The Voynich Ninja

(26-09-2018, 09:23 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Spot the main difference!


Now to get back to the pair, I think the man's short statue is due to botched perspective.

You mean the tiles?

Yes, foreshortened by perspective makes sense, a bit like taking a selfie from above to enhance the best features.
Plus that low slung belt. Not to minimise JKP's points, though.

Jkp, you are right that the women are often allegories. In the French works, they are often courtly values like Hope. The same is true for this image, and it did cross my mind that she might ne taller because of her allegorical nature.

However, I still don't understand why it's always (in the VM as well!) as if the man were dangling in mid air. They are not placed on the same level in the field. 

So wouldn't it rather be that the man is put in the background? This could be symbolical and therefore tie in to your points, but it would explain short leg syndrome as well.

Don: not the tiles, something more bizarre.

In M.245, it does look like he has been set back, and that it might be a way to show perspective, but in the two images above it, the man's feet are as close to the viewer as the hem of her dress, so the difference in stature seems quite apparent.

Main difference: it's got to be the haircut in the back.

(27-09-2018, 07:11 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Main difference: it's got to be the haircut in the back.

Yes! I found it bizarre that they'd replicate the tiniest detail in the new cut but just change one woman's headdress. They must have found it really ugly.

This won't help us anything, but I'd like to understand the crossed arms pose. Could this be the symbolism behind crossing the arms? As if they are bound? Like symbolizing a love-bond between both partners? This does not require any formal ceremony, but might just communicate to the viewer that the lovers' lives are now intertwined. 

Obviously in this picture the woman is really captured and bound with ropes, but familiarity with this pose might facilitait the symbolical meaning of a love bond.



From You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Giovanni Boccaccio,De Claris mulieribus, traduction anonyme en français Livre des femmes nobles et renommees
[font=roboto_condensed]1403[/font]

A pair of lovers and.....

[attachment=2408]

(though the style is not close)

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Edit: so this is the myth of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. In short, Cephalus returns unexpectedly and pretending to be someone else, tries to seduce his own wife. Later in the story, he accidentally kills his own wife while hunting in the forest. This explains: pair of lovers, single woman in forest, single hunter.

Here is the same scene from a different MS: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.


And a woodcut: Ulm, 1473; You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[attachment=2409]

And from the same MS as above (Library of Congress Incun. 1473 .B7 (1473))

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[attachment=2411]

(I know, still far off)

I am wondering how much of this pose can sometimes be attributed simply to defensive body language?

I've written a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where I try to track other illustrated Capellanus MSS. It was a lot of work for zero results, unfortunately. The only thing I found was that two years later one Georg Stuchs also used Hartlieb's prints, basically a re-issue of the same book with a different printer's name. I think it might even have been the same block. Stuchs bottom, Hartlieb top.



I have not been able to find any other illustrated works, whether in Latin or vernacular, of Capellanus' De Amore.