Re: VMs: Colored paints, touch-ups, and the michiton text

["DANA SCOTT" <dscott520@xxxxxxx>]

Without knowing the chemical compositon of the ink, it may be rather 
difficult to determine the principle colors applied to the VMs. What is now 
brown may have originally been a lot closer to black. It would be great if 
we can entice Beinecke to embark on a non-intrusive physical/chemical 
analysis of the manuscript.

Raman Microscopic Technique for examining illuminated manuscripts:
http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/ac/98/feb/raman.html

Regards,
Dana Scott


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jorge Stolfi" <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, July 03, 2004 12:29 PM
Subject: Re: VMs: Colored paints, touch-ups, and the michiton text


>
> About the month names (and touch-ups) in the zodiac section, Gabriel
> asks:
>
>   > [Gabriel:] Erm... what about the same person at a later date with
>   > a different pen and ink?
>
> Could be. By the way, the hue and darkness of the "new" ink seems (to my
> very amateurish eyes) fairly similar to that of other manuscripts that
> I have seen on the net, such as the Kircher letters.  Whereas the
> "old" ink has a dull brown-ocher tint, which apparently has intrigued 
> other
> people too (was it Glen who once said that some manuscripts from
> Cambridge also use a similar brown ink?).
>
> However it is hazardous to make such color judgements from digital
> images (CRT gamma and all that).
>
> Anyway, while the month names *may* have been written by the same person
> who wrote the Voynichese text, it now looks just as possible that they
> were written by a later owner.  So while those labels may give us precious
> clues about the history of the VMS, we can no longer assume that their
> language was the language of the VMS main author.
>
> As you recall, the language of those labels still has not been
> identified with certainty. However, the spelling of "April" with "b"
> instead of "p" points to Spanish or Portuguese (where the month is
> spelled "Abril"), or Arabic (which has no "p" sound, and uses "b"
> instead in foreign borrowings). Moreover, the epenthetic "i" ("Abiril"
> rather than "Abril") seems to point to Arabic, which AFAIK does not
> allow "br". So the person who wrote the labels could be an Arab-speaking
> person in Europe, e.g. in Spain (which was partially under Islamic rule
> ultil late 15th century).
>
>   > If that "phi" character appears (probably) under the paint in a
>   > few instances there is a possibility that either the same author
>   > wrote everything, or the painter (if it was done after) wrote the
>   > phi in the flowers/leaves and the oladabas page.
>
> It seems a long stretch to call that letter a "phi". In modern Greek
> script, at least, the lowercase "phi" is written with a single stroke,
> beginning with the round part and going counterclockwise; so the "eye"
> ends up on the right side of the stem, not on the left as in f9v.
>
> The letter on f9v looks like a miniature and incomplete EVA "t". It
> could be a distorted EVA "q" with upturned arm...
>
> It has also occurred to me that the "phi" could be not a letter but part
> of the drawing -- a stamen, pistill, or whatever. Are there similar
> details on the other front-viewed flowers, under the blue paint?
>
> BTW, the reason why the color separation did not work so well on f9v
> may be sample contamination from the brown ink. It appears that that
> the painting-over dissolved a little of the brown ink and created a
> faint brown smudge, running diagonally over the "phi". So perhaps the
> separation will improve if you resample the blue ink where there is no
> brown smudge.
>
> All the best,
>
> --stolfi
>
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