Just preparinig to print my own facsimile of Capirola...
I was wondering: most animals look really realistic (yes I know, there's Griffons and Unicorns too and those do not exist). How did the illuminator (Mr. Vidal?) know how a Giraffe looks? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Capirola_lutebook.jpg The guy holding the leash also doesn't seem to be European. Is there any information about travels? The pictures just look too good, especially in the light of other animal representations of the time when people had not actually seen very much of exotic animals. (When depictions of an Elephant looked more like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Deinotherium.png/1280px-Deinotherium.png) Or maybe Giraffes and Monkeys were held in private Zoos? Where would that be? Anyway, this book is highly enjoyable and it might finally teach me how to sight-read Italian tabs... To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html