The Voynich Ninja

After Koen's marvelous work on Alpha vs. Beta plants I wondered if we can correlate scribal hands as identified by Lisa Fagin Davis to other imagery throughout the manuscript. The first obvious choice is nymphs andd faces in general which are abundantly drawn by scribal hand #2 ('balneological section') and #4 (Zodiac / Astronomy). But there are also a few figures on one page doubtfully attributed to hand #1 ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) and two marginalia-associated drawings on pages attributed to scribal hand #3 ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ) and hand #5 ( You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. ).

Scribal hand #1 - Roundel
Not much from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. which is not even definitely attributed to scribal hand #1 . There are four figures, two of which are shown from behind. There is only one other instance of a figure drawn from behind on f86v4 which Lisa attributes to scribal hand 2. The figures are large but rather crudely drawn. Eyes are slightly downward-curved lines.
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Scribal hand #1 - Pharma
In the root section we find a few faces.
A number of small ones with few features on f89r1 . They show strong resemblance to the small astro faces associated with scribal hand #4
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And a single one in f101v2 . It looks quite unique, round with pointy nose and best resembles the male zodiac figures associated with scribal hand #4
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Scribal hand #2 - Plants
One plant, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. shofs large faces in roots. These have somewhat c-shaped but more complex eyes and an unique '<' -shaped mouth but overall I think the best match are the astro-faces of scribal hand #4.
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Scribal hand #2 - Balneological
Arguably some of the best drawn figures though quality varies somewhat. Notably crisp dark lines. The eyes are mostly but not always c-shaped , the open end pointing inward. Sometimes loops. This appears to be a key feature of figures associated with scribal hand #2.The nymphs are also fairly large.
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Scribal hand #2 - Rosette backside
The 4 persons on f85r2 and f86v4 show a very strong resemblance and are obviously drawn in the same style. Puffy cheeks. One figure is shown from the side, one from the  back. Only one has c-shaped eyes.
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f68v3 has two figures. One has clear c-shaped eyes, the other an odd unique polygonal face and nose
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Scribal hand #4 - Rosette
The rosette foldout shows two strongly fades suns in the corner that appear similar in style to the other large astro faces by scribal hand #4. The lower sun has darker c-shaped eyes that could be amended.
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Scribal hand #4 - Astro
We see a number of faces on celestial bodies that have an unique style. The large ones have more complex eyes, the mouth is sometimes represented by two parallel lines. Noses are often broad and round in large faces, rectangular in the small ones of celestial bodies.
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Scribal hand #4 - Zodiac
This is where things get interesting! We have two zodiac pages in Q10: f70v2 and f70v1
The drawings are some of the best Nymphs in the manuscript. They are lifelike, in different poses and expressions standing in their fancy barrels. Eyes take different form. c-shapes are rare but look natural and not like amendments
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Q11 Zodiac signs show a noticeable decline. The figures become much more static, also faded. The naked nymphs appear in the same poses as the ones from the balneological sections but are overall poorly drawn. Unambiguously c-shaped eyes are absent. Eyes are mostly dots or lines. The style is more or less consistent while quality varies. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. still shows some well- drawn figures and a lot of males in red with caps.
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The foldout You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , f72r1 , f72r2 , f72r3 has a very similar style of crisp lines but drawing quality and paint job is noticeably worse. Ink becomes faded and there are some dark lines that look like amendments.
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f72v1 has broader lines and some obvious amendments on the nymphs on top (crown, eyes). But no c-shaped eyes anywhere.
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f72v3 , f72v2 shows massive fading with no obvious amendments in Leo, excapt maybe breasts. In Virgo, Virgo herself has c-eyes but they also look like they were made with dark ink.
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Q12 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. stylistically match the previous pages but less faded.
These 2 pages are the only ones in the astro section where we see clear c-shaped eyes - and they have been amended in darker ink. Just like hair/headdressses on the previous page. All nymphs in faded original ink have dot or line eyes. But also amended eyes can be dots or lines.
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Marginalia #1
A single drawing associated with marginalia text on a page attributed to schribal hand #5.
Not much can be discerned from the face but the style looks different from the other marginalia drawing and more like the zodiac figures.
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Marginalia #2
Another single figure on the last page associated to marginalia, the quire attributed to scribal hand #3 . The naked nymph appears quite well drawn and organic and in an unique style distinct from other nymphs in the manuscript.
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Now what to make of all this?
In my opinion the drawing style correlates better with topics or even quires and pages than scribal hands. Furthermore, despite the differences, the style is fairly consistent and more a continuum than distinct chunks. This matches our experience from the plants.

Conclusio - looking at all the intermediates and the overall consistency of style, I propose that scribal hands mark periods in the development of an individual rather than distinct persons. I do not find the hypothesis that at least 5 people worked together in creating those highly similar yet subtly distinct images parsimonious. Obviously all the drawings are amateurish. Not necessarily bad but not the work of professionals. And one of the hallmarks of a good artist is achieving consistency. Overall the style across scribal hands is fairly consistent - too consistent to be the work of several untrained individuals. But this is my layman's opinion. I am not a paleographer.

