The Voynich Ninja

As a Spanish speaker, I often correlate grammatical gender with biological in my mind, even for inanimate nouns. The table ("la mesa") is somehow feminine, the phone ("el teléfono") is not. Casting nymph symbology aside or whatever, I'd intuitevely personify stars ("las estrellas") as women rather than men. Same goes for plants and herbs (la planta, la hierba).

Do German speakers picture a star as masculine (ein Stern), somehow?

Hm, interesting question. In German we have the generic masculinum so male is the norm. I wouldn't say I see stars as male, they're neutral.  Likewise I don't really perceive the sun as female. If anything the moon is male because of the man in the moon. The moon is frequently depicted with a male face. The sun however is often depicted with a neutral face. A clearly female sun is not common. The same goes for stars. If stars are drawn with a face, it's also mostly neutral. The grammatical gender is all over the place in German and at least I believe this has little influence. A revolver is male (der Revolver), a pistol is female (die Pistole). A rifle is neutral (das Gewehr). I don't think this changes how people perceive these firearms.

The idea that structures in one's native language may influence world view is called "linguistic relativity". It's highly controversial, and experiments indicating a connection are, let's say, hard to replicate.

Standard Dutch has all but turned into a two-gender system (one being for male and female, the other for neutral). But my dialect still grammatically differentiates between male and female in addition to neutral. This is why many Flemish speakers still have an intuitive grasp of grammatical male vs female, which other dialects have lost.

"Dog" is male. When some older friends of mine were talking about their newly adopted female dog, I remember them saying "he's on his period". Just to say, speakers of gendered languages are able to completely separate grammatical gender from biological gender. From my experience, grammatical gender does not influence my interpretation or representation of the world at all. 

Either way, it's very shaky ground to build a theory on. It should be much more solid to look at traditional representations in the arts. If you find that [thing] is generally represented by female personifications, then you have your answer.

Interesting argument. I speak Standard Italian and the local Eastern Lombard language and what's interesting is that some words have opposite genders between the two languages, i.e. Italian 'il sale' (the salt), masculine, and Eastern Lombard 'la sal', feminine. I automatically switch without much thought (I guess, never thought much about this). Howerer it's fun to ask somebody to voice "una forchetta" (fork, Italian, feminine, [for.'kɛt.ta]), which results in a high-pitched voice, and then to voice a "perù" (fork, eastern Lombard, masculine [pe.'ru]) resulting in a very low-pitched voice. So there must be at least some grain of truth in the (weak) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 

If the nymphs were a representation of the soul, or of geographic locations like Linda puts it, then why did the VMS author(s) use the Balneis or Taccola's diagrams to draw inspiration from? Why not just... draw some random baths? Why the need to copy bath designs and river diagrams specifically from exceedingly rare books, such as De Ingeneis?

Makes no sense to me, if water/bathing was not specifically the objective.

(08-06-2026, 09:17 PM)Someguy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If the nymphs were a representation of the soul, or of geographic locations like Linda puts it, then why did the VMS author(s) use the Balneis or Taccola's diagrams to draw inspiration from? Why not just... draw some random baths? Why the need to copy bath designs and river diagrams specifically from exceedingly rare books, such as De Ingeneis?

Makes no sense to me, if water/bathing was not specifically the objective.

I don't think bathing comes into it, per se. If the Balneis or Taccola's diagrams were popular in a pocket of society that intersected with the makers of the vms, there could be many answers. 

1. The makers saw something and it came to mind while they were drawing, to echo these likenesses somehow for some reason.

2. The makers didn't see or think of any of it, and what seems to be inspiration is simply coincidence.

3. It is a purposeful obfuscation to keep the casual observer from understanding the true nature of the diagrams.

I think the bathing as seen in quire 13 is more of a metaphor for living near/because of water.

In terms of why the nudes? I think it is because it is the bare form everyone is accustomed with, no matter their background, a standard, and the least telling of whence they came, other than the basic European look. No local costumes to give any hints. Bathing would be a good guess whether or not it was seen in a book, though. The nudity, along with them either being in the water or touching it in most cases, would likely bring it to mind anyway. Except that there also is clothing in other parts, I think it is all a progression over a very long period of time.

I also think it would make it understandable to be flustered about having been caught with naked lady pics, however clean and natural they might be, and likely you wouldn't have to explain that you were really hiding secret documents.

This thread again is asking a just fairly correct question, but coming from a wrong guideline:
there is not the slightest hint that the „balnear“ and „zodiac“ nudes are somehow „nymphs“ at all.

The right questions would be:
- where (in Europe) was an extensive bathing / water culture part of the living at beginning of 15Ct and before? (there are some)
- where (in Europe) was it normal, accepted or for scholar/educational uses just tolerated to show such nudity at ~95% of the whole book?

This is reducing the chance of being a western-european manuscript by numbers:
„bathing scenes“ in western cultures were mostly related to bathing houses aka brothels, and you can find a lot of examples involving men where this bathing led immediately to bed scenes. 
Apart from the zodiacs, I don‘t see many male figures within the original VMS.
On the other hand, religious imagery shows a lot of nude human beings in hell or other inconvenient situations; they are also no nymphs, but their nudity is for that purpose accepted. 
Beyond that, we found several bathing scenes in west-european manuscriptsat special occasions, but they never reach a majority.

(09-06-2026, 01:13 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.- where (in Europe) was it normal, accepted or for scholar/educational uses just tolerated to show such nudity at ~95% of the whole book?

I think I saw astrological/astronomical diagrams in some manuscript with nude people in some sectors.  Unfortunately don't remember any details.

Would nude figures be acceptable in illustrations of Greek legends?

All the best, --stolfi

The term "nymphs" is merely a convention: I don't think many people think of them as actual nymphs. So objecting to the literal interpretation of "the nymphs" as nymphs is an accidental strawman.

Some traditions (Beguines, mystics, Italian frescos) conceptualize and depict the soul as female, the bride of Christ, immaculate... Though this mostly applies to the blessed soul that belongs to one leading a virtuous life, or that is with Christ in heaven. 

The Blessed tend to wear clothes though. You're much more likely to see nude figures among the damned, and these are not exclusively female either. Quite on the contrary, the damned tend to represent all parts of society. Or they might just be anonymous male and female figures. This is also what you see in Dante illustrations for example.

So I guess a "souls" interpretation would work best if the figures were either all female and clothed, or all nude and mixed. 

Either way, giving a single interpretations for the VM's nude figures that accounts for every context they occur in would be quite the challenge.

(09-06-2026, 03:53 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think I saw astrological/astronomical diagrams in some manuscript with nude people in some sectors.  Unfortunately don't remember any details.

Maybe you mean this (ULIXBONENSIS, Roland, fl. 1430 Physionomia) or similar works:


(AG Jimenez will like this)

These figures look quite male.

Jorge_Stolfi Wrote:Would nude figures be acceptable in illustrations of Greek legends? [..]

I would remind that such stuff had the tendency to be localized/regionalized and adapted to actual looks and fashions of the period it was reproduced. There are several occasions where ancient "classics" are reproduced in medieval gear and style -- so I do not recall many 14/15th Ct remakes of ancient greek nudity.