The Voynich Ninja

Could the nymphs be nothing more than doodles drawn by one who was a bit too far into his cups?

(02-01-2025, 11:37 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[quote="tavie" pid='63205' dateline='1735836592']
[quote="Mark Knowles" pid='63204' dateline='1735832147']
There is an kind of laziness to some of the illustrations and maybe that was ok as the work was intended to be functionally useful rather than visually appealing. Some of the painting looks kind of like a rushed job.

Also, even if the author(s) could afford to pay professional illustrators they may have been reluctant to do so as that would mean introducing more people to their possibly intended to be secret private manuscript.

I agree on both parts, and will add again that if you make it nice, people might notice it more and be interested in it. So you make it a bit shabby because it doesn't need to be nice to be functional.

Quote:Posted by GlennM - Yesterday, 10:10 AM
Could the nymphs be nothing more than doodles drawn by one who was a bit too far into his cups?

I don't think so, there seems to be a rigid structure to them, Koen did a blog post on it, about the facing legs pretty much always being straight...and sometimes the arms are in totally unnatural poses, seems purposeful.

(02-01-2025, 11:37 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is an kind of laziness to some of the illustrations

I think that the astrological pages of the manuscript are actually done quite well. It is in the botanical pages and in quire 13 where the illustrations are bad.

I can envisage a scenario that might explain the differences.

It is that the manuscript was written as separate pieces of work, section by section. The author initially had no intention of creating a work of ~225 pages. Initially the author's intention was modest, to write something that would generate interest, and then to wait and see how it was received before committing himself to doing any more. The author probably felt that in order to create a success with the initial offering he would have to take care and make it look professional. So some of the astrological pages of the manuscript, perhaps even the 3x2 sheet, being the most professional looking, probably came first. Thereafter the author, now being pleased with his success and being full of confidence that success with additional writing would be certain, felt that he could relax his effort. So he started to get careless and subsequent illustrations became 'lazy'.