The Voynich Ninja

I sometimes wonder if the sexual ambiguity of VMS Virgo is because the traditional Virgo was male and the later medieval Virgos were mostly female but sometimes male.

I challenge anyone to find bigger bag pipes than these  


(Early 15th century (ca. 1400-1410) France Bibliothèque nationale de France Français 836: Le Livre du duc des vrais amants by Christine de Pizan)

Did we have this guy already? The fiddler on the left. One of the more complete matches for the crossbowman's ensemble in my opinion.


Unfortunately I can only find it without any explanation. My guess would be early 15th century Paris, though this may be completely wrong.

(11-07-2019, 09:58 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Did we have this guy already? The fiddler on the left. One of the more complete matches for the crossbowman's ensemble in my opinion.


Unfortunately I can only find it without any explanation. My guess would be early 15th century Paris, though this may be completely wrong.

I like that he has a violin bow instead of a crossbow.

The sleeve could be straight cut, but it is not. It looks like it has a hem in the front with fur or something similar. The dress seems to be quite noble.

bi3, I was thinking it might be a lace edge on the VMS sleeves because it seems finer than dagged sleeves (although there were also sometimes finely-dagged sleeves). Dagged sleeves might have been a way of simulating lace edges at a lower price. I can't remember if I posted examples earlier in this thread or on one of the other threads but I've mentioned this before.

There was a great deal of handcrafted lace in noble circles, but details like that were only recorded in very careful drawings. There were some finely dagged or maybe lace sleeves in Tacuinum Sanitatus

BL Add 1277 has lace or finely dagged sleeves. Below, from NAL 1673 are some tatted sleeves (left) and what probably is a rough drawing of lace-edged sleeves (which I've probably posted before):

[attachment=3077]   [attachment=3078]

Thanks @JKP, especially the second picture convinces.

After the world's largest bag sleeves I now present you the longest (and most tripping hazard) hat tail. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., 1430's England. "Possibly made under the supervision of John Lydgate (b. c.1370, d. 1449/50?), poet and prior of Hatfield Regis. Commissioned by William Curteys, abbot of the Benedictine abbey of St Edmund, Bury St Edmunds, as a gift for Henry VI"

[attachment=3079]

In the same MS there are some hats very much like the one of the VM crossbowman, as well as some more voluminous sleeves. Though I think the MS may be a bit too late to feature the exact sleeve type we are looking for, and it does not contain the wide-end sleeves for women.

[attachment=3080]

A bit OT, but think of the muddy ways and places in the middle ages. People even had to wear protective overshoes (patten) to be able to walk at all without sinking in the mud. Everything lying on the ground was problematic. Sometimes one is very astonished about the fashions.

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Tacuinum Sanitatis, BNF Latin 9333, 15th century, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Arca posted this in another thread:

(04-10-2019, 09:05 PM)arca_libraria Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..... but my searches turned up this charming manuscript which has a sagittarius that is one of the most similar "matches" to the VMS sagittarius that I've seen in a long time, but is probably old news to this forum*.

I don't recall having seen this particular Sagittarius, but there are so many, I may have forgotten. As a whole the Zodiac series is certainly of the extended family to which the VM series belongs. Or at least to which it clings on the best.

The archer has nice baggy sleeves, which, based on the findings in this thread, would make me suspect a date between 1400 and 1430. Indeed, it is dated to the 1420's.

[attachment=3440]

There are quite some similarities, as well as differences with our crossbowman.

[attachment=3441]

Similar are the tunic with excess material at the elbow but tight at the wrist. The "skirt" seems to be made of strips of material. High belted. Shoes; round collar; little beard. Surrounded by circle of text.

Different are the weapon, the headgear, some colours and the orientation of the figure.

All in all a great find.


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1. Direction and Color

One of the things I noticed when looking through my zodiacs (which number around 700 sets but I usually only mention 560 because only about 560 are complete or virtually complete (12 figures per set)) is that even if the illustrator copied from an existing tradition (e.g., crayfish versus crab, dragon versus scorpion), he often flipped the figure around to face the other way.

Color was also at the discretion of the illustrator BUT it depended on the figure—I noticed that some things tended to retain the same color within certain traditions (like the blue fish).



2. Theme

But... on another line of questioning... as far as subject matter goes... and I think this is important... it took about 500 zodiac series before I could evaluate what mattered and what did not...

Was a satyr a different tradition from a two-legged man (as opposed to a centaur), was a longbow a different tradition from a crossbow? Was a female Virgo a different tradition from male (usually yes, but not always), was a sitting Virgo different from a standing one, was a scale-with-figure different from a scale-without figure?

These are important questions and you simply can't discern the answers with less than 500 zodiac series. Until I had that many, I would go through them time-and-again and scratch my chin. I simply wasn't sure. In fact, I wish I had 1,000 series (12,000 images) rather than only 560 (6,720), but it's becoming extremely difficult to find ones I haven't already collected (I have to wait until more are digitized).


After scrutinizing this growing collection for years now, I have gradually come to the impression that it did matter (most of the time) whether it was a centaur or a two-legged figure (it seems to split into traditional or humanist themes*). In other words, the traditions were traditional (centaur) or humanist (two-legged satyr or human), but the two legs could be a man or several variations of satyr and still be essentially the same.


And... I have noticed that it doesn't seem to matter whether it was a longbow or a crossbow (as far as I can tell, so far)... which has direct relevance to the image just posted.


So we have two elements...

• a flipped image (doesn't matter, they did it all the time), and
• a figure with similar clothing but a different kind of bow... which, as far as I can tell, didn't matter—the illustrator chose the bow.


Now, there might be stages IN BETWEEN the zodiacs I have in my collection (ones that are probably lost forever) that could help fine-tune the individual choices between satyr and human or longbow and crossbow, but from what I have seen so far, the kind of bow was not a significant indicator of tradition... it was a choice.

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* I've found that the terms traditional or humanist seem to work reasonably well in describing the break in zodiac traditions that my research suggests occurred in northeast France/Flanders and which slowly migrated east and south to create the traditions that most closely resemble the VMS zodiac figures.

The group that splits off not only represents the archer as a two-legged creature rather than a centaur, but also represents Gemini as a human couple rather than as celestial brothers. So "humanist" seems like a comfortable working term for the present time even though this break in tradition happened in the early medieval period and is not in parallel with the "humanists" of the 16th century. If someone can think of a better term, I am open to suggestions.