The Voynich Ninja

Hi all,
I'm all new here, so please bear over if this issue has already been brought up a million times -  but a search didn't bring it up as existing, 
so I'll jump in both feet and kindly ask this forum for a heads-up on something that puzzles me.

I came across another book, called "Von dem Gang des Himels(sic) und Sternen" [HuS].
It's a German book from the second half of the 15th century, and freely accessible from the Morgan library.
It struck me, how the astrological illustrations are quite reminiscent of the same in the VM - only of higher quality.
I'm aware there are only so many ways you can illustrate an astrological ram, a lion, and say a set of scales, but the two artists in question share a surprising (to me) number of details.
The same paw is lifted, the same shape of tails, the extended tongue of leo, the sane angle on the "libra" scales, the band of stars connecting the pisces together.
There are so many similar details that, for the untrained eye, it would seem the illustrator of the VM simply made an exact (but hasty) copy of the HUS illustrations.
This may of course be a case of random similarity, or a question of one book inspiring the other.

My problem is, two-fold:
The VM was presumably never published to the broad public, so the author(s) of "Himels und Sternen" would not have access to reading it, thus inspiration would likely be in the 
HuS -> Voynich direction.
And this proposes my problem 2: HuS is of a later date than the VM, which puts a spanner in the timing.

It's a little thing, sir... but it bodders me.

When a medieval artist sat down to add illustrations to a manuscript, he would rarely invent stuff completely; he had a vast tradition to draw from. This is especially true for subjects that are traditional by definition, like astrology.

Finding Zodiac sequences that are most like the one in the VM is a long, complex and ongoing process. One thing we know for certain is that the fashion (dagged sleeves, bagpipe sleeves) was at its peak in the 1400-1430 period, which coincides nicely with the radio carbon dating of the vellum.

Of course, we all hope to find a smoking gun one day, a resemblance so strong that a relation to the VM must be assumed. But even then, we still couldn't necessarily assume direct copying between this MS and the VM, since Zodiac signs always belong to an extended family. So there might be a common ancestor for all we know.

I agree that the Morgan MS and the VM's Zodiac are attached to the same family tree, but at some distance. Gemini, Virgo, Scorpio and Sagittarius are all very different. In cases like Scorpio and Sagittarius, it's even a different basic type.

Link: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Dear Koen,
thank you for your answer. The issue had me confused for a moment.
If I read your interpretation correctly, it seems to suggest that the illustrators of the VM and the Morgan MS both draw upon an already established tradition for illustrating
the western astrological signs with a set of graphical archetypes. 
This would also seem to suggest, the VM author(s) was at least familiar with existing material of this sort, they had gained from looking at other illustrations of the time.

Your manuscript and Voynich are a bit close but not very close.
We may expect that belong the the same region and time period thus the similarities exist.

If you want to have something really close to Voynich you will need:

- Scorpio as kind of lizard, not arachnid
- Sagittarius as a man with crossbow, not a centaur with bow
- Gemini as dressed man and woman
and more.

Have some read here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Funny coincidence, “The Secular Spirit: Life and Art at the End of the Middle Ages”, a 1975 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, included both 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.. In the catalogue, both manuscripts are discussed in the chapter about Science and Technology in the Fifteenth Century by Derek de Solla Price. No parallel is drawn between the two works, but they were clearly seen as belonging to the same broad category of late-medieval scientific manuscripts.