Comparative analysis of painting recipes: a new contribution to the study of the texts of the Strasbourg family

For many years, the Strasbourg Manuscript was believed to be the oldest German-language source for the study of Northern European painting techniques. Unfortunately, the manuscript was lost in the 1870 fire at the Strasbourg Library, and the text only survives in a 19th-century transcription made for Eastlake (1847). Studies such as those of Ploss and more recently those of Oltrogge have already highlighted the existence of texts with very similar contents, grouping them under the name of the ‘Strasbourg family’. Since these studies, a clearly defined corpus of manuscripts has been established as belonging to this family. This paper shows the different degrees of connection between the texts and presents some suggestions concerning their compilation process. The possibility of collating different versions of an identical text and cross-checking recipes can also be exploited to learn more about the ways in which recipe books were compiled, and to provide information concerning their use and function.