The Voynich Ninja

JKP brought to our attention the flag finials decorating the rooftops of some of the buildings in the 9-rosette foldout.

"Also on the rosettes page, many people notice the Ghibelline merlons, but they don't seem to comprehend the importance of the saddleback roofs. They are almost as significant as the merlons! Saddlebacks with the flag on each end were a very specific architectural style that is hard to find outside of certain areas in the 15th century. France, southern Switzerland, Bavaria, a few of the northern Italian (Lombardic) states, and some of the Lombardic and German colonies in the Greek islands are the major areas where you find flagged saddlebacks. Since people walked in the 15th century, it was important to know where to enter a city, or you could end up walking a lot of extra miles. Each culture had a slightly different way of indicating a portal and flagged saddlebacks were primarily Frankish and Germanic."

So I decided to open a new thread to discuss where and when in history we can see examples of this architectural detail.

My first example is from the Nuremberg chronicle, 1493
[attachment=835]

Here is another one from 15th century French manuscript
[attachment=836]

I tried to find a match for these finials a couple of years ago, but (as -JKP- suggests) the range is just too broad.

The Nuremberg Chronicle is not the best source for such kind of inquiries; one may notice that it even repeats same pictures for different cities

(23-10-2016, 03:52 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I tried to find a match for these finials a couple of years ago, but (as -JKP- suggests) the range is just too broad.

The Nuremberg Chronicle is not the best source for such kind of inquiries; one may notice that it even repeats same pictures for different cities

I meant to find out how broad is the region where they appear in 15th century. Are they found in Spain or Itally or is it more of a Northern thing in the 15th century.

I agree than Nuremberg chronicles do not depict the cities accurately (especially those far away from Germany). The flag finial in my example however comes from the illustration for Ulm - which has nice similarities to the actual city.
[attachment=837]

In this sense the Nuremburg chronicle can be trusted for depiction of architectural styles in Germany at the time.

(23-10-2016, 03:10 PM)EllieV Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Here is another one from 15th century French manuscript

Hi Ellie,
thank you for starting this very interesting thread!

I checked the mandragore site, and it says that BNF Francais 2644 is from Belgium:

Quote:Cote : Français 2644
a) Auteur/Titre : jean froissart, chroniques
Titre d'usage :
Nom de pays : belgique
Origine : bruges
Siècle : 15ème siècle
Date : vers 1470-1475
Artiste : loyset liédet et collab.

(23-10-2016, 04:01 PM)EllieV Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
I meant to find out how broad is the region where they appear in 15th century. Are they found in Spain or Itally or is it more of a Northern thing in the 15th century.

...

Ellie, I was interested in that question too and collected a lot of pictures of old "maps" (drawings of cities) from around that time period and, as far as I can tell so far, other than the few examples in the Greek islands and a very few east of Venice, they tend to disappear once you cross into what was central Lombardy at the time.

So the saddlebacks with flag finials were generally a French, Swiss, German convention and the Ghibelline merlons (which were political at the time) were a southern German/Lombardy/west Bohemian architectural political statement.



These days, swallowtail merlons are an architectural decoration that can be found almost anywhere, but in the 15th century, they were significant localized landmarks and, on a map, could have been used to represent Lombardic/Ghibelline (now northern Italy) possessions, just as the saddelback roofs with flag-finials might be used to represent the Frankish/Gallic/Germanic lands. Since the Holy Roman Empire and Lombardy used to stretch along the coast into the Catalan region, there were a few there, as well, but not as many, just as there were not as many east of Venice (just a few).


The Powder Tower in Prague has the characteristic saddleback and the gateway portal below (a detail that can be seen in some of the VMS rosette-page towers as well), but the finials do not have the flags. When you travel west of Prague into Bavaria, however, the flags become more numerous and extend past the Alsatian area into France, then they peter out again as one goes south.


My research was far from complete and I'm sure there's more that can be discovered and it might be important because...

...it's possible that the saddlebacks on the rosettes page are specific gateways to certain cities that might have been recognizable to a medieval traveler (just as the "tower in the hole" may have been a real place, known to people at the time), but many 15th-century landmarks were destroyed in wars or remodeled into different styles, so finding these exact buildings may not be possible.

It occurred to me that maybe the "tower in the hole" was a symbolic way of representing the leaning tower of Pisa, which was built in the 12th century and was already sinking into the ground soon after they started building it. If someone made a trip to Rome, Naples, or Salerno from the northern areas, they would probably pass through Florence or Pisa. If it is the tower of Pisa, then the eye-shaped mountain could be the Colliseum in Rome (or symbolic of the hills of Rome) or... if the journey was a longer one (to Naples or Salerno medical schools), the eye-shaped mountain could be the volcanic areas around Naples.


I'm still not 100% sure the rosettes page is a map, but it has always felt like a map to me, and the little details like the merlons and saddlebacks have always seemed like landmarks. Whether they can be specifically identified, I don't know, but it's a pretty interesting line of inquiry.

(23-10-2016, 06:12 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi Ellie,
thank you for starting this very interesting thread!

I checked the mandragore site, and it says that BNF Francais 2644 is from Belgium:

Quote:Cote : Français 2644
a) Auteur/Titre : jean froissart, chroniques
Titre d'usage :
Nom de pays : belgique
Origine : bruges
Siècle : 15ème siècle
Date : vers 1470-1475
Artiste : loyset liédet et collab.

Thanks Marco!
These details are missing in the Gallica info.

Titre :  « Chroniques sire JEHAN FROISSART ». Français 2644
Date d'édition :  1401-1500
Type :  manuscrit
Langue :  Français
Droits :  domaine public
Identifiant :  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Source :  Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Français 2644
Provenance :  Bibliothèque nationale de France
Date de mise en ligne :  17/10/2011

Hi JKP,

Do you by any chance remember where these examples come from?

[attachment=839]

(23-10-2016, 09:47 PM)EllieV Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Hi JKP,

Do you by any chance remember where these examples come from?

Ellie, the one on the left I think was from a French Book of Hours, possibly 47941 (I'm going by memory).

The one on the right is from one of the Pal. Germanica chronicles, probably #23.

The ZellamSee portal tower has flag finials, as well, but I haven't had time to look up when it was built. It might not be as old as the others.


Interestingly, Rouen has a tower similar to the Prague Powder tower with balls instead of flags as the finials and Hohenzollern tower is like that, as well, so there might be a cultural reason for using flags rather than balls, just as there was a political reason for Ghibelline merlons. If there is, I haven't discovered it yet.

In the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in Trento there are frescoes illustrating the 12 months. They were painted in 1400 ca.
The frescoes seem to represent both dovetail merlons (even if most represented crenelations have no dovetails) and flag finials towers. Details from the months of January (left) and May (right).