The Voynich Ninja

Chiesa di San Francesco, Montefiore d'Aso. Atrributed to the 14th-century Maestro di Offida.

Pierre, I wonder, what is your opinion on the feasibility of cross-checking merlons with other architectural elements in the Rosettes buildings?

(22-07-2026, 03:53 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.opinion on the feasibility of cross-checking merlons with other architectural elements in the Rosettes buildings?

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You’re thinking along those lines.
For example, images 1 and 3 show the same city gate. Difference: approx. 300 years
The question is whether the VM image shows a city gate.
Gates like this are only found in larger cities.
There are other interesting features in the drawings that can be used to identify the region.

(22-07-2026, 03:53 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Pierre, I wonder, what is your opinion on the feasibility of cross-checking merlons with other architectural elements in the Rosettes buildings?

Except the onion domes, they are contemporary in Italy, if this is what you mean.
Otherwise, this is one of the topics I hope to elaborate on and discuss with everyone as soon as I'm able to present my objectives and methodology in detail.
Until then, all I can say is that I do not believe any of the architectural elements represent a specific building or location, nor do I think they function primarily as symbolic representations, even though the Rosettes as a whole may well be symbolic. 

The third option is to trace their stylistic origin. I like to refer to this as the minimalistic* approach:
Can we connect these depictions of buildings in some way if we identify them indvidually or together in previous manuscripts? Keep in mind that so far we have zero potential matches for the Rosettes imagery, except for your and Cary's Heavenly Jerusalem theory:
1. The swallowtail castle/city is too generic to be identified with a specific illustration of a castle or city. This leaves us with two avenues for its interpretation: one of them is to treat the castle as a common motif in a certain category of abstract depictions. For instance, take a look at the following mappa mundi by Giovanni Leardo (1442, east on top):


The Terrestrial Paradise and other big castles at the (far eastern) end of the world have swallowtail merlons, the other castles do not. The question of why there are castles on medieval maps is relatively clear: in most cases, each one corresponds to a real or imaginary location. In Leardo's two subsequent maps (1448 and 1452-3), the castles are identical and have no merlons, thus requiring no further analysis. In the mappae mundi I posted last month, the swallowtail merlons are the only marker of a location, so they present no difficulties: we can chalk it up to a stylistic choice that may or may not have had any antecedents (indeed, the scholar I cited assumed that the second mapmaker copied the first based on this evidence). They can also be compared with the (much later) Leardo map of 1452-3, which has bright red dots next to the labels. On the other hand, the 1442 has both types of merlons, a situation that demands an explanation. Whether it is the size of the castles, the locations associated with them, their presence at the top of the map, or some other interpretation, it is at least an "investigable" stylistic choice.

Other examples are the models of cities and buildings held by saints, as in the paintings from Trieste or this beautiful sculpture on the Loggia del Lionello in Udine, dating to 1448: 

These generally reflect real merlons, although we need more examples before we can make a definitive judgement. In Gothic frescoes, the opposite is observed: castles with merlons of either type are usually generic, with few exceptions. In Baroque frescoes, by contrast, true models of cities and castles are more common, though not universal.
In most manuscript ilustrations, swallowtail merlons are either true to nature, and sometimes contrasting with Guelph or other types of merlons, or they are applied uniformly as a stylistic convention. In both cases, there are clear and concrete explanations for their use. If we discover manuscripts where the swallowtail merlons were added for a different reason (perhaps on the map of Rome?), the same line of thought applies.

What we are looking for is to create a small database of "explainable" merlons in various types of illustrations; the more abstract, the better. Of course, that means we need to find much better manuscripts than the ones we have. 
See also: Liber ad honorem Augusti by Pietro da Eboli, c.1197 Folio 140r. Peter of Eboli invokes Wisdom
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The second avenue is to examine the potential meanings of this castle among those we are familiar with. I previously highlighted Andrea Longhi's research on subalpine castles, particularly his theory that medieval-looking structures continued to be built in the sixteenth century because they stood for power and control in people's minds, even if they were a military and financial liability. A fortified villa would have been far less impressive to the growing number of feudal landowners. This may be one of the reasons why swallowtail merlons maintained their relevance long after their practical utility expired. Perhaps castles remained common on maps for the same reason. An "important" location always had one, even if it had become a glorified villa or an obsolete pile of bricks. We can thus imagine that swallowtail merlons were added to the Rosettes castle in order to emphasize it within the larger picture. An analogy would be a 21st-century person drawing a curved skyscraper instead of a tall rectangle.
See also: T-O map with swallowtail merlons: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Check out his zodiacs too.

