Cool! Is it Norse? Or maybe Gaelic?
(13-08-2020, 02:12 AM)MichelleL11 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Cool! Is it Norse? Or maybe Gaelic?
LOL! 
That was my reaction also.
Hahahahah! Koen you are so sneaky. Naamloos. 
Postscript. Okay. I found it. But I won't give it away. 
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It's Byzantine, there are hundreds of these that survive. What they did was take a cross pendant and punch five dots in it to represent the wounds of Christ. There are many surviving rings with the pattern as well.
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These are a roundabout way to rediscover that to a medieval person, a circle surrounded by four circles was a significant pattern. The VM is quite fond of this in various sections. Anyway, here it is placed next to a cross and a female figure with a blue hood.
Very good.
I did not know the extent to which the 5-dot arrangement had religious meaning and now I see it everywhere. I was familiar with the basic shape, of course, but it wasn't until you started posting Arma Christi imagery that it really sunk in, and now you have provided another example that would be completely meaningful to medieval people in a similar way but which to most of us is just a design.
Nice find.
Years ago I read an excellent article by women who are familiar with eastern European designs.
They made it crystal clear that the geometric embroidered designs on their local clothing are not just patterns. In their words, every single pattern has a meaning and how they are combined has meaning as well. To us they are just designs... boxes, crosses, stars, flowers, to them it is an iconographical symbology with a deep cultural history (one that is fast disappearing but which exists in pockets where ancient crafts are still practiced).
Koen, that's one of the plants I had difficulty identifying in a naturalistic sense. I have come back to it many times thinking that the unusually large amount of red (which is one of the more costly pigments in the Middle Ages) and the overall design of it must be a reference to... something.
I did wonder whether it might be Eryngium, but Eryngium does not have big red seedpods. So... my best guess so far and a suggestion I haven't seen anywhere else is an unusual Mediterranean plant called Paracaryum lithospermifolium. This, of course, assumes it was inspired by a real plant, which it might not be.
Possible ID (but very tentative)...
[font=Arial]Paracaryum lithospermifolium has You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. with little white 'teeth' and very interesting You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. that are bright red with depressed centers and little points on the edges. The calyx has long hairs that might inspire the long fuzzy edges on the VMS drawing.[/font]
It's not a perfect match (and the seeds eventually turn from bright red to brown), but it has the same "feel" as the VMS drawing and is the kind of plant that inspires storytellers.
It is a rare species (I can't find any public domain photos of it) and I have never seen it in a medieval herbal but if you click the links for flowers and seedpods, you might see why it reminds me of the VMS drawing.
It's blood, man
Although remember that there is no true red in the VM, these are cheap ochres that we can read as red in the given context.
I understand that you are drawing a parallel to blood, but there is an overall feel to all the plants that they were inspired by reality even when they do not slavishly follow reality. Whoever did the drawings knew and liked plants.
I also understand that there's no true red in the VMS (that became clear when looking at the color swatches), but this is as close as you can get if it's ochre and bright red ochre wasn't as easy to obtain as the browner ochres (well, I guess it depends what region you live in, so maybe it was, but the redder ochres are used selectively in the VMS).