100 sheets of stolen vellum

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I agree with the rest of your assessment, Jorge,  but I would rule out that the VM creator personally owned these - or any - reference books. Illustrated manuscripts would have been worth a fortune and unless a compilation including all VM imagery sources existed, he would have needed a small library, something one would not find with any average man, especially a poor one who had to resort to making bad parchment and ink.

But my theory is that he had seen better fortunes before, at which time he assembled a good library of the kind that a well-to-do educated man would.   But by the time he decided to put his notes  to vellum he was old and living on a stretched budget.  And yet he would have kept his library, as much of it as he could.

IIUC, that is what happened to John Dee himself .  Before his crazy adventure on the Continent, he was rich enough to assemble a large library, including several Bacon books.  When he returned to England his mansion had been taken (IIRC) and his library had been dispersed.  His friends got  him a professor job somewhere, and some of his books were returned by the "borrowers"; but (IIUC) he was no longer a rich man.

(I am reminded of the scene in the movie The Ninth Portal where Depp visits an impoverished nobleman who has sold all his furniture, but still keeps his books neatly lined up on the floor of his decrepit manson.)

And then there's the 'elephant in the room' - BNCF Palatino 766, Taccola's personal notebook De ingeneis III-IV created for Emperor Sigismund of which no known copies exist.

Well, just because we do not know of any copies we cannot conclude that there were none.  I have seen estimates that only 10% of the manuscripts that existed in that era have survived to this day.  And i suspect that it is an optimistic estimate.

And there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of manuscripts sitting in libraries of convents, schools, state archives, and private individuals which have not been cataloged, or whose catalogs are not publicly available.

In contrast to the other VM references, (and Taccola's other works), as far as we know, this was never a book one could simply acquire as a copy, even when putting a huge amount of money on the table. In fact, we do not even know if this specific book ever reached a wider audience. It even widens the gap between the necessary quality of the illustration source and the DIY character of the VM.

Many old manuscripts were made in "factories" to be sold. But many were also made by individuals who borrowed a book that they liked and made a copy themselves, or hired a scribe to make one.

I suppose that even books in an imperial library were often lent out, or made available to visitors.  Otherwise, what would be the point of creating such libraries?  

IIRC, Fr. Petersen made a hand copy of the whole VMS by visiting Wilfrid, Krause, or some library for months on end.

Is BNCF Palatino 766 really Taccola's original notebook?  I imagine that his real notebook would have had all sorts of scribbles, stupid ideas, bad drawings, etc; so he would not have dared to just send it to the Emperor.  I rather think that he hastily made a clean copy for that purpose. 

I wonder why someone would even go through the process of making 100+ bad parchment sheets, which obviously was a lot of work.

No scholar made his own parchment.  Turning animall skins into parchment is a laborious, messy, and stinky process, that requires non-trivial know-how and equipment, as well as special materials such as slaked lime, tannin, pumice, limestone, sandarac, ...

The quality of the final product varied a lot. The hide could have scars, wrinkles, botfly holes, calluses, etc that could not be removed by the maker.  Scraping and stretching could create tears or other defects by accident .  But the maker would still sell bad sheets at a discount, rather than throw them away.

the author or a community may have produced all materials including ink and pigments DIY style.

Vellum, parchment, and paper could have been self-made by a large community, like a large monastery.  But normally they would be bought.  

Inks and paints were usually made as needed by the users themselves.  Lampblack could be easily made by anyone.   Any mineral pigments (like ocher, sienna, azurite) would have to be bought.  Some binders (like gum arabic) would be bough too, but DIY alternatives (like egg yolk) would have been available.

Why not use paper?

 

Indeed I assume that the draft of the VMS was created on paper, which at the time apparently was 1/5 of the cost of parchment, or less.  Most probably with lampblack (india) ink or some other simple ink like watercolor.   

Vellum and parchment, with iron-gall ink (IGI), were generally used when one wanted the result to be resistant to wear and tear, humidity, and accidental exposure to spill or rain.

So the Author presumably decided to have his paper draft put to vellum because he wanted to preserve its contents for posterity.  Or maybe because he thought that a vellum copy could be sold for a better price than a paper one.

A more intriguing question is why the VMS is not written with IGI.  This fact is clearly shown by the (non)appearance of the ink in the infrared images, and by how easily text and drawings got rubbed off or washed away (as on page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and under that "ketchup" stain on f103r).  

Maybe the Scribe had no experience with vellum, and neither he nor the Author knew that he had to use IGI? Or the Scribe used a washable ink on purpose, because he anticipated there would be many mistakes that would have to be corrected?  Or maybe the Author was so poor that he could not even afford the ingredients (oak galls and green vitriol) needed to make IGI?  

Or maybe those ingredients were not available where the vellum copy was made? They should have been easily available in any European town where someone used vellum/parchment -- meaning any town that had a notary, lawyer, monastery, etc.  But outside Europe, where vellum/parchment were not used, it may have been impossible to obtain them.


All the best, --stolfi