2. Ed's Castle: I disagree with Ed's suggestion that the three towers and tall roofs are hallmarks of an alpine castle. I have seen no evidence that such an arrangement is more common in the Alps; to me, these look like run-of-the-mill artistic conventions. The only thing I can say about this castle is that it's far less visible than its swallowtailed cousin due to its smaller size and lack of merlons.


3. The Flat Tower: this one reminds me of a flat tower like the Torre Guinigi, but it could also represent a normal merloned tower with a flat or short roof:

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I'm not really familiar with the history of flat towers. They were mostly urban towers, rarely depcited before 1450. In fact, l bookmarked this early 16th-century fresco from the Santuario di San Magno because it was such an unusual sight:
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4. The walls with no merlons: these are extremely important because they connect three of the spheres and define the inner sphere on the top right. It would be amazing if we could find a diagram where walls play similar roles.
For instance: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 016I: Matthew Paris OSB, Chronica maiora II f. ivv  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Liber ad honorem Augusti by Pietro da Eboli, c.1197 Folio 115r. Salerni uprising against the Empress Constance.: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
DOC5/471 - Map of Jerusalem. Vlaanderen, Twelfth century. British Library. The Manuscript Collection (Add. MS 32343, fol. 15b).
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5. The wall with swallowtail merlons follows the same pattern. It is reminiscent of our mappae mundi, where the merlons sadly do not form actual walls. I have begun collecting maps in the hope I might find some that do.

6. Onion domes - you know more about them than I do. Maybe we should make another map with depictions of them.


Bonus: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(23-07-2026, 12:09 AM)Pierre Dumont Himself Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For instance, take a look at the following mappa mundi by Giovanni Leardo (1442, east on top):

The spelling of the month names on that map is interesting. I suppose that the "Ç" in "Çenaro" and "Março", "stands for a sound like the "th" of English "think", or the initial "z-" of European Spanish, or maybe modern Greek "θ".  According to my father, that phoneme was characteristic of people in some specific parts of Veneto.  I think it typically replaced the "ci-"  of Italian, which in other dialects of Venetian is replaced by "s-".  My father said that the borough of Ciano where he lived for a while, in the Treviso province, was pronounced "Θiàn" by the locals.

Quote:3. The Flat Tower: this one reminds me of a flat tower like the Torre Guinigi, but it could also represent a normal merloned tower with a flat or short roof:

But note that the flat square yellow roof (like the pointy yellow roof of the smaller tower) is only painted, not outlined.  The inked outline does seem to depict a flat-roofed tower, but in pure side view.  So it could even be a round tower.

All the best, --stolfi

Chiesa di Santa Maria della Misericordia (Ascona)

Quote:Il ciclo più antico situato nel coro, scialbato nel 1619 per volontà del cardinale Federico Borromeo e tornato alla luce nel 1881, è attribuito a diversi maestri attivi nella prima metà del secolo XV; nella lunetta ad est: Madonna della Misericordia; sulla pareti laterali: a nord, sessantasei Storie dell’Antico Testamento; a sud, trentasei Scene della vita di Cristo, attribuite a due pittori diversi; al Maestro dell’Antico Testamento sono pure riferibili gli affreschi nelle vele della volta raffiguranti la Majestas Domini, San Pietro papa con due santi vescovi, l’Annunciazione e i quattro Padri della Chiesa disposti a coppie, e anche l’Annunciazione e gli angeli sull’arco trionfale: tutte le figure sono comprese in ricche architetture ornamentali.

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Well found! That's a small detail in such a busy scene. There are a few other overlaps with the Rosettes as well, like the mandorla shape and the rose window framework.

(This is irrelevant, but the central emblem of the Jesuits must date to the 16th century. It looks like it may have been expunged at some point).

Saw this in Split, Croatia (the Etnographic Museum). Maybe it's modern or otherwise irrelevant.

