The Voynich Ninja

Maybe she's athletic and it's her leg. People with gymnastic talent can stand with one foot above their head.

(12-09-2026, 03:47 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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.

I will add that hands are a detail that notoriously requires some skill to be drawn accurately.
Opicinus details from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

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(12-09-2026, 03:47 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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. ...

I agree with most of your analysis. But I would not dismiss item 1.

Starting from the Aries pages I see that the Scribe's nymphs were terribly crude at first, but he gradually learned to draw more decent ones over the next half a dozen pages.   And You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. looks like it was drawn even before Aries.

Quote:And I'd say we can also eliminate (2) "The drawing was done in a hurry or with disinterest, regardless of the artist's skill level. Doodle, quick sketch, rushed job..." the individualizing details on the barrels and clothes suggest that this wasn't a rushed or disinterested job

I agree.  I would not call any page a "doodle, sketch, rushed job", even if many details look that way.  My guess is that each page took him about one hour for the text and about one hour for the illustrations.

But I do see signs that the Scribe became somewhat sloppier as he progressed along the Zodiac, even while he learned to draw better nymphs. And he seems to have been more careful on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. than on all the other Herbal pages.  

Thus I would say that, after spending extra care on the first pages of each section, he relaxed a bit, but maintained a consistent level of care from then on.

As for the barrels and clothes, my theory is that he drew them in order to hide the awful job he did on the first few nymphs.  Or just to avoid having to draw those parts.

Quote:3) The viewer is not used to the artistic norms and customs of the artist's culture or time period.

To me it is clear that the Scribe did not know the artistic "language" of the time.  On the "Spiral Galaxy" page, for instance, he seems to have misunderstood  the cloud-band of the original drawing as the edge of a pool or plate.

Thus I currently imagine the Scribe as a young uneducated guy who had some writing experience -- but on paper, not on vellum, and for purposes where legibility was much more important than beauty.    Before he took on this job, he probably had not seen anything like those books that the copied  -- Oresme, Taccola, Balneis, etc.  

And he probably was not being paid much.

He may even have been the Author's teenage nephew, who had a nice handwriting and agreed to do the job for only a couple of bucks per page...

Quote: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.  ... 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.

But keep in mind that those nymphs are very small, about 20 mm tall.  It  is very hard to draw an anatomically correct human body at that scale, without first sketching it in pencil (a trick that Scribe obviously did not know).  Trained artists like Leonardo (or even Taccola) could do it.  A small-town accountant or lawyer probably could not.

All the best, --stolfi

(13-09-2026, 01:00 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A small-town accountant or lawyer probably could not.

Do we have any examples at all, of regular townsfolk or non-scribes (lawyer etc) penning an entire manuscript with illustrations?

(13-09-2026, 01:00 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.To me it is clear that the Scribe did not know the artistic "language" of the time.

I would say it goes way beyond this in an eerie way. The artist lacked common sense, such as the fundamental basics of plant anatomy. This resulted in stem loops root tables, stacked flowers and strange leaf appendages. No child no matter how small draws plants like this. One might think this is just the author's fantasy, maybe it is in some cases, but to me it again looks like a fatal misinterpretation of source material. Look at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for example. The source for these plants was probably a highly naturalistic Dioscorides copy in which the stems just crossed each other. The author turned this into loops.
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In contrast, one of the most realistic plants in the VM is the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 'Viola', a common weed the artist likely drew from a limp live (ripped out) or pressed specimen. To me it looks like the author simply had no general idea what plants looked like IRL, so he made fatal flaws when interpreting drawings. I'll leave the 'why' to your imagination but I stand by my point that whoever made the VM imagery was not a normal person living a normal life. What we can say is that this person must have had access to an extraordinary collection of imagery.

(13-09-2026, 01:00 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But keep in mind that those nymphs are very small, about 20 mm tall.  It  is very hard to draw an anatomically correct human body at that scale, without first sketching it in pencil (a trick that Scribe obviously did not know).  Trained artists like Leonardo (or even Taccola) could do it.  A small-town accountant or lawyer probably could not.

One of the things I gradually realized is that things like very basic skeletal accuracy are a sign of skill, and they sit much lower on the ladder than you might think. Even in lower quality manuscripts, arms connect to shoulders, elbows work well and bulls' hind legs bend correctly.

Just for myself, I found it liberating to be able to say "this detail is probably the result of bad drawing" rather than having to find a cultural or compositional explanation for everything.

This does in no way imply that I think the drawings are meaningless. But both things can coexist: a poor artist trying to communicate something through drawings. But that something is not standard, even if we normalize for the effect of poor technique.

As for the background of the artist, one potential (of several) ideas I like is that he may have travelled as a student, as many did. When I was knee-deep in Taccola research, one of the things I learned is that he had a lot of contact with the students of the university in Siena. German (speaking) students were the largest groups of foreigners here, those who lived "above the mountains". And one of the hypotheses for the manuscript with the VM parallels is that it may have been available to students. (This is based on my recollection of an article I read at the time).

A common thread among several works we have marked as potentially relevant is their role in Italian pedagogy and education: De Balneis, La Sfera... In places like Florence, you would encounter these works at some point in the curriculum, especially when pursuing medical studies.

So, coming back to the earlier question, I believe one explanation for a diversity of influences is ironically that the person had (or was having) an education - just not one focused on illumination! I realize this point of view clashes with other popular options, like that the artist lived an isolated life or that they must have suffered from some form of mental issues.

I do not think this is a contradiction. The author obviously had an education. But still struggled with things the most uneducated and illiterate person would resolve easily. The plant quirks are not the result of lack of artistic skill.

(13-09-2026, 08:08 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.To me it looks like the author simply had no general idea what plants looked like IRL, so he made fatal flaws when interpreting drawings. 

What kind of person has no idea what plants look like IRL? This seems to be a very strange person, indeed.

So, have the manuscripts of Paris, Dijon, Hagenau, and Prague all been abandoned?

(13-09-2026, 08:53 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So, have the manuscripts of Paris, Dijon, Hagenau, and Prague all been abandoned?

People move around, certainly between the German-speaking world and Italian centers of learning. I like Alsace and Laufenberg as much as I like northern Italy.