The Voynich Ninja

While researching my last post, I was reminded of this thread by this image of Ovid holding an oversized ring. As an added bonus, there's a cloud-band under him



The source was given as: "Ovid as imagined in the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493." Any ideas why he was drawn like this?

Ovid's elegies are all about lust, love, and marriage (and explicitly mentions rings) and the cycle of the stories is also circular, so that may be why they chose a ring to represent Ovid.

The clouds I don't know. He was a real person rather than a deity or semi-deity. Although I suppose if he were looking out from heaven he might be depicted above the clouds.

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Wait a minute... are you sure those are clouds and not waves?

Ovid was banished to the Black Sea for some kind of indiscretion that angered the Roman emperor. Those might be waves. I can't think of a reason (other than the fact that he was long-dead by medieval times) that they would put him in clouds but waves would make sense. The two things for which he was best-known are the love elegies and being sent to the Black Sea.

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(27-03-2016, 02:41 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Caruncle, beak and scales speak against a wolf. One thing is certain though - we can exclude animals with hooves.

I'm not sure we can exclude animals with hooves.

Both Taurus and Aries have rounded hooves that are quite pawlike. All the animals in the VMS tend toward softer rounder paws and hooves than most medieval beasties. In many manuscripts hooves are quite sharp and prominent.

Oh yeah, those are definitely waves. I think you're right about everything, though I always thought Ovid was mostly known for his Metamorphoses. 

For the record, I don't think this has much to do with the VM image, though it might be a good example of oversized rings as symbols.

(12-04-2016, 09:55 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Oh yeah, those are definitely waves. I think you're right about everything, though I always thought Ovid was mostly known for his Metamorphoses. 

For the record, I don't think this has much to do with the VM image, though it might be a good example of oversized rings as symbols.

In the literary sense, he is known for his Metamorphoses, but from a popular standpoint, in his day, I get the impression the love elegies were the ones that caught the public's fancy.


It's like the difference between a classic movie and a popular movie.

(12-04-2016, 08:54 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.While researching my last post, I was reminded of this thread by this image of Ovid holding an oversized ring. As an added bonus, there's a cloud-band under him

If you browse the book, you will see that below most portraits there is a “frame” of some kind. They can be interpreted as waves, leaves, nebuly lines. I doubt these frames have a specific meaning. 

The Nuremberg Chronicle arbitrarily reuses several times the same engravings, changing the labels. The image of Ovid was conceived to illustrate You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:



The ring is mentioned in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
[Prometheus] was the first to strike fire from rock; and he originated the custom of wearing a ring (but of iron) on the fourth finger, in honor of the arteries of the heart. 

The passage about “the arteries of the heart” is explained in p.7 You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
[Prometheus] was the first to wear a ring made of iron as a sign of love. … He decided that the ring should be worn on the finger in which there is a vein that runs up to the heart.

In conclusion, also in this case the ring is a symbol of the bounds of love.

Hmmm... weird that the Promethean ring should be remembered as a sign of love!

In the myth, Prometheus' ring was something that he made for himself after his ordeal of being chained to the rock and have his liver regularly pecked at by an eagle.
Zeus, who had finally agreed to grant him his freedom after an intervention by Hercules, nonetheless ordered him to wear a permanent reminder of his torture: he made the ring out of a link in his chain, and adorned it with a fragment of the rock he had been chained to.

I don't know where the fourth finger/heart/artery thing came out of: perhaps a distortion due to the medieval courtly love fad?

Definitely not clouds, probably not waves. How about some scrolling acanthus leaves?

(13-04-2016, 05:36 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Definitely not clouds, probably not waves. How about some scrolling acanthus leaves?

I think Marco is right in that it's mostly decorative, like a picture frame. It probably doesn't really matter, while you'd think the oversized ring does. Maybe they considered beforehand which image would fit with a number of persons and just went from there.

(13-04-2016, 11:58 AM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I don't know where the fourth finger/heart/artery thing came out of: perhaps a distortion due to the medieval courtly love fad?

The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I previously linked ("A Ring on the Little Finger: Andreas Capellanus and Medieval Chiromancy", Stefano Rapisarda, 2006) talks of the origin of this idea at p.5. The paper quotes Macrobius (early 5th century):

A discussion of that very point [i.e. which hand and which finger a ring should be worn] had come to us from Egypt, and I was in doubt for a while whether to call it just an idle tale or a true explanation. But later, after consulting some books on anatomy, I discovered the truth; that there is a certain nerve which has its origin in the heart and runs from there to the finger next to the little finger of the left hand...; and that this is the reason why it seemed good to the men of old to encircle that finger with a ring, as though to honour it with a crown.

Thanks Marco P, that is interesting to know! Should have read the paper more closely    ...

Anyway, I just wanted to emphasize that the iconography I was hoping to explore here is finding ladies,  not gentlemen, clutching rings and not holding them daintily between two fingers, but brandished in a fist as they are in the Voynich.

There are numerous examples of medieval illustrations of men holding oversized rings, notably in heraldic crests from Spain and Portugal, but I did not include them because they are men.
Another incidence is the illustration of jewelry-making, such as here in an Italian c.1465 version of Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis (Victoria & Albert Museum, Msl/1896/1504): (bottom right)



But to me, this is irrelevant as well...