The Voynich Ninja

I wonder if the nymphs on top of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. could be the constellations of Cepheus, Cassiopeia and Andromeda. They were all placed in the sky as a punishment: Cepheus as a fish, Cassiopeia chained to her throne with her arms spread, and Andromeda chained to a rock in the waves.

Later MSS depict them differently, but yesterday by coincidence I came across Revised Aratus Latinus, which depicts them in a way that reminded me of these nymphs. Especially the correspondence between the middle nymph and Cassiopeia is striking. The nymph to her right, which should be Andromeda, is also standing in wavy water.





DATE
809
LOCATION
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France → Nouv. acq. lat. 1614, fol. 86v-87r
TEXT/BOOK/DOCUMENT
Revised Aratus Latinus

A very interesting depiction can be seen here as well, in another version of this text:  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

What is interesting, is that this latter manuscript does something very Voynich-like: it gives the figures a small base to stand on, indicating their environment. Cetus and Andromeda get water, Cassiopeia gets a palace platform.

I'm not an expert in astrological matters so I wonder if it could be possible.

Cassiopeia has been mentioned in connection with the central nymph on this page by several people.
The fact that the nymph seems to be seated is the main pointer.
Cepheus as a female nymph seems problematic.

There's a nice picture of Cepheus in the (by now) well-known German MS Tübingen MD 2:

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where his garb seems to reflect the habits of the place and time of the MS rather than his Ethiopian origin.
Or maybe that's what they thought he would look like......

Is it possible that the VM for some reason defaults to female for constellations? I've run into this problem before. As soon as a nymph represents a "male" constellation, it still gets a female body.

If you compare the Cetus and Andromeda (left and right) from the MS I show here, there's not that much to tell their gender apart either. The weird thing in the VM is that it moves to a female (i.e. "marked") form rather than a neutral one.

I'll just throw this in as an additional possibility about this image:
I find this illustration has parallels in the study on the Livre d'Ethiques I linked to in my post about poses, which you can read You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .
Specifically I see a parallel between the structure of this image and that of the iconography depicted in figures 12A & 14:
At the center there is Virtue with her arms extended to both sides. On either side are the Vices: Excess and Default. Closer to her are the personifications of Good Will and Knowledge.
In the Voynich there are five labels also. It could be interpreted as Virtue in the Center, Default on the left, Excess on the right (note that the left nymph stands in a rather simple tub compared to the right nymph, which stands in a more ornate one).
Immediately to the left and right of the central figure there are two labeled tube ends: these could be Good Will and Knowledge.

Following MarcoP's remark about the apparent polarity between shed [font=Arial]& [font=Eva]ched[font=Arial], I add that a similar phenomenon seems to be at work in this image:[/font][/font][/font]
On the left is a label containing shed, while on the right we have a label containing ched.
So whatever is going on in this image may involve two opposite notions and a central medium, which fits nicely with the idea that the central figure may embody Virtue and the side ones Excess/Default, or some similar composition.

(08-05-2016, 10:06 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Cepheus as a female nymph seems problematic.

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There are many gender-neutral depictions, like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., which reminds me a lot of Voynich nymphs. I don't see why a later copyist couldn't reinterpret this as a woman. As a bonus, we get an awesome sheep-robot scorpio.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., especially Andromeda.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Perseus looks much more manly than Cepheus and subsequent owners seem to have disagreed about Andromeda.


Now You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I find very interesting. Not because of Cepheus, but because of Hercules. Look at his genitals. Unless I'm really mistaken, he's been made female, just like I think happened to some Voynich constellations. Why is that? Mid 15th century German manuscript, by the way

(And the "lion skin" (s)he's using as a shield is the best thing I've seen in any manuscript ever.)

In the same manuscript, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. got a similar treatment. What is that all about?

Just to briefly come back to the point of constellation sex changes. This seems especially frequent in works derived from the Roman tradition. Their constellations were often drawn naked but without visible genitals, and to make it worse, some of their artists had the habit of drawing the male chest with two "circles" on it, making the whole thing quite androgynous and a nightmare for copyists. It wasn't all man-to-woman though. Cod. Sang. 250 has a rather interesting Virgo, who looks just like - nay, I shan't say.

(08-05-2016, 04:42 PM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Following MarcoP's remark about the apparent polarity between shed [font=Arial]& [font=Eva]ched[font=Arial], I add that a similar phenomenon seems to be at work in this image:[/font][/font][/font]
On the left is a label containing shed, while on the right we have a label containing ched.
So whatever is going on in this image may involve two opposite notions and a central medium, which fits nicely with the idea that the central figure may embody Virtue and the side ones Excess/Default, or some similar composition.

