The Voynich Ninja

(11-09-2018, 10:24 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I've been calling it a wedding scene just to give it a name, but it became clear to me that many illustrators were themselves confused about what was supposed to be going on.

It is likely that the exact significance of the scene didn't matter for the person who drew it in the VM. I'm just hoping we'll be able to find out with more precision where exactly the image came from.

I agree that the specific meaning (if any) is not terribly relevant: we know that the two male twins were first transformed into Adam and Eve and later in courtly lovers. More common lovers' postures appear in other zodiac cycles, but we are lucky the VMS includes something as rare as the "double hand-shake" you noticed and investigated.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. seems relevant to the subject. Among the images they present, possibly the most interesting is the one from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, Hagenau, Diebold Lauber, 1443‒1446). It fits well with one of the lines of investigation you have opened. If google translate gets it right, the posture (which is just somehow close to a double-handshake, at best) "symbolizes the reciprocity of [the lovers'] bond". This meaning agrees with the double exchange of rings in the French manuscript, but it doesn't seem too appropriate for the paragraph of the De Amore illustrated by the engraving.

(11-09-2018, 10:24 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If I'm not mistaken, your mid-14th century French example is the earliest one found of a proper crossed arms image. In the VM the arms are still crossed, but in Alsace they became uncrossed. However, in the Alsatian examples the style, colors, clothing and details are close to the VM.

It seems unlikely that the VM illustrator re-crossed the arms. Hmm..

I agree. The French Machaut illustration pre-dates the Augsburg "De Amore" engraving by about 130 years: unless their similarity is coincidental (and I don't think it is) there must be evidence of the transmission of this visual motif through time and space.

According to the snippets I can read of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by K. Andersen-Wyman, "most of the extant manuscripts are fifteenth century and German." It is possible that some of them are illustrated and that the 1482 engraving by Anton Sorg derives from a German manuscript, but the only Capellanus ms I have found so far (the Italian BAV Barb. Lat. 4086 mentioned above) isn't.

So (if I may fantasize for a bit) it could be that we are looking at a source at a rather precise intersection. It was used by Lauber and the VM, but Lauber got the arms uncrossed. The fact that he does have some awkward half-crossing going on does suggest that his images derive from crossed arms as well. Additionally, I've written about more indications that Lauber and the VM Zodiac have a shared ancestry (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).

Simultaneously there's a line of proper crossed arms imagery going from mid-14th century Paris to late 15th century Augsburg. And we have.. two or three dots in between? One of them is the VM.

The Normandy/Paris and Augsburg-region clusters also show up prominently when one does a combination-search for leg-tail Leo+crayfish Cancer+no-figure Libra.

This specific search seems to entirely exclude England and the Italian states. There is one that may be from Lombardy near the Veneto, but the origin is not certain, and one that is even less certain thought to be from Provençe (but some historians think maybe Paris).

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I have tried hard to find examples from Spain, southern Italy, and eastern Europe that might fit into this combination-search, I didn't want to overlook anything, but the Spanish ones are mostly traditional classical styles (and frequently use a crab rather than crayfish). There are a couple with crayfish from St. Maria Rivipulli (NE Spain) and Catalonia, but the Libra scales are held by a classical figure. Another from Catalonia has a no-figure Libra, but Cancer is a crab. The Spanish zodiacs rarely have leg-tail lions (there is an 11th-century leg-tail basilica frieze in Léon but some of the tiles are later replacements). England also leaned toward using a crab.


It becomes clear after doing a number of these maps and combination searches for zodiac imagery that there was a great deal of cross-pollination between Paris and central Europe. I think this may be because there was quite a bit of communication between scholars who attended the University of Paris and the University of Heidelberg (and the University of Heidelberg, in turn, was in regular communication with Munich and Prague) and scholars were more likely to visit libraries and carry around books.

With respect to the crayfish, I see that Nick already recommended you to get into contact with Ulrike Spyra, a recommendation that I also just wanted to pass on to you. She writes quite a bit about the lobster/crayfish ("Krebs") in the various copies of Megenberg's Buch der Natur.
She picks up on the fact that there are one or two in which the lobster has six legs instead of eight, and that they are unnaturally red (Augsburg and Würzburg copies), but not on the incorrect placing of them.

See:
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It seems that the Frankfurt crayfish has the same problem, while the Voynich ones do not. (Depends on how one is supposed to count the legs).

There seems to be significant literature on the possible composition of Lauber's workshop, the number of different artists and the examples they may have used.

There seems to be significant literature on the possible composition of Lauber's workshop, the number of different artists and the examples they may have used.



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I'm on it, I'll let you guys know as soon as she replies.

Many alchemical emblems and illustrations contain a pair of a man and a woman (often, a King and a Queen) with crossed arms, crossed flowers or branches. Of course, it symbolises Alchemical Wedding. Majority of those depictions appears in alchemical treatises from beginning of the XVI century. 
I was very interested in finding of earlier sources and I finally found one of them, it is dated by 2nd half of the XV century. Not perfect date, but it is something.
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Miscellaneous treatises on alchemy, including John Lydgate's 'The Churl and the Bird' (the latter imperfect at the beginning) 
Origin: England
Date: 2nd half of the 15th century 
Language: English and Latin
Unfortunately, now the object of our interest (crossed arms) is not clearly visible, but the same scene was copied in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and was included in the printed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Elias Ashmole - 1652). Look below.
It is interesting that alchemists used a retort which they called "Double Pelican" or "Gemini". These retorts really have "crossed arms". It was used for circular distillation.
Liber de arte dist. de simpl. 1500. „Distillation“ by circulation. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Unfortunately, I didn't find the earlier example, but I keep searching.

Nice find, Searcher. It's likely a side branch of what we're looking for, but it does further fill in our picture of the motif.

One tendency in the true crossed arms images is that symbolic figures are naked while courtly love scenes are clothed. This is where the VM Gemini really dwell on the wrong side of the fence.

Whenever I see a large rounded pair of distillation jars, it reminds me of the VMS giant green balloon shapes.

Could the courting imagery and astrological Gemini have been conflated because they were on the same page?

Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB), Cod. 3085 (1475)

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