. And the dark traces on hair and "showercaps" of some nymphs are clearly spurious additions.
It would be very helpful if Beinecke provided some really high resolution images, even if only of small selected areas of selected pages. High enough that one could see whether glyphs or figure details have been traced once or twice.
PS - don't waste time and space downloading the "full size original (tiff)" images from the Beinecke site. They are the same as the "Full size (jpg)" images, merely converted to the much more wasteful TIFF format. With the same resolution and JPEG encoding artifacts. -
RE: Pisces (Folio 70v) and the New Year on the 1st of March in the Republic of Venice
Jorge_Stolfi > 04-06-2025, 02:17 PM
(04-06-2025, 08:04 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.At some point in the history of Voynich research, it was fashionable to envisage a parade of successive owners messing with the ink and the paint. (Nick Pelling often argues something along those lines). I think that's pure fantasy. Darker ink may have been from a different batch prepared the same day for all we know.
Indeed, one may easily go overboard with the "splitting". But it is a consensus that several distinct agents added stuff to the VMS: the quire numbers, the folio numbers, the month names, the marginal "letter" tables, the 116v and other "semi-Roman" text, the penciled "a" and "b" on f70r, the Jacobus signature... While some of these "agents" may have been the same person, it is very unlikely that they all were the same Scribe who penned all of the text. So the existence of a Retracer would not be extraordinary.
On the other hand, I tend to agree with that earlier handwriting expert that there was only one original Scribe, who wrote all the text and drew all the figures in the same yellowish brown ink. I respect Lisa's expertise, but I believe that it does not apply to the VMs -- because its nature and the circumstances of its creation are quite unlike those of most manuscripts that she built her expertise upon. The variations in glyph shapes that are supposed to indicate different "hands" on different pages is dwarfed by the similarities that indicate the opposite.
All the best, --jorge