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I will start with an apology to Marco, nablator and Koen. I couldn't reply to you last week and probably won't be able to for a few more days.
When igajkgko posted the merlons at the Ethnographic museum, I decided to finish my investigation into the city of Split, which I'd suspected might once have had swallowtail merlons. Dealing with Croatian materials was not an easy task, though I am eternally grateful for the free access to almost all the books and papers I needed. Aside from translation issues, the main challenge was that Split is so old, that every building has been repurposed multiple times over the past 2000 years. If you look at the past two centuries alone, archeologists and conservationists have had a hard time deciding what to keep, wha to tear down and what to rebuild. I still don't have a full picture of the city's evolution, but I believe the balance of evidence tilts toward the existence of swallowtail merlons in the early 15th century: 
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1. Early 14th-century crest in the Old Town Hall showing the bell tower and the northern wall. This is perhaps the initial crest adopted in 1312 when the first town hall was completed. Cvito Fisković dated it on stylistic grounds and made a convincing case that it was restored after the original building burned down in 1420, and that it survived the partial demolition of the second structure in 1820. 
Cvito Fisković - NAJSTARIJI KAMENI GRBOVI GRADA SPLITA (1936). You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

2. Mid-14th-century crest with the coat of arms of the Hungarian Anjou dynasty on a stone slab in the lapidarium of the Split Archaeological Museum. The same Cvito Fisković argued it was originally located on a public building, but was unable to identify which one.

3. A miniature from the Budapest manuscript of the Chronicle of Thomas the Archdeacon, folio 2r, shows the same view of the city, but with swallowtail merlons only on the corner towers, which I find similar to those in the Tempietto Longobardo. The Guelph merlons in the middle look exactly like the ones we can see today. The manuscript, commonly known as the Codex Traguriensis, is now held by the Széchényi National Library in Budapest (OSZK, Codices Latini medii aevi 440). It remained in the Archiepiscopal Library in Split until the 18th century, when Archbishop John Luke Garagnin transferred it to the Garagnin–Fanfogna family library in Trogir, whence the modern name. In 1903, Ivan Dominik Fanfogna sold it to the Hungarian historian Lajos Thallóczy for the library of the Society of St. Stephen (Szt. István Társulat) in Budapest. Some time later, under unknown circumstances, the manuscript came to the library of the Hungarian National Museum and from there to its present home. Historians disagree about the exact dating of the MS, but they all place it in the period between the late 1380s and the fifteenth century. 
OLGA PERIĆ, DAMIR KARBIĆ, MIRJANA MATIJEVIĆ SOKOL, JAMES ROSS SWEENEY - History of the Bishops of Salona and Split (2006). You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Ivan Ferenčak - DIPLOMSKI RAD. Iluminacije glagoljskih rukopisa prve četvrtine XV. stoljeća (2015)
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4. On the other hand, three miniatures from Hrvoje's missal of 1407 show regular merlons:

5. If I understand correctly, Katja Marasović's article on the south-eastern corner of the palace implies that the 14th-century walls with swallowtail battlements were integrated into the courtyard of the convent of St Clare, established in 1420 (13A). This was the same complex that now hosts the Ethnographic Museum. 
Katja Marasović - Prostorni razvoj jugoistočnog dijela Dioklecijanove palače/Spatial Development of the Southeast Part of Diocletian's Palace (2000) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
6. In 1420, the Republic of Venice took control of the city and built a castle outside the walls of the Diocletian Palace, on what is now the Voćni trg (Fruit Square). Today only a tower remains, the rest of the castle having been dismantled by Napoleon's forces. A 1549 painting of Saint Dominus with a model of the city shows the castle with Guelph merlons in the foreground.  

7. A 1441-3 crest of the city with the Venetian coat of arms depicts only straight merlons:

8. A mid or late 15th-century coat of arms of the Petraka family shows a tower with three swallowtail merlons.
Radoslav Buzancic - PALAČA PJESNIKA MARKA MARuLIĆA U SPLITU/The Palace of the Poet Marko Marulić in Split (2012)
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9. In the mid-15th century, the Venetians built new walls, which most likely had Guelph merlons. I believe these were built in front of the old walls, which were not destroyed.
10. In 1574, Giovanni Francesco Camocio published a map of Split in which the city had swallowtail merlons. The map was likely drawn by a native Dalmatian artist, like his other maps of Dalmatia, and the first edition may have been published in 1571.

11. In 1584, Antonio degli Oddi published a different map with swallowtail merlons. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to locate the entire volume.

12. The walls of Split were rebuilt in 1573 and in the 1650s. By that point there were no swallowtail merlons left.

EDIT: references added

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Pierre Dumont Himself Wrote:If you find swallowtail merlons somewhere, please post them on the main thread as well. I can't keep up with all the different threads.

Here, swallowtail merlons are depicted in BL, Sloane MS 4016, 1440, folio 108v
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