The Voynich Ninja

(11-09-2026, 07:00 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For example Quire 13 (bathing nymphs) seems to take inspiration from

One thing must remain clear, which is that every part of the VM is (to the best of our knowledge!) a novel composition. Over the years, my approach to the manuscript's imagery has changed several times, but I've settled on the way I prefer to look at it. And for unsolicited advice I dispense.

1. Every part of the MS is an original composition (until we find evidence of the contrary)
   
2. The artist was still a child of their time, and I assume they had access to some books.
   
3. The artist was not extremely skilled. 
   

From this follows that we must expect to recognize elements because this person was aware of medieval book culture. Their lack of skill (and confidence?) may have lead to a lot of borrowing. But we must also accept that original meaning and applied meaning may not coincide.

Put bluntly, I think they borrowed forms, poses, sequences.. from the world around them, in part because borrowing makes drawing much easier, but also because everybody does it. But they built something new with these inspirations. (Again, this isn't drastically new: copy shops like Diebold Lauber's recycle poses for different purposes. And there were even model books in circulation. So to some extent, the practice of seeking reference images may have been expected).

What I used to do was: recognize baptism scene in Q13 -> assume the whole page is related to this baptism -> construct a forced narrative. But in retrospect, I think this activates the same biases and mechanisms that lead to decipherment theories.

So the questions I currently find the most interesting is those of the kind you are asking: which influences do we see? Are they equally convincing? What would the implication be for timing and location of the artist, and/or the contents of a library they were able to access? 

These aren't easy questions. For example, half of us may find it plausible that the artist had access to a Balneis copy, while the other half may not even see that much similarity.

That would be all fine and logical... if it were not for the part where they invent an unbreakable cipher that no computer or professional cryptanalyst can even BEGIN to make sense of.

If the illustrations were surrounded by Italian feminist material, or Latin magical invocations, or even Bavarian health remedies, fine. But not THIS. THIS points to a highly advanced, meticulously planned and designed piece of work, with at least 3, possibly 5 collaborators according to LFD. 

Definitely NOT a random occurrence of some dude in rural countryside who one day decided to sketch the finest work of cryptography and composite artistic creation that defies logic 600 years later.

(11-09-2026, 08:33 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

1. Every part of the MS is an original composition (until we find evidence of the contrary)
   
2. The artist was still a child of their time, and I assume they had access to some books.
   
3. The artist was not extremely skilled. 
   

Agree completely for 2 and 3. I would even say "child of their time and place".

As for 1, there is no evidence for it.  On the other hand, there is evidence to the contrary; it is just not generally accepted yet.  So I would say that the prudent choice is to leave that point open.

Quote:Put bluntly, I think they borrowed forms, poses, sequences.. from the world around them, in part because borrowing makes drawing much easier, but also because everybody does it. But they built something new with these inspirations.

That "they" conflates two (or more) totally different persons.  One of them invented an original alphabet (and cipher, if believe that) and had a lot of things to say about various "scientific" subjects, including herbalism and astronomy/astrology.  The other could not divide a circle into four equal parts or score baselines and margins to guide his scribing.

So it is hard to tell which parts of each figure were defined by the first guy, and which parts were improvised by the second one.  Even when we can tentatively identify a figure as being inspired on the Balneis, Taccola, Oresme, a certain German almanac, etc.

Quote:What would the implication be for timing and location of the artist, and/or the contents of a library they were able to access?

Maybe f85r2, the "four ages of man" is the most likely to provide that information?  I understand that Taccola, Oresme, and the Balneis were widely dispersed in Europe. But f85r2 was conjectured to be as a "cousin" of the illustrations of "four seasons" in a certain German almanac.  Would that book have been known outside Germany/Austria/Switzerland?

All the best, --stolfi

(11-09-2026, 10:26 PM)JustAnotherTheory Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That would be all fine and logical... if it were not for the part where they invent an unbreakable cipher that no computer or professional cryptanalyst can even BEGIN to make sense of.

There is no cipher that is even remotely as hard to crack as a language which is not related to any language you know.  All the spooks in the world together would not make a dent in  "deciphering" a text in Sumerian, Etruscan, Prahã, or watever, without either a bilingual text or access to a speaker of the language.

All the nest, --stolfi

Something irks me about these long-standing attempts to quantify the artists' skill. What does "not extremely skilled" even mean? For art historians, the focus is usually on what techniques the artist inherited from his native environment, learned or adopted from elsewhere as time passed, and how these were integrated in their compositions. For instance, one painter's understanding of perspective might be taken as a pared-down version of that found in a "great" painter's works, or it might be interpreted as the adaptation of a new technique to a well-established local style. Any discussion of this kind is bound to become contentious. One reassessment of Giacomino da Ivrea's frescoes claims that he was a technically skilled and versatile artist who painted a wide variety of works in a perfected "simple" style, as demanded by the conservative taste of the local nobility and church. Similarly, a provincial workhop head might adopt an improved perspective or arrangement of figures from a regional center, while another would keep the old perspective and make the figures, or only their faces, more naturalistic. A "skilled" associate is typically implied by an artwork that successfully integrates some of the master's known techniques, whereas others could only create mannerist imitations. In some cases, a member of the workshop would go on to adopt new techniques and approaches to composition, thus becoming a master himself, but it is fairly rare that a work within an artist's circle was grossly inferior to that of the master.

