Conservators have discovered that the red ink on the set of 16th century hand-drawn maps of the Spanish Armada’s failed invasion of England is of far more recent extraction. They look integral and original, but all of the red accents — ships on fire, city markers, compass points — were added in the late 19th century to enhance the maps’ salability.

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Thas a real shame, but common (alike practices) Its really a crappy thing 2 do, but i must not judge sum poor geezer hundreds of yrs ago hoping for a taste of the good life.

Gives it more interest i suppose.

Actually preserving these things and not embellishing then to make them look pretty/more expensive/etc. Is a relatively new thing

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"All good stories deserve embellishment." - Gandalf

Hmm that’s funny because I swear their flag had red

I guess there’s also the line between when is something a historical artifact as opposed to just a text with information. Nowadays we digitize everything, and have copies of copies of stuff. In the 19th century they could definitely mass produce books, but still a book was where legitimate data was stored. If you find that an old text is fading or otherwise is seen as needing clarity, it might not be seen as very crazy to just update your stuff.

Not that I like it. But I wonder how different the perspective was of the guy who did it

So, you're saying these are useless for invading England now? Asking for a friend

He wanted money..

...money for beer

Could the original red have faded, and this was a refresh? That possibility doesn't seem to be excluded by the data.

A crucial point is that these maps were not worth much money at the time the red ink was applied. It is not comparable to doing do in today's market in which the documents sell for a great deal.

also the reason to polish all that dirty paint off those marble statues and also medieval armor.

Correct. In the past people saw old documents in a very practical way and not as some artifacts of historical value. Same attitude applied to other things like architecture, tools, weapons and so on. It was natural for them to take an old thing and "improve" it as they saw fit.

People forget that for hundreds of years wealth didn't come from the amount of money you had, but by what you had. So of you owned thousands of acres of land, art pieces and houses/estates you were wealthy.

That's why people did that to artifacts to 'improve' their worth.