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New images: Marci letter wax
- New images: Marci letter wax
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RE: New images: Marci letter wax
proto57 > Yesterday, 11:34 PM
(Yesterday, 07:04 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(Yesterday, 06:45 PM)proto57 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.it is too difficult to get the scale correct.
The VMS pages are said to be ~235 mm tall. On most single-page BL 2014 images the tallest pages are ~3570 pixels tall, which gives a scale of ~15 px/mm or 386 px/in or 0.0658 mm/px.
For the Marci letter, one could get a rough estimate from the folds reported by Rene, assuming that they were meant to make the letter fit inside the cover.
All the best, --jorge
That is a logical process, and I actually tried something similar to what you describe. I also tried it with other letters from the Carteggio, which do give better dimensions and images.
But I think an actual, hands on measurement would be better at providing the necessary precision for those close chains and line counts. The Voynich page size varies, which you reflect with your "~235 mm" estimate. And I don't personally know that the folding of the Marci letter was to make it fit inside the cover. Even if it were, it could have been folded smaller, and not accurately to the edges of a page... or, the cover.
In fact a friend just let me examine his amazing Siloe copy, which is very accurate... but I think the folded Marci letter (even assuming that it was cut perfectly accurate to the original) was a bit smaller than the width of the Vms pages. Also, the folds lines of the Marci letter do not make sense as a letter, or an envelope... they are sort of wonky.
In a perfect world, if all those variables were not variables, and so on, your idea would work. But I think there are too many variables and unknowns to apply it with sufficient accuracy in this case: To compare to other papers, so see if they could be from the same or different source.
By the way, it might be of interest to see this... I was trying to identify the watermark on one of the Carteggio Marci letters, and it is different than the 1665/66 letter. It is some roundish design with three balls at the bottom. The three balls often appear in "foolscap" logos, but there is not enough detail to know if that is the case, here, on 557_64R:
That alone tells us that Marci... if the Marci letter "found" in the Voynich is real... used a different paper than at least one of his letters, without doing a chain/line count. As Lisa suggested, and I long wished for, it would be very interesting to see all the Marci letters in the Carteggio, and elsewhere, to see when... and if... he every used a paper with the three hat watermark. -
RE: New images: Marci letter wax
ReneZ > Today, 12:47 AM
Using the same 400 dpi scan of the Marci letter, I could measure the horizontal and vertical sizes of the watermark according to the two arrows:
width = 5.1 cm (between the edges of the hat rims),
height = 2.1 cm (bottom of hat rims to highest round top).
The other letter shown by Rich is from 12 January 1641, so more than 20 years earlier. -
RE: New images: Marci letter wax
Jorge_Stolfi > 11 hours ago
(Yesterday, 11:34 PM)proto57 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.By the way, it might be of interest to see this... I was trying to identify the watermark on one of the Carteggio Marci letters, and it is different than the 1665/66 letter. That alone tells us that Marci... if the Marci letter "found" in the Voynich is real... used a different paper than at least one of his letters, without doing a chain/line count. As Lisa suggested, and I long wished for, it would be very interesting to see all the Marci letters in the Carteggio, and elsewhere, to see when... and if... he ever used a paper with the three hat watermark.
A match would be interesting information, but a failure to find a match would not be, right? Marci must have written more than a hundred letters per year, not to mention notes, worksheets, book extracts, laundry lists, ... And he had secretaries writing for him. I imagine that they would buy paper in packets of 100-200 at most. Therefore it would not be surprising if two letters written decades apart, one by Marci and one by his secretary, used paper from different makers.
All the best, --jorge -
RE: New images: Marci letter wax
LisaFaginDavis > 6 hours ago
I agree, Jorge - it would be great to find another Marci letter with the same watermark, but if one doesn't survive, there won't be any conclusions to be drawn. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It's worth remembering as well as that the letter at the Beinecke was written by Marci's secretary, so that might impact the paper stock that was being used.