Reality checks - considering Lauber

[-JKP-]

It isn't just costumes.

The palette is very similar. I've looked at thousands of manuscripts and it's hard to find palettes this similar. I have only found a few.

The way the little critter in the pond is drawn in the Lauber "mermaid" drawing is quite unusual, as well, just as the hind legs of the VMS critters are very unusual. I've collected thousands of medieval animals drawings and MOST illustrators "get" the notion that the hind legs point the other way. The VMS illustrator didn't have a good sense of three dimensions and did not understand joints/anatomy and mostly got this detail wrong. The same oddity is found in the critter in the Lauber pond picture, in addition to the general form. The drawing style is different (the Lauber illustrator could draw much better), but the form of it is unusually similar.

That's why I spent ridiculous amounts of time trying to find out about Lauber predecessors. This kind of oddity (a quirk of perception) sometimes runs in families, along with the fact that these kinds of businesses often stayed in families in the Middle Ages.