The Voynich Ninja

Hey.

So this came to me as a bit of a surprise and got me quite excited - though it may still be a bit of a long-shot ----
I was recently visiting an exhibition in the Town of Třeboň called "You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.". It displays several manuscripts written by a medieval Czech scribe called Kříž z Telče (Crux de Telcz/Cross of Telč) who lived in 1434-1504,  he was a prolific writer on a very wide range of topics including medicine, astronomy, religion, law, alchemy etc.


What caught my attention was the sometimes close resemblance of his style and drawings to those of the voynich manuscript. Moreover, the timeframe (granted Crux lived a little later than the radiocarbon dating of the voynich suggests, but I think it's easily possible that he could have used parchment that was some thirty or so years old) and also the location of origin - Bohemia - seem to line up quite well with what we know about the Voynich.

You can check out for instance folio 176r - 200v of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.manuscript.

And here are some examples:


You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[attachment=7713]

Many of us probably experienced something similar at one point, when we encounter a certain "quality" of manuscript, to be reminded of the VM. See for example the Picatrix figures in JKP's post here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Despite the initial impression of similarity, I mostly see structural differences. For example, the VM avoids diagrams that rely heavily on straight lines. In fact you'll have a hard time finding many ruled lines in the MS. For diagrams, it prefers round and organic shapes, and any straight lines tend to be freehanded.
The human figure at the bottom really allows us to conclusively eliminate Telcz as an author though. The VM draws faces in three quarter view, not in profile. The VM artist is also better at connecting arms to the shoulders, keeping consistent bodily proportions, drawing hands etc. Even though the VM maker produced hundreds upon hundreds of human figures, their worst ones are still better than Telcz' sketch. And overall it's just completely different.

Maybe this MS may have some relevance for Voynich studies (I don't know), but certainly not by providing us with an author.

I noticed that when the draughtsman puts down the ruler, the artistic refinement is also gone.
This is not the case with the VM draughtsman, he still has the arcs and curves under control.

I agree. There are definitely some pretty obvious differences.
It was just close enough that I felt like i had to bring it up.

As for the drawing of the person - the following is also one of Crux of Telcz's drawings. It's clear that he was capable of drawing in a more realistic way - he just sometimes ... didn't.

[attachment=7714]


Maybe i'm off ... but I'm imagining VM's author as someone not too dissimilar from Crux of Telcz - a trained scribe, who would probably produce many books, most likely copies of popular or religious books. With these, he might be more restrained by the norms and rules of book-writing of the time, so much that they might have little resemblance with the VM, the VM being the only time he had complete creative freedom over the piece.

It looks much better already.
The difference between the one person and the other drawings makes me wonder if it was really the same artist.

(04-10-2023, 04:09 PM)Aga Tentakulus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The difference between the one person and the other drawings makes me wonder if it was really the same artist.

Contemporary scholars attribute both texts which contain these drawings to him ... but I guess we can never know for sure.
It might just be the difference between that ten-second sketch while hungover, just quickly trying to illustrate the location of some body parts and him actually trying to do it right and taking his time. Or maybe he gave some child or young student the opportunity to draw that figure... or... who knows!