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+--- Thread: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens (/thread-5199.html)
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - R. Sale - 19-02-2026
Yeah, passing out gold coins, like they were cookies. And the other two guys are wondering, 'How do I top that?'
It should also be noted that the provenance for this text [Paris, c. 1410] is the same as BNF Fr. 565, which is closely tied to the VMs Cosmos.
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - DG97EEB - 19-02-2026
(19-02-2026, 07:27 PM)pjburkshire Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(19-02-2026, 06:55 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I'm sure someone has thought about this before, and it plays to my own theory about a Padua link, but could the central rosette be a representation of the the Basilica of St Anthony in Padua...? It has domed rooves and Padua was surrounded by canals and quays..
When I first saw them I thought they were buildings but Koen convinced me otherwise.
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Google:
Definitions from Oxford Languages
noun
1. a receptacle shaped like a shrine or a cup with an arched cover, used in the Christian Church for the reservation of the Eucharist.
Either way, I think the large circle in the middle represents Heaven/God.
When you remove the colour, it looks to me like a crown full of stars, which I agree looks religious. But the absence of religious elements elsewhere is puzzling. Unless it is Augustinian, which would take us back to Padua, as St Anthony was an Augustinian, and the ceiling of the Basilica is full of stars...
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - pjburkshire - 19-02-2026
(19-02-2026, 10:45 PM)DG97EEB Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
When you remove the colour, it looks to me like a crown full of stars, which I agree looks religious. But the absence of religious elements elsewhere is puzzling. Unless it is Augustinian, which would take us back to Padua, as St Anthony was an Augustinian, and the ceiling of the Basilica is full of stars...
I see most of the non-plant pages as being religious. It is a mixture of medicine and religion. That is how they did things back then. I see the story they are telling as being built out of religious beliefs.
From God/Heaven in the center of the Rosette Page, I see the Light of God Powering the Universe (Air, Fire, Water, Earth).
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Koen G - 20-02-2026
Even if the VM does not overtly show any recognizable Judeo-Christian religious imagