The Voynich Ninja

In the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., I posted this image of a nymph on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. who appears to be holding a rounded beige object under her arm:



Then Koen pointed out that it might not necessarily be an attempt at depicting an object, but just something weird with the coloring, since we can find in the same pool a nymph where the hollow is filled in with green and another where it is left blank:



Now while filling the hollow in with green makes sense, and leaving it blank can be attributed to sloppiness, filling it in with beige is clearly a deliberate choice.  In any case, this got me looking at "arm hollows" a bit more closely.  Oddly enough, it's clear that the illustrator was paying careful attention to exactly what is depicted within these spaces.

Take a look at this pair of nymphs from f81r:



The front lock of hair on the nymph standing in the back is strange in that it's abnormally long and is extended out at a large angle from the top of her head.  And as we can see, the lock of hair ends up in the arm hollow of the nymph directly in front.  The illustrator must have drawn the hair this way because it was important that the hair be shown within the arm hollow.

Now look at this pair of nymphs from f75r:



This time it's a nymph's leg that's abnormally elongated and again it winds up the arm hollow of the nymph in front.  It seems like this must have been deliberate.

Now if we turn to the pages of the Zodiac section where the nymphs are standing in cans, we can find that sometimes the arm hollow is filled in with dots, and sometimes it isn't:



Looking at just these two examples, it seems like the dots are just the interior surface of the can, which is visible in the arm hollow in the first example due to the strange way the can has been drawn, and not in the second example.  We can provide further evidence for this view from looking at another example:



Here the nymph is standing at one side of the can, so we can clearly distinguish the interior surface of the can and see that it is in fact filled with dots.

Thus far it seems like everything can be explained by whether the inner surface of the can is visible or not, but now look at this one:



If we look under the right arm hollow (from our perspective), the rim of the can is clearly visible... yet there is also a row of four dots above the rim.  Obviously these dots cannot be explained as a simple depiction of the interior surface of the can.  It must have been important to the illustrator that dots be shown in the arm hollow for some other reason, and the awkward bend in the arm also suggests that it was drawn with this purpose in mind.  Interestingly we also see four dots in the other arm hollow, yet no can rim is visible, even though it seems like it should be there.

There are some other oddities regarding arm hollows, such as in this example:



Here there's an odd beige stripe behind the nymph's head that winds up in the arm hollow.  Is it the nymph's hair?  It doesn't appear to be, because her hair is generally not colored in.  Yet again it seems that something is done simply to influence what is depicted inside the arm hollow.

Anyway, this list of peculiarities does not exhaust the observations that can be made regarding arm hollows, but I think it suffices to prove that the illustrator was certainly thinking about this.  I have no idea what it means, so naturally I welcome any further observations or parallels that can be found in other works of art.

Good idea to start a new thread about this, Sam. For the record, I think it unlikely that the yellow spot in the original nymph is a mistake. This particular shade of paint appears to have been applied with relative care throughout the manuscript.

Now the last nymph you posted offers an interesting partial solution, that is that the yellow thing is some kind of extension emerging from the lower head. A piece of cloth woven into the hair? Hair extensions? A piece of a headdress? 

If you look at this nymph, you see that her "veil" is bound near her elbow and still has a part beneath it.



I think this whole issue is tied in to the poses themselves though. There seems to be a relevant difference between stretched arm, slightly bent arm and "arm hollow" arm. Everything seems to be related to the amount of space a figure is allowed to occupy and their relevant positions. Your observations also point towards that.

On an unrelated note, look at this nymph. Four boobs! She has the standard "nude nymph breasts" and a pair of "in dress breasts".



This is a strong indication that either the dress or the breasts have been added separately. Interesting..

Koen, Sam G.,

I think Koen is right to keep in mind the distinction between veil and hair.  The same, I think, explains Sam's example.

It's also good to keep in mind the scale to which the painter was working; the draughtsmen were extraordinarily good at working to a small - even *tiny* scale, as e.g. the figure's hand, below.  But there were limits - the thickness of the painter's brush, or his paint.  That's why, instead of proper 'roses' in their cheeks, most figures have a few dots or tiny stoke of paint, I thiink.

(23-10-2016, 08:42 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Good idea to start a new thread about this, Sam. ...[deleted for brevity]...
...

It is interesting that the dots here are clearly not part of the inside of the loge. Could they be a symbolic way of indicating a lace veil?

JKP: I am nearly certain they are, in fact I wrote this in my yet to be published post about headgear. We can see short and long veils marked with this pattern.

(02-11-2016, 04:02 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

It is interesting that the dots here are clearly not part of the inside of the loge. Could they be a symbolic way of indicating a lace veil?

I suspect they are not really a depiction of a physical object at all, since if you look at the arm hollows collectively there's something funny going on with many of them.  One possibility for these "dots above the rim" is that the illustrator deliberately did something that makes no sense, perhaps as a joke or maybe for some "philosophical" reason.  Another possibility is that it was important that the dots be there for some symbolic purpose, though it's not clear why he didn't just move the rim up a bit higher and draw the dots underneath.  Whatever the explanation is, it seems to have been intentional because the awkward way the arm is drawn suggests that the illustrator wanted to leave space for this particular configuration of the rim and the dots.

Okay, I'm not sure this is really the right way to think about it, but if we look at the arm hollow itself and remove the rest of the nymph we get this:



Could it be a symbol of some kind?  It does seem reminiscent of the stripe-and-dot patterns found on many of the tubs.

The one on the left could be a veil but I agree that the one on the right seems to argue against that. 

The motivation for extending the tub pattern may have been that the arms needed to be exactly above it with the hands just below the rim. Throughout the whole section, the relative position of body parts compared to rims and borders seems very important.

(02-11-2016, 10:15 AM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The one on the left could be a veil but I agree that the one on the right seems to argue against that. 

The motivation for extending the tub pattern may have been that the arms needed to be exactly above it with the hands just below the rim. Throughout the whole section, the relative position of body parts compared to rims and borders seems very important.

I agree that many other aspects of the poses are important too.  But if arm position is the only concern here, then why bother to draw the dots at all?

Also, look at the warped rim he drew on this tub:



He could have drawn something far less bent out of shape for the other nymph and then placed the dots under the rim, if the sole motivation was to get the dots in there for whatever reason.  It seems that putting the dots above the rim was important to the illustrator.

It could be, though one could also see these examples as a somewhat forced/awkward attempt to convey that the arm is exactly on top of the rim in the back. Basically we can't say this for sure before we answer these questions:

• Do the patterns have a significance, and if so, which one?
  
• Does the pose of the human figures have a significance, and if so, which one? 
  
• Does the relation between the limbs of the figures and other objects have a significance, and if so, which one?
  

Before we know more about these things, it's hard to say whether the pattern serves the sole purpose of making sure that we see where the inside of the barrel ends compared to the arms, or whether the pattern being there has a significance of its own. Or whether it's just a mixed-perspective attempt to reder the three-dimensionality of the barrel... 

All are still possible, I think, but keeping an eye open for things like this might help us along.