What I find consistent in nearly all the facial illustrations, with a few exceptions, is the curved line that runs from one eyebrow, down the bridge of the nose and then around the bottom of the nose. It seems to be something a bit peculiar, as do the double eyebrow and nose exceptions. How do other 'line-drawn' faces compare?

The similarity of the faces would seem to indicate a single artist, but was it the same individual as the single scribe? Was it one of the five scribes? Or was it another person entirely? And who drew all the plants?

I've been giving this question a LOT of thought over the years, focusing on the faces as well. My current thinking is that the plants were likely drawn by their scribes, but that a single artist did the figures and faces throughout. In general, without archival or other external evidence, there is no real way to "prove" that a scribe was also an artist, but in the VMS the correlation of Koen's two plant styles with scribal corpora certainly suggests that, at least in the herbal section, scribes and artists were likely the same. This is supported by the fact that in at least one case, a plant component in the pharm. section (Scribe 1) calls back to a Scribe 2 herbal page but is drawn using the same characteristic features for Scribe 1 plants: the root on 99v, 2nd from the left on the third row, has the typical Herbal A root-line, but the Herbal B version on 34v doesn't. That's hardly enough for a definitive argument, but it is suggestive.

I missed several faces in the plant/pharma section and two suns on the rosette page, they have been added!

I still don't really know what to make of this. Especially the different faces is the pharma section raise questions. Do they look like they were added later? I can't tell but it's not obvious. As said, I see a strong resemblance between the small root faces on f89r1 and the small astro faces on f67v2
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The round face on f101v2 (shown on the right) is quite unique but somewhat resembles the well-drawn male zodiac figures like the crossbowman or the guys in red. All associated with scribal hand #4, though the pharma section is scribal hand #1.
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The root faces in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. associated with scribal hand #2 (shown on the right) match the large astro faces accociated with scribal hand #4 remarkably well. Even the two eybrows in addition to the nose line can be found in both.
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It may not surprise you that I have also given this some thought before, and as usual it's a complex story. I wrote a long post here detailing my thoughts, but then deleted it because I'm not certain of anything.

First off I'll say that I agree with the sentiment that the just like the broad style of text and plants, that of the human figures is the same throughout the manuscript.  So we are looking for variation within that consistency. (I would not compare the celestial faces directly to nymph faces, since they have a different anatomy and scale.)

I don't want to get into the one-vs-many scribes or artists debate now. We are still collecting data.

When I was thinking about the faces before, I focused on two things: the eyes, and the lines that form the forehead, cheek and nose.

I would distinguish three core styles based on the linework:

1. Smooth style: the face is outlined in an almost continuous line. Nose line may be separated. Frequent in early Zodiac pages. 
   
   
2. Eye-dip style: the forehead line curves in towards the eye and continues into the cheek line. Forehead and cheek are two distinct arches. The nose is a separate line. Frequent in four-figure diagrams, late Zodiac (starting ca. Leo); also found in some Q13 pages.
   
3. Picasso style: the forehead line curves strongly into the nose line. The cheek is a separate line usually starting at the eye. This messes with the perspective, hence my name for the style. Frequent in the "central pool pages" of Q13.
   

Examples:

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Based on this, one might construct the following sequence:

• Smooth style -> eye-dip style -> Picasso style
  
• Early Zodiac (changes around Leo) -> Late Zodiac -> Four figure diagrams + marginal figure of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -> original first folios of Q13 (transitional) -> original second group of Q13 + You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. figure.
  

What I find most fascinating is that the marginal figure of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. occurs on the same bifolio as f57v. It is badly faded but seems to match the style of lines and eyes. And the figure on the last page of the manuscript mostly matches the Picasso style of presumably late Q13. Therefore, I would argue that the two marginal human figures were made around the same time the main drawings on these pages were made.

Another potentially interesting avenue is to trace the evolution of eye-dip style into Picasso style through Q13, with the goal of reconstructing its original page order.

The scanned images may give casual viewers a false sense of scale.  The height of each page is actually ~23.5 cm.  Thus the drawings are smaller than one may think, and the traces are quite thin -- 0.1 mm or so on the drawings, a bit more on the text.   The face of a typical nymph is only ~3mm wide and ~5 mm tall.  Could you draw consistent faces of that size?  With a quill pen, on a rough vellum?

Thanks Koen, I was hoping of exactly this imput from you!

(06-06-2025, 10:10 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wrote a long post here detailing my thoughts, but then deleted it because I'm not certain of anything.

Now that's a bit harsh to yourself. There is not much regarding the VM we are truly certain of. I think it is good to discuss ideas and observations, even if they turn out to be wrong. There's a lot to learn especially from that.

When I started working on the faces, I was convinced of a strong correlation to scribal hands but as it looks now, things are more complicated.

