Page - 47 - in The Vienna Genesis - Material analysis and conservation of a Late Antique illuminated manuscript on purple parchment

Jiří Vnouček, Sarah Fiddyment, Abigail Quandt, Sophie Rabitsch, Matthew Collins, Christa Hofmann 47 parchment were stretched and pinned to a wooden board and left to dry (Fig. 7)27. After dyeing, no surface treatments were carried out as these would disturb the purple colour. It is surprising that the repair patches in Late Antique manuscripts that were applied over natural holes during the wet treatment of the skin survived the colouring process and stayed perfectly in place. This means that the time spent in contact with the liquid dye must have been relatively short, as the parchment (despite being very thin) did not become so wet that the patches became detached. Colouring only makes these thin patches of epidermal tissue much more apparent compared to similar patches on uncoloured parchment28. After dyeing any irregularities in the parchment also become much more visible. Visual examination of the parchment of the Vienna Genesis Parchment for a luxurious manuscript is usually very well prepared and selected. In the case of the Vienna Genesis, whose folios range in size from 257 x 238 mm to 328 x 268 mm29, there ae hardly any visible traces or imperfections resulting from the production of the parchment. On the surviving 24 folios only two holes were found, on folio 2 and fo- lio 11. Both of them are on the lower halves of the folios where the illustrations are located. On the flesh side, a parchment patch that is much thicker than the original parchment covers the hole on folio 2 (Fig. 8). This patch was not applied during the original produc- 27 The stretching and drying of natural coloured parchment on a wooden board is practiced today in Turkey. 28 Observation by Vnouček; Quandt 2018, p. 127 and Fig. 70. 29 For the individual measurements of each folio see the chapter on inks. Fig. 7: Stretching of dyed samples (left) and the traditional way of stretching parchment on wooden board that is still used in Turkey (right). Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY 4.0