(15-07-2022, 04:20 PM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (15-07-2022, 09:36 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Rene: do you know of any other example of a foldout that unfolds in two dimensions, like the Rosettes?
Helmut: I don't buy that. Look at the foldouts in the small plants section for example. They are designed in such a way that one part fits the VM folio format and the other part can fold out. The same goes for the other foldouts in the MS: they are all designed with the VM's folio size in mind. The most obvious exception is the Rosettes, where they clearly wanted one big sheet to fit one big drawing. But the revers side is again neatly divided along the VM folio format.
I think the better part of the (bi)folios was cut to size before binding, it is obvious in the herbal part. Medieval parchment had a similar average size, it comes from the average size of he animals used, that is were you get your V. folio size.
I must say I am not far advanced with this ´things, I just turn around some ideas from years ago
EDI: It is a question of reconsructing the ms. before it was bound
I think the way the Voynich Manuscript turns otherwise generally sane people into ranting fighty idiots is the #1 most interesting thing about it.
Never mind merely forming an opinion in five minutes, the most truly talented already have a full translation by then.
(15-07-2022, 04:32 PM)Helmut Winkler Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[quote="Helmut Winkler" pid='51238' dateline='1657898444']
[quote="Koen G" pid='51233' dateline='1657874168']
Rene: do you know of any other example of a foldout that unfolds in two dimensions, like the Rosettes?
It is not just the fact of a large fold out that I found surprising on first impressions of the VMs. I had seen a few fold outs in other (somewhat) later works, but none so arresting. What is this, I thought, a map? A herbal with a map as a feature? That struck me as both surprising and important.
It led me to the conclusion (to which I still hold) that what is depicted is a herb
gathering tradition, not a herb growing tradition and not an urban apothecary tradition. There are no horticultural depictions in the work, nor even any signs of sickness and disease (with perhaps one exception in marginalia). The map is remarkable because it contextualises the herbs and the rest to a particular geography. I think that sets it apart from your garden-variety medieval herbal from the outset.
As I read it, the map makes it a work about a herb
gathering tradition, and I don't know another work like it in that respect. It helps explain the complete lack of correlates between herb, astrology
and the human body. It is conspicuously not a directly medical work: it is about the location, collecting, storage and preparation of herbs, herb gatherers, not herbal-
ists. It's an important difference made plain by the map which seems intended, I think, to be a key to the whole work.
(For various reasons, I identify the map with the Ladin territories around the Rosengarten mountains in the Dolomites, alpine northern Italy.)