VMs: Sagittarius f73v quiration...?

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

Looking again at f73v yesterday, I noticed a small unreadable mark in the 
bottom right corner, at the level of the bottom of the outer ring. Now, 
while I can't *read* it, it would seem most likely to be a quire mark, and 
I believe that I can tentatively identify the hand-writing as being 
consistent with the "zodiac month hand". However, it would need a better 
reproduction of the page to be certain of this - another good reason for me 
to buy the higher resolution picture from the Beinecke. :-)

If this idea is correct, it suggests to me that the zodiac quire was 
back-to-front when the VMs originally had its quire marks added: and that 
it was then turned round, and the folio numbers and the month names were 
added (by two other hands, at two different times), with the zodiac month 
hand adding in the missing quire mark.

I also believe that the zodiac month hand is essentially late medieval 
while the folio numbers are in a (fairly generic, but very similar to 
Edward Kelley's) Renaissance hand. If this is correct, this suggests to me 
that the month names predated the foliation, but postdated the quiration.

Comments?

FWIW, here's my current idea of the construction sequence for the VMs (feel 
free to disagree!)...
(1) text is written/copied/enciphered onto bifolios
(2) bifolios are folded into quires
(3) quires are loosely bound
(4) pages are painted
(5) binding is removed
(6) VMs gets dropped on the floor :-(
(7) VMs gets reassembled (but with a number of bifolios out of order)
(8) quires gets re-bound in the order we see today
(9) quires are numbered (but with zodiac quire back-to-front)
(10) zodiac diagrams have names over-written (in European hand)
(11) zodiac quire is reversed & has extra quire mark added (in European hand)
(12) folio numbers added (in Renaissance hand)

This sequence could also be extended to account for missing pages (ie, at 
what stage were pages / bifolios / quires removed / lost / stolen?) - that 
might be an interesting exercise, too. :-)

What I find tantalising about stage 7 (reassembly) is that I haven't yet 
found any places where there are unmatched inter-folio paint marks - that 
is, it looks as though either (a) the person reassembling the quires 
matched up all the paint mark pairs he could find (ie, he treated it as a 
huge jigsaw puzzle, and solved it as far as he could), or (b) the painting 
was done *after* the reassembly. This is a classic forensic logic puzzle. ;-)

However, I'm also far from sure how the "heavy painter" fits this sequence 
- any suggestions? Is the heavy painter's paint the only kind that 
transfers between pages? Was the heavy painter's work done after or before 
the VMs was reassembled? And similarly for the light painter's work?

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....


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