The Voynich Ninja

The gallows have the same patterns on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as on the rosette folio in the middle right (III III III). Maybe that is unimportant but maybe not. It's not just groups of vertical bars, but three each.

It seems possible that it is a kind of marker to make a connection between text and image part on the rosette folio. Or is that too farfetched ?

It all depends. If the pattern has sone significance, then I'd say there's a good chance. However if it is merely decorative, then odds are it might return in a flourish without significance.

It might also be art-technical in the sense that it is used to show you how to see the different white bands. 

Let's make it concrete, what could it be? Imagine that the striped bands represent some kind of material. These are not blank space, they are bands made of x. In that case my intuition tells me that the same technique returning in a doodle doesn't mean much.

If, however, the striped lines represent something more specific or unusual, then the return of the pattern may signify a connection.

There are two parallels I know for this kind of pattern. One, on ancient temples. Two, in some manuscripts it is used to draw ropes. So perhaps they are meant as symbolical ropes.

But even if ropes are meant, then a gallow can still be elongated and decorated like a rope for mere fancy.

To me it suggests at least that we have the same individual at work.

That's a very important observation.

There aren't many clues to tie the illustrator to whoever (and there are several whoevers) who wrote the text, but it would, at the very least, indicate some interest each others' work or some observation or direct communication among them (or some cultural connections) or, at the top of the pyramid, perhaps an indication that the illustrator may have been one of the scribes or maybe (a rung below that), the illustrator may also have been a "rubricator" in the sense of adding major glyphs.

It can be interpreted so many ways, but it IS intriguing.

I agree JKP, though I think Rene's suggestion is uncharacteristically determined. A scribe may obviously reference an illustrator's work without them being the same person. This is especially true if the pattern has a somewhat important meaning.

If it's a mere doodle in both cases then I guess it increases the odds that they are done by the same person. But I don't see how we can determine that as long as we don't understand at least the drawing or the text.

The pattern on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. around the "pool" ( the same as in the gallows with an additional dot ) can also be seen on the rosette folio. So it really seems to me that there is more to it than just decoration.

I tend to have more ideas than time to put them into practice.

One of them was (is) to make a matrix of the various sections in the MS (based on illustration type), and for each combination (e.g. zodiac vs biological) find indications for a common 'artist'.
I have the feeling that many (but not all) of the cells of the triangular matrix can be filled in with some observations.

The correspondence indicated above would match cosmological vs biological, on the basis of a detail.
Whether or not that is significant is of course a question, but this could be addressed at the end, when the matrix has been filled in.

I am of course aware of the argument of JKP that there are indications of a second 'artist', which would also have to be addressed.
There are plenty of examples of scholarly analyses of this nature, and it is not unusual that one or the other 'hand' only has a minor contribution.

It's also my impression that the secondary illustrator made a minor contribution. The second hand is almost like a "touch-up" hand that went through the manuscript and filled in what was missing (or might be misinterpreted).

Whether this was at the time the original drawings were done or later, I'm not sure. It's entirely possible that it happened later. When male-looking nymphs are changed to female, one wonders if the second person was respecting the original intention. And yet it's possible that the secondary hand had more authority than the first, so if it was contemporary, then the second hand might have been making corrections rather than guessing.

I prefer to be more careful.

The different faces of the two Aries and the two Taurus may well be evidence of two different draftsmen. I can't say.
However, for all the emendations (and suspected emendations) that appear in the text and in the drawings there is no way of telling how much later they were made, or by whom.

It is speculation, but entirely possible, that they were made by the original scribe, on the next day, after going over the dried results of his efforts and noticing that there were either mistakes or parts that did not come out clearly (i.e. they were emphasised using new ink).

Other scenarios are possible, including much later emendations by later owners, but I don't see how this can be demonstrated either way.

I think one should not base grand theories upon such speculative arguments (as a general rule, and not intended as criticism of any reader/writer here).