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What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
- What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
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RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
Koen G > 29-09-2025, 05:22 PM
That makes sense! -
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
Aga Tentakulus > 29-09-2025, 06:17 PM
(29-09-2025, 04:19 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As for the red, there's nothing inconsistent about a fifteenth-century scribe writing in iron-gall and red ink. It is quite common.
My question is not whether it was common or not.
The question is, is it one of the writers who is also visible in the text? (Handwriting)?
If the same red is used in 67r (writing) and, for example, in f51r, then it is also the same period between red writing and red used in flowers.
Same writer, same red = same period. -
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
LisaFaginDavis > 29-09-2025, 06:21 PM
Yes, I think the hand is the same. -
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
Aga Tentakulus > 29-09-2025, 06:26 PM
That's wonderful.
The colour was also used during the writer's lifetime.
Ergo, the plants were almost certainly used too. -
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
R. Sale > 29-09-2025, 07:18 PM
There is a certain diligence, a fair amount of accuracy and a great deal of subtlety in the paining of the lips and cheeks of most all of the VMs nymphs.
VMs White Aries should be considered since the stripes were drawn in ink. The duality is intentionally built in, and the color is an essential part of it. Paired bendy, blue-striped insignia and a red hat present the possibility of recognition for those who possess the necessary historical grounding. During the VMs dates, both the original Poor Clares and the Colettine Poor Clares trace their existence to Pope Innocent IV.
All the alternating blue and white patterns show that the painter's efforts weren't a total loss. It just wasn't neat.
Not every artist was neat.
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How can intervals of time between VMs events be measured? -
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
Jorge_Stolfi > 29-09-2025, 07:39 PM
(29-09-2025, 11:33 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It seems almost accepted as a truth that the colors in the MS were added later, by someone who didn't know what they were doing. ... I thought it was time to collect the actual evidence.
Indeed. Sorry, I should have written "decades or centuries". The point is that the painted colors were not chosen or approved by the Author. They were instead applied by someone who not only was a terrible painter, but clearly did not care about accuracy, did not understand the text, and understood the figures even less than we do today.
There is one bright shade of green that seem to have been applied to the leaves of some Herbal pages with a proper brush by a minimally skilled painter. (And is responsible for the most conspicuous cases of bleed-through.) All other colors, including a darker shade of green used on many other Herbal pages, were applied either with a quill (much like a kid today would "paint" a drawing with a felt-tip pen) or with a totally inadequate brush, that could have been just a stick with a chewed-up tip; and often with the brush half-dry, to obtain a crude spotted effect. The painter did not even bother to clean the brush when switching between colors.
In some cases the paint obscures details of the drawing that should be important, such as stars, leaf edges, nervures, etc.
On f2r, for example, at first sight one may think that each leaf is a roughly triangular "hand" with five "fingers". But looking under the paint one can see that each "leaf" is in fact a bunch of five separate simple leaves.
On f82v, the paint on the pond at the bottom of the page not only obscured part of the drawing (A,B), but apparently washed some of it away -- and maybe some text too (C,D)!
The poor quality (to put it mildly) of the painting is itself strong evidence in favor of the claim above. If the painting had been in any way commissioned or supervised by the Author, he could not possibly have accepted his book to be defaced so badly.
There is another argument, but it depends on my Retracing Hypothesis, which you may not (yet) accept. Take the root of the plant on f2v, for example:
The West half of the root is quite different from the East half. The latter is crude by comparison, and has all the signs of being an addition by the Retracer (who may also have retraced the circles on the West half). Since both halves are painted, it follows that the painting must have happened after the retracing; and since the motivation for the retracing must have been that the original had faded, it must have happened decades or centuries after the original scribing.
As for the pigments being compatible with the 1400 date, the same pigments -- natural minerals like ochre, azurite, and malachite -- must have remained in use at least until the 1700s, when synthetic pigments became more common. Therefore, this may be an upper limit for the date of the painting.
All the best, --jorge -
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
Jorge_Stolfi > 29-09-2025, 07:46 PM
(29-09-2025, 01:43 PM)RobGea Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Cipher Mysteries Wrote:"given that there is now strong evidence that many of the bifolios and even quires were scrambled several times over the manuscript’s history and yet nearly all the paint transfers appear to be between pages in their current order, it seems that a great deal of the Voynich Manuscript’s paint was added later on in its life"
ciphermysteries --> "Voynich colour inference, a sure path to madness…"
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That is a good argument... However, plaing the devil's advocate for once, could it be that the paint transfers happened much after the painting, when the relevant pages were exposed to humidity?
(There is a big water stain on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that spans the whole page, for instance.)
Tempera paints usually are not waterproof. I would expect the binder to be gum arabic or other organic glue, which would soften if exposed to water for more than a few seconds...
All the best, --jorge -
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
LisaFaginDavis > 29-09-2025, 08:18 PM
I will discuss this in my Toronto lecture as well! -
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
Jorge_Stolfi > 29-09-2025, 09:08 PM
(29-09-2025, 02:04 PM)LisaFaginDavis Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Recent XRF elemental analysis on ff. 1r and 1v did not find any evidence that the pigments were later
Element signatures in inks and paints should have remained mostly the same until the 1700s, when synthetic pigments started to replace natural minerals.
I wonder what was the very dark blue pigment used on the flowers of f3v, f4v. f17r, and a few other pages. It seems different from the lighter blue pigment used on f16v, f69v, etc., which I can believe was azurite. Did McCrone analyze it?
Quote:except for the Marci annotations, which are zinc-gall and therefore confirmed as post-medieval.
Zinc was a common impurity in green vitriol, hence in iron-gall ink. But do you have a reference to that "zinc-gall" ink?
Quote:The suggestion that the pigments must be later because of the offsets makes no sense to me. It's just the opposite. The offsets suggest that the manuscript has been in its current state for centuries.
Again, ofsetting of tempera paints can happen any time after they are applied, if humidity is high enough.
All the best, --jorge -
RE: What's the evidence that the colors were added later?
LisaFaginDavis > 29-09-2025, 09:20 PM
The point about the Marci annotations is that they have NO iron AT ALL. Only zinc and a few other trace elements. It's all in my lecture...recording coming this week hopefully...