Which posting are your talking about pls ?

Davidsch,
it's this one:
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In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Koen discussed again the possible relation between the nymph at center-top of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and illustrations of the Cassiopeia constellation.
The important addition to his argument is the mention of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. downloadable from the site of Kristen Lippincott.

At the end of the document, Lippincott presents a few medieval images that illustrate different subjects with images that appear to be derived from Cassiopeia (three stained glasses illustrating St.Mary and a 1440ca painting illustrating a scene from the lives of Saints Cosmas and Damian).
My impression is that this VMS detail is as close to some constellation illustrations as the examples discussed by Lippincott. The fact that such an eminent art historian considers similar parallels relevant seems to me to confirm Koen's observation.

While I am grateful to Koen for repeatedly mentioning this parallel, my personal opinion is that the Voynich nymph was not meant to represent Cassiopeia, but I do agree that the image was likely directly or indirectly inspired by an illustration of Cassiopeia.
[attachment=1763]

I disagree with Koen when he writes that the Voynich illustrator "bypasses European developments altogether and somehow taps into different sources which have retained more of their authenticity" (by "authentic" he means directly derived from classical images). After examining Lippincott's collection, the Voynich image seems to me closer to medieval illustrations than to those that appear to be more classical.

In particular, the Voynich illustration represents a naked woman, in a perfectly frontal view, sitting on a simple parallelepiped; her arms are outstretched and her posture is symmetrical, but for the face that is slightly turned to her right; she wears a veil and a headdress that Koen seems to interpret as a diadem (this is how he sees the similar garment of the nymph on the right) and I interpret as You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The woman seats on what Koen appropriately describes as "a simple box" (an undecorated parallelepiped).

The two early images of the constellation discussed by Koen (from the Farnese Globe and the Leiden Aratea) are consistent with the W-shape of the actual astronomical constellation: they present the legs of the figure in profile, matching the triangular arrangement of Cassiopeia stars gamma, delta, epsilon. At p.10, Lippincott discusses that Aratus apparently only considered the “lower” part of the W, three segments arranged as vertical, horizontal, vertical corresponding to stars alpha, gamma, delta, epsilon (2, 4, 5, 6 in Ptolemy’s Almagest): these segments actually can be matched to the profile of a sitting figure. The segment between alpha and beta (2 and 12) is part of the modern “W” shape, but was not included in the three-segment zig-zag described by Aratus. Since star beta (Ptolemy's n.12) is place on the backseat of the throne, it seems that the most authentically Ptolemaic illustrations must feature a backseat.
[attachment=1765]

Cassiopeia in the Kugel Globe (Lippincott p.23) is closer to the pose of Voynich nymph. The legs are crossed and seen in three-quarters (similarly to the Leiden ms) but the arms are completely outstretched and seen frontally.

The legs seen in profile (or three-quarters) are necessary for the image to fit the arrangement discussed by Ptolemy and Aratus, but (as far as I know) the full-frontal view could also have appeared in classical astrological works. Anyway, my point here is that all these poses are well documented in medieval images: there is no evidence for a direct derivation from an ancient model.

I think BAV Vat Reg Lat 309 (IX Century) Lippincott p.43 provides a good match for the VMS illustration: the figure is seen frontally, with her head slightly turned; she is veiled and seats on a "simple box". The inconsistent perspective is particularly noteworthy: as in the VMS, the body of the woman is seen from the front, but the "throne" is seen in three-quarters.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Milan 1447) Lippincott p.74 has a half-naked woman with a turban-like Quattrocento headdress. Her posture is similar to that of the nymph, but her throne is a complex gothic structure.

Cambrai ms 933 (Padua 1460) Lippincott p.54 has a completely naked woman sitting on a "simple box".

On the basis of Lippincott's collection, I think that the Voynich illustration derives from a medieval image (possibly similar to that in Vat Reg Lat 309) that was transformed into something close to other images produced in the XV Century (e.g. the Milanese and Paduan manuscripts).
Of course, several of the alterations must correspond to the intent of the illustration and the unknown meaning of the pipes connecting the nymphs and the associated labels. Actually, while it is interesting to see that the detail of the central nymph may fit in a specific visual tradition, the true originality of this composition and of Quire 13 in general is in the almost exclusive presence of naked women and the pipes and "fluids" that accompany them. I see no reason to think that the overall illustration is more related with astronomy or astrology than the Cassiopeia-like illustrations of St.Mary (Lippincott p.113).