I generally agree with your evolutionary time-line of faces, but I struggle to explain the ups and downs in quality (which is also found in plants). The round-faced early Zodiac figures and the single root face in Pharma are very well executed and of good quality. The early Zodiac nymphs come in a variety of dynamic poses while the later ones are more rigid and often poorly drawn. Why is there such a decline throughout the zodiac? An exception appears to be the Sagittarius crossbowman which is also in early zodiac style with broader lines than the large ugly and skewed nymphs that accompany him. The style does not look congruent.

I had estimated the hand#1 4-figure diagram in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to be among the earliest drawing attempt of figures. Though the persons are large, the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. artwork is heinous even for VM standards. The hand#2 4-figure diagram of f85r2 with the persons painted blue is of much better quality, closer to early zodiac.

It can be argued that the artist got tired of drawing all the zodiac nymphs or that some pages were considered more important than others but is the bad artwork really sloppiness or lack of skill? I can't say. but I think we must consider that the VM was drawn in several layers and not all elements on a page were necessarily added at the same time.

One observation I made - if we assume an evolution from A to B plants and from early to late zodiac, we notice a trend from round organic to more rigid stylized drawings. Both in nymphs or plants. While unusual and counter-intuitive, this may be a development of the artist's own unique style that might as well be a fashion. Herbals also show a reductionist trend from the highly realistic works of late antiquity to the schematic and simple plants drawings in many late medieval works. Something like the transition from the neoclassicist photo-realism of late 19th century paintings to more abstract modern art.

I think the marginalia figures are extremely interesting. I agree that there is a strong similarity both in writing and imagery on the bifolio You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - f66r. Lots of rare singly glyphs and quite badly drawn figures. It's not clear if the figure (as on the last page) is really associated to the german-gibberish text but if so, it would mean it was made at the same time as the VM.

Things to work on:
compare the artwork across bifolia
compare quality of text with quality of drawings on each page

(06-06-2025, 01:28 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The scanned images may give casual viewers a false sense of scale.  The height of each page is actually ~23.5 cm.  Thus the drawings are smaller than one may think, and the traces are quite thin -- 0.1 mm or so on the drawings, a bit more on the text.   The face of a typical nymph is only ~3mm wide and ~5 mm tall.  Could you draw consistent faces of that size?  With a quill pen, on a rough vellum?

That's true but the style often is remarkably consistent within pages or topic, independent from size. That is what I have posted above! Interestingly face quality also is not really associated to size. There are badly drawn large and well drawn small faces.

In Koen's Post #5 for the early Zodiac, there is a clear 'S'-shaped line that was drawn to define the nose and the distal eyebrow. The later Zodiac does contain examples of a sharper style as part of a mixture with the previous facial representations - a higher percentage of dark ink usage. The balance seems to shift at VMs Libra.

The 'S'-shaped line clearly reappears in the first face of the "four figure diagrams" and it is reversed in the two images in the second row who are facing to the left. It is a technique that is quite consistent in the VMs faces.

For comparison, here is a Lauber illustration

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This does not look the same to me.

There may be a bit more similarity in a few illustrations from The Book of the Queen, take the fellow on the far left, but wdIk?

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(06-06-2025, 02:53 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It can be argued that the artist got tired of drawing all the zodiac nymphs or that some pages were considered more important than others but is the bad artwork really sloppiness or lack of skill? I can't say. but I think we must consider that the VM was drawn in several layers and not all elements on a page were necessarily added at the same time.

This I think is a key point. I couldn't see much rebuttal to the idea that Q13 nymphs are more "artistic" than the zodiac nymphs on the whole, but it doesn't necessarily mean it was someone else. The start of the zodiac seems to have more care taken to a point than after that point, it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest the "artist" just got tired/bored of doing nymphs and maybe they started doing them in bulk, doing 30 noses in a circle then 30 legs might break up the monotony and quicker ways of doing things developed, such as dots for eyes etc.

(06-06-2025, 02:53 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The round-faced early Zodiac figures and the single root face in Pharma are very well executed and of good quality. The early Zodiac nymphs come in a variety of dynamic poses while the later ones are more rigid and often poorly drawn. Why is there such a decline throughout the zodiac?

My guess is that this is due to a general decline in the quality of the zodiac illustrations.
This can be observed in several different aspects. I had never looked to closely at the nymphs' faces,
except that one time when I needed a particularly ugly one for a talk. I found it towards the end.

The first sign uses a wider piece of parchment, such that the full height of the page could be used to fit in a large circle. This was not done for the next two signs, where much smaller circles were used. But these were split in two pieces each. Possibly, this was just for quality reasons.
However, this was dropped, and for the remainder the full circles were squeezed in the smaller width.

Painting is only used in the beginning.

Equally spreading out the nymphs gets worse towards the end.

Is this a sign of loss of interest? Increased haste? 

The circular designs are all from hand 4, and these may have been the last ones. 
(Hard to say if the Rosettes page was done before or after).