The Voynich Ninja

Hi David,

thanks for the invitation, but as it happens, I concluded that the 'Ghibbeline' merlons in the Vms - in particular those in the map on folio 86v (Beinecke numbering f.85v and 86r) aren't a reference to the Guelf- Ghibbeline division, but a motif which is used in that case, as it was elsewhere, purely as decoration for a drawing, or a generic reference to 'imperium'.

It was being used as decoration by the fourteenth century (eg. on diagrams relating to maths and geometry in the Zibaldone da Canal).  Some maps apply the motif to indicate the 'imperial' wall of China, or that of Gurgan, or again the limit of the Roman empire, or of the Egyptian rule in Egypt... and so on.

I suppose one might argue that a person who added those merlons to his own castle was making a pro-Ghibbeline statement, but the statement might only last one generation: a Ghibbeline father might well have a son who adopted the Guelf cause .. or who, like Dante, changed his mind about his preference more than once.

All in all, I wouldn't think there is much to be gained by attempting to read the motif politically in the Vms.  You may feel differently, of course. I know there are others who do, too.

Quote:..purely as decoration for a drawing, or a generic reference to 'imperium'.

Everything ancient we have,  comes from a decorative element.  But every symbol, if it is hieroglyph symbol or a graphiti symbol has a meaning,
it will follow (informal but known) rules, if will have a dialect and by examination you can see how that specific culture evolved.
I was/am  studing  that in relation to the symbols usedin the VMS.


In this case it shows the region were the author of the VMS came from, or that he came in contact with that region and got inspired.

David,
Yes, I see where you're coming from. Recognising historical and cultural cues is certainly a major part of provenancing - a different discipline from the creation of historical narratives.

You and I differ in our conclusions here. Where you are envisaging the imagery's being the original expression of a single 'author', and are seeking the things which you imagine might have 'inspired' the Voynich manuscript's pictures, my view is rather that no authorial theory is required by the primary evidence.

Recognising a single, creative, informing mind or hand is part of the work of provenancing, of course, but in this case the very absence of an individual 'hand' is most important. Like Renaissance Italian artists, or  fifteenth century German draughtsmen, individuals whose profession was in the graphic or other arts learned to form images in the style they gained during their apprenticeship, even if that was gained after they joined a monastery, or had developed no further than lessons at school.  That training has its own style - which is why we can usually tell at a glance if a painting or bit of woodcarving was made in Spain or in Germany - or even in England by a Spanish artisan, or in France by a German painter.

As Steele and many others noted long ago, nothing in this imagery refers to any  later-medieval or Renaissance European Latin style. Simple as that.  The copyists *may* have been Italian etc., but that's as far as I'd go.

For you, the interesting thing about the  merlons is, I guess, where the hypothetical author may have travelled or lived and which castle, if it still exists, might be imagined having inspired him.  That is a scenario which a writer of histories might well want to explore.

It doesn't have so much relevance to a provenancer - and provenancing imagery by what it contains  and the style in which it was done, and by reference to materials and find-place is what I do.  I'm not even interested in writing the story of any later owners. Luckily this field has room for all sorts of approaches and special interests - and all sorts of people, even those having as little interest in the written text as I do.

I can understand that.  However provenancing would assume that you know anything about the heritage of the images, the parchment or the text.

Since we do not know much, and almost nothing for sure, there is almost only the "style" you can work on, or is there more?


----
Something else. I did a little comparison on the gaps in the text. And came to the conclusion that the text gaps  in the "wierdos page" could imply that the author wanted to draw more wierdos.     Read more  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

About those gaps in the text- I think you are right in that they deserve attention. However, their presence both next to the drawing and isolated from the drawing, both next to large open spaces and within blocks of text, slightly undermines the hypothesis that they were meant to leave room for an image.

Your other suggestion seems more likely: perhaps they were left for a collague who would add letters in another script. My own first guess would be that they were meant for text in a different color of ink. Often place was left for exactly that. 

From a 1417 German ms pointed out by Rene in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

This rather looks like the "rc" shape abbreviation (don't remember what it stands for). Note that it is repeated twice - in black and in red.

---

Ah, checked at Cappelli and this simply stands for "et cetera"

Davidsch,
You said

Quote:provenancing would assume that you know anything [something?] about the heritage of the images, the parchment or the text.

Yes, in a sense, although I'm not quite sure whether you are speaking about provenancing a particular piece of work, or provenancing an *image*. 

They're rather different things. To provenance an object, you are effectively dating and placing the manufacture of a single item - and need only know enough to buy and sell the thing. Any picture of a woman and child could be correctly provenanced by saying it was painted in e.g. 15thC Italy.  By reference to the substrate, pigments and glaze etc. (mostly these days by scientific non-invasive tests) you can check that it's not a fake. And then perhaps by the  'hand' name the atelier or painter who made it.  But you are provencing that specific object's time and place of manufacture. Strictly speaking, you're not provenancing the image, but just the painting.  

Provenancing the *image* would mean distinguishing this  "a woman and child" as, say, a Christian religious icon, and since that idea  takes different forms and carried different connotations in Byzantium as against Coptic Egypt, or Spain, or China, then regardless of who painted it, or where or when, the analyst aims to identify the context from which the informing image has come.

In reality, curators and keepers of books and art buyers do this within their area of specialization, to greater or lesser extent. It requires a great deal of reading and study of things other than pictures.  But then when an image arrives which doesn't accord with anything in their own repertoire, regardless of where the particular picture was made, that's when they call in the iconographic analyst.  Because what we do is reversible: we might say 'the style in which this picture of a bird is painted tells us that it came from an inner Asian textile, and the style of depiction is one that was popular in twelfth-century Persia, but by the fourteenth century, that fabric and its motifs was being copied by weavers in Lucca, and from them it began appearing first in frescos made in (say) Siena, and it was finally adopted by certain manuscript painters near Florence.  So it isn't a native Italian or even a native Latin European form, but it is most likely to have been used by a painter who had trained in one of those centres - after which it became a fad in (say) England, because the English king married an Italian woman from Siena and set a new fashion and fad among the courtiers.

So then the provenancer knows where the 'curious' element comes from, and what it meant, and why it should turn up in a work made in fifteenth century Italy. The *image* isn't Italian, but Asian, and wasn't first enunciated in the fifteenth century but in about the seventh century and so on. The 'picture' however is, still, fifteenth century Italian.

And no matter how many examples one might then find in Italian, or in English manuscripts, the *image* remains Asian, not European, until inevitably it becomes mutated by the ways of seeing which apply in those Latin countries.


I think that the lack of background and training  in this field has greatly hampered many Voynich researchers.  It actually took me almost five years of explaining that the 'cloud band' pattern was Asian and could not be used as 'proof' of German cultural product, no matter how popular it later became in Germany.  It was also necessary to point out that it was just as popular - and earlier - in France and other countries: because no-one had looked.  The interesting thing is that though knowing themselves amateurs, people often think that imagery and its study is easy, and all you need to do it is look at pictures.  I don't think, even after eight years, that Nick Pelling is quite willing, just yet, to abandon his belief that hatching is used in the Vms, or (supposing it were) that no-one except Italian renaissance graphic artists ever used hatching - but I live in hope!

They look to me kind of like Tironian Notes. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Also the squiggle -- that symbol shows up in Cappelli as an abbreviation usually meaning er. (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..)