I do think there may be some additions, for example I think there might be more men than we think who had items (usually breasts) added which cause them to be taken for women (if we lean into the "retracer" theory). But there are also other explanations which I touch on later. But,
well this is a hope more than anything I guess - my hope is that whoever added things like crowns, if they were added, had some sort of reference, if only the picture in their mind of what that item looked like, then we may still place it to a time and place. As you say though, it may turn out to be a fools hope.
- I also have no expert knowledge in any of this, so its just "vibes". Happy to be proved wrong, and I know lots don't agree at all.
A while back I mix and matched some images to create new ones, this figure is a woman (..maybe) in the VM, however I felt like it made a more convincing man in nightwear (If I just removed the badly drawn breasts). I then thought I would add him into the night sky in his "flying dream machine" to lean into the "nightwear" impression I got, I also felt he was looking at something (rather than the more usual generic eyes) so he could peer into the tube of the (now) dream machine. This nymph is 2 to the left of the 12 o'clock on, on the same page, if you would like to see the original.
So in a way I took on the role of the later modifier and added my own spin.. but the core elements and styles were kept intact so we might pull info from what is there (my hope).
The 11:00 figure I take to have the star attached to their hair, or maybe it is a long hood like "The Liripipe Hood".
The arm is now badly faded, or was always drawn lightly and the next run over the image missed it - depending on how you look at things.
With the crown, for me it falls into the "whether it was original or not" previous thoughts, and I think it is more likely that whenever (/if) it was added the person was drawing from something they knew, rather than a total fabrication. So we could still do something like see when the first crowns of this style popped up and try get some information from that (back to the hope). Obviously there's a chance it throws up an exact match for much later than we expect from other details in the manuscript, but in that case we could maybe put a date on the "retracer". This exact example may not be a good one, but the thought (/hope) is more an overall "hope" that might consider many items together.
With the "breasts/nipples through clothing" thing, for the opposite side of my drawing I removed these from my chosen nymph (in another image mash-up), as I felt it was more visually appealing to do so. Maybe the choices I took might also be true for someone else in the past doing the same sorts of things.
If we look above this nymph, which is actually 1 right from the original image I shared (12 o'clock on 70v), there is a very strange case of "double breasts". The line to show the area of clothing where the breasts are, has much smaller breasts with nipples drawn above. I have a couple of thoughts on "clothes with nipples" in general, maybe not so much for this exact drawing, it might just be quite a bad try..
For the "retracer".
- Maybe someone later thought it amusing to add breasts all over the place, there are parts also where this theory might touch on penis's too.
- Maybe it was not for amusement, but a "bad take" on what was there
- Maybe they saw naked nymphs and just thought, well they all need them!
For "original"
- Maybe some of the clothing was sheer - under garments or nightwear etc possibly, we would take this as "erotic/sexy" now, but at the time it would be different.
- Maybe paint played a part in making this confusing in some areas.
There is also something to be said for the skill of the drawer overall, and I have found many areas that seem totally perplexing to me that usually trying to redraw it shows me what they were trying to do (and got wrong), or sometimes other close by examples have one time where what they tried went right, but they tried again using a different pose and it all went wrong. A good example of this is arms that seem to "shoot from the hip"..
For the example I gave originally, my hope is that the stiches (if that is what they are) may lend credibility to the breast height line being intentional, but I might not be correct.