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[split] Darker ink, retracing of text and drawings

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• [split] Darker ink, retracing of text and drawings

• RE: [split] Darker ink, retracing of text and drawings

  Jorge_Stolfi > 11-09-2025, 04:40 AM

  (11-09-2025, 03:49 AM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All that extra work - and no boobs?

  
  Both the Scribe and the Retracer soon got better in that department as they continued their work.

• RE: [split] Darker ink, retracing of text and drawings

  Aga Tentakulus > 11-09-2025, 07:51 AM

  Have you considered that the artist may have sketched with a pencil lead tip?
  Sometimes you can see it.
  In that case, the artist is also the illustrator.

• RE: [split] Darker ink, retracing of text and drawings

  Jorge_Stolfi > 11-09-2025, 11:12 AM

  (11-09-2025, 07:51 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Have you considered that the artist may have sketched with a pencil lead tip?

  
  Yes.  It is a variant of the alternative "the Scribe himself went back and retraced parts that had come out faint or crooked"
  I don't think o, for several reasons.  Among others:

  • The retracing is often limited to parts of single glyphs or parts of the figure outlines.
    
  • The original traces often clearly look like they were drawn with a pen, namely with broad strokes whose width varies with orientation and apparent speed -- only faded in various degrees.
    
  • The parts that I think are retraced are often grossly wrong, like on that nymph. Sometimes they include invalid glyphs.  I don't see how that could happen if the Inker was the same person as the Penciler, or even if they were working for the same Author.
    
  • My hypothetical Retracer had some specific obsessions, like the right breasts of the nymphs and the distinctive "showercap" diadems, that were not shared by the original Inker.
    
  • In some places (liek f57v) the inked text and drawings are faded to the point of being almost invisible.  If any parts already looked like that before 1910, any owner who prized the manuscript (including the Jesuits at the Collegio Romano) would surely have wanted to restore them. 
    

  And I think -- but I am not quite sure yet --- that there were at least two rounds of retracing, by different people.  The first one was more careful and used brown ink similar to the original.  The second one was clumsier and used a much darker ink, with a different tone, but retraced only a few parts that the first one had skipped, and a few parts that had been retraced but were again faded or damaged.
  
  All the best, --jorge

• RE: [split] Darker ink, retracing of text and drawings

  Jorge_Stolfi > 11-09-2025, 03:36 PM

  (11-09-2025, 07:51 AM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Have you considered that the artist may have sketched with a pencil lead tip?

  
  PS.  The circles in the Zodiac and Cosmo sections may have been done in pencil, originally.  
  
  The thinnest (~0.1 mm) and lightest parts of those circles ('A' in the f71v clip below) are very smooth and the radii seem to be all different, so they must have been made with a compass (as opposed to by hand or by tracing around a template).
     
  There is a pinprick in the parchment where the "dry" point of the compass ahould have been planted. It is best seen in the transmitted-light multsipectral images:
     
  However, most circles fail to close: the two ends often miss each other by up to a millimiter or two, and continue past each other by a centmeter or more.  I suppose that these defects could be explained by the parchment warping during the tracing, or by a compass that was not as rigid as it should be. Needless to say, if any part of any circle was originally traced with a compass, then all circles must have been originally wholly traced that way.
   
  Pencil would be the most convenient choice for drawing with a compass.  And the thinnest and lightest parts of the circles look just like one would expect from pencil.  o we may assume that all circles where originally wholly traced with pencil.
  
  However, some parts of the circles are a bit thicker (~0.3 mm) and darker, with the light yellowish-brown color of the ink used on that page.  See 'B' in the clip above. Those parts of the circles must have been retraced in ink.
  
  There are compass attachments for drawing circles in ink (I used one in college, in the technical drafring class) but I don't know how common those were in the time and place where the VMS was scribed.  Anyway the Scribe may have improvised some eqivalent arrangement, e. g. a sharp quill attached to the compass.
  
  However, those inked parts of the circles sometimes are jittery, not as smooth as the penciled parts, and in a few spots they deviate from the underlying penciled circles.  This is best seen on that same page, in the circles bounding the inner text band, around 03:00:
     
  Here 'A' are the original circles (~0.1mm, light, and smooth), and 'B' are the retraced ones (~0.3mm, darker, jittery). The latter deviate from the former by ~0.4 mm in the indicated spots.
  
  So I am fairly convinced that those inked parts of the circles were not re-drawn with a compass, but were retraced with free hand. 
  
  One puzzling detail is that these "medium-thick" retraced circles also fail to close, like the original thin traces did. If they were retraced by the original Scribe, I would expect that he would use the occasion to fix that defect of the penciled traces and join the two ends.  My explanation is that the Retracer was not the original Scribe, but someone who had been hired to restore the faded parts of the book -- and this person thought that he ought to retrace the original as faithfully as he could, defects and all.
  
  And then there are sections of the circles which are clearly retraced with a broader pen, and even less care. Like 'D' in the first clip...
  
  All the best, --jorge
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