Here are some tidbits found in the net, with my translation from
Italian into English, sort of.
Thanks very much for doing that! :-))) Patrizia Catellani's page was one
of the key sites that got me excited about Caterina Sforza, and my tourist
Italian only let me understand 50% of it. :-/
But note that a recent paper in Renaissance Quarterly concluded that the
story of her raising her skirt ("anasyrmos") was a myth probably invented
by Machiavelli - what she actually did was made "four figs" at her captors
(from the safety of her fortress), probably an obscene gesture involving
poking her thumb between her index finger and middle finger. Just so you
know. :-)
Note the use of sunflower in one of her recipes!
That, and "snakeroot" too! :-)
FYI, I've been coming to the conclusion that the VMS is a compilation of
three documents:-
(a) herbal + pharma + recipes, copied from Caterina Sforza's manuscript
(1480-1500?)
(b) balneological + gynaecological, copied from another source (say,
1460-1480?)
(c) cosmological + astrological, adapted from an even older source (say,
1300-1350?)
So: when we talk about "the date" of the VMS, we are (in the absence of
physical evidence, such as pollen samples in the vellum, etc) at high risk
of confusing the dates of the original plaintexts with the date of the
compilation/encryption. :-/