The illustrations in the VM do not strike me as being strongly influenced by the early Renaissance, peak International Gothic, or Giottoesque schools, all of which were prominently reflected in manuscript illumination around the turn of the 15th century. But this observation implies only the absence of a certain style and techniques, and not of "skill" in general. The VM is certainly not a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., nor were the pictures added by a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Many years ago, Ernst Gombrich argued that medieval abstract and semi-abstract art only reached its mature form thanks to the absence of "naturalism". Artists in the Middle Ages could easily draw on ancient true-to-life models if they were interested: Gombrich gave examples of naturalistic drapery on icons and frescoes. But by discarding realism, the medieval artist was free to play with structure and arrangement, shape and color in ways that earlier and later painters could not. Gombrich cited the brightly-colored paintings on stained glass windows as an art form that could only emerge if natural colors were deemphasized. Had they not been invented in the Middle Ages, perhaps we would have had to wait until the turn of the 20th century. I believe the VM is simply drawing on this older visual language. The fact that human figures were copied from elsewhere and given uniform proportions is fully congruent with this approach, rather than being a "skill issue".

Quote:Their lack of skill (and confidence?) may have lead to a lot of borrowing

While some details were faithfully borrowed and others were reworked, can we say that this happened a lot, and that a "better" artist would have copied less? I got the impression that most of the imagery is either original or untraceable. The VM artists were probably not a workshop of miniature copyists, and there is very little that hints at inspiration from a model book (maybe the vessels?). That brings me to another point about skill: it is almost unheard of that an artist was skilled at composition and bad at drawing. In Ed's Sienese manuscript, this very discrepancy was taken as evidence that a better artist's illustrations had been copied. Nonetheless, our painter was still praised for the consistent style of his stripped-down miniatures, which were likened to modern comic strips. I personally find the drawings in the VM quite effective, but here's a more practical question: between the painter of the Rosettes, the mystic Opicinus de Canistris, and the artist-monk of Gombrich's calendar (12th c.), who was the most skilled?

From the Story of Art:

(12-09-2026, 01:37 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is no cipher that is even remotely as hard to crack as a language which is not related to any language you know.

What's the probability that the VMS text is a completely unknown, never before encountered, European natural human language? I would say close to 0.

(12-09-2026, 12:01 PM)JustAnotherTheory Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(12-09-2026, 01:37 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is no cipher that is even remotely as hard to crack as a language which is not related to any language you know.

What's the probability that the VMS text is a completely unknown, never before encountered, European natural human language? I would say close to 0.

Right. But that’s not what Jorge meant (as I understand). Decoding the language is much more difficult than deciphering a cipher.
Moreover, even if we know the language but not the writing system, the task does not become any easier. Example: rongo-rongo (if this is a language, then most likely Rapa Nui. What does this give us?)

(12-09-2026, 12:01 PM)JustAnotherTheory Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(12-09-2026, 01:37 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is no cipher that is even remotely as hard to crack as a language which is not related to any language you know.

What's the probability that the VMS text is a completely unknown, never before encountered, European natural human language?

I wrote "not related to any language YOU know".  If you don't know any Semitic language, you can intensely analyze an Arabic or Hebrew text for 50 years, with all the math and computer tools you have, and you will not get a single word out of it.

All the best, --stolfi

Pierre, just a year or two ago, I would have written the same as you. But I've had to change my mind. At least part of the reasons why the images look the way they do is that the artist(s) was not very skilled. 

There are four reasons I can think of why a drawing may look "bad" to a modern, Western viewer:

1) The artist is not good. By this we mean: untrained, unpracticed, unskilled. Someone who is not good at drawing, for whatever reason. Someone who could not produce a much better drawing even if they spent some more time on it. 
2) The drawing was done in a hurry or with disinterest, regardless of the artist's skill level. Doodle, quick sketch, rushed job...
3) The viewer is not used to the artistic norms and customs of the artist's culture or time period. There's something "ugly" about early medieval art, for example, but blaming this entirely on unskilled artists would miss the point. As children of Renaissance values, one of the things we prize in art is a certain realism, so when we see art with different priorities, it may be jarring.
4) The artist knowingly goes against current norms and expectations. A lot of contemporary art is not easy on the eyes and distorts forms, but that's the point.

It has always seemed logical to me that the VM art falls in category 2 and 3. There's a bit of a rushed feeling, especially when a lot of nymphs have to be drawn, which gets worse as the Zodiac series progresses. And people who call it ugly may be judging it by the wrong standards.

With a drawing of a plant we don't realize, we can't judge the drawing quality. But with animals and people, this can be done more confidently. The biggest red flag is that poses and perspectives become more tortured as they deviate from the cookie-cutter forms. And even on pages where poses should be consistent and the artist clearly spent more effort, there are big differences in how successfully human anatomy and proportions are represented. 

This is just the first area I happened to zoom in on to find an example. Ask: where are the elbows? How long is each part of the arm? Does the arm come from the shoulder or the belly? The answers are different every time.

[attachment=17605]

We can eliminate (3): clearly the artist does not have a cultural or stylistic preference to draw arms like rubber tubes, because we see just as many sharp elbows. It's all inconsistent. And I'd say we can also eliminate (2) here: the individualizing details on the barrels and clothes suggest that this wasn't a rushed or disinterested job. 

Importantly, drawing a plausible basic anatomical frame is a very low bar. You will notice that this is usually done well, with the right amounts of bends connected to roughly the right place. Therefore, I would say the artist wasn't very skilled, and only trained to a certain degree. Enough to work with writing and drawing utensils, but not (yet) enough to pose arms and legs.

Maybe the arms mean something? The poses in quire 13 seem to mean something, why not here? Or I suppose it could all be random and therefore not much care was taken.

Or maybe, like the red one at the bottom, the hair is supposed to be seen as covering the shoulder toward the front, so they didn't paint there, and her outfit is really meant to be more like the batwing style of Sagittarius.