(4 hours ago)quimqu Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Look at the leg of the upper nymph (red arrow) and the border of the pool (also red arrow). It could have not been drawn while the parchment was stitched. It was drawn before the parchment strip. Once stitched, the painting was applied, that's why there is no painting at the inner side of the stitching (blue arrow).
THanks for calling the attention to the details of the interaction of paint, drawing, and tear. But my conclusion is opposite...
That tear probably happened during the manufacture of the vellum. The sides were stitched together to prevent the tear from opening up into a big hole as the parchment was stretched and tanned. The stitched edges created either a ridge or a valley, a couple mm tall/deep.
Once the vellum was dry and out of the stretching frame, the stitches were removed. The tear did not open up, because at that point the vellum was already stiff and no longer under tension. The "lips" that had been stitched together were sort of flattened but remained rough and uneven.
The original drawing probably stayed clear of those "lips", as they must have been too rough to write on them with a sharp quill. But we cannot tell for sure, because the original strokes are now very faint, and any that were inside the big green pool would have been washed away by the paint.
Long time after the original was drawn, someone retraced large parts of the drawing that were nearly faded away. Including the outlines of Miss Okal and her tub. This Retracer also had fun "enhancing" the drawings with extra details -- like the "pineapple" on the hat of Miss Sokoly and the "shower cap" of Miss Okar. One of those "enhancements", I believe, was the wavy outline of the big pool. These retraced strokes, applied with a somewhat broader quill. extended a bit into the "lips" of the tear (your red arrows).
Some time after that, a Painter applied most of the paint we see. (The light yellow paint on the nymphs' hair may be original, or at least much earlier than the rest; not sure.) The Painter too generally avoided the "lips" of the tear, presumably for the same reason (his "brush" does not seem to have been a real brush, but more like a chewed up stick...) But not completely: the green paint in the big pool
did enter the "lips" area at several places, including just below the wavy outline (your bottom red arrow). It even covered a couple of the stitching holes. Clearly it was applied
after the stitches had been removed.
And the painting must have been applied
after the retracing. For one thing, it is unlikely that the Painter would have painted a pool with that peculiar shape if there was no outline. Also, on some of the places where the paint overruns the pool's outline, the ink of the latter seems to have been partially washed away and/or obscured by the paint.
All the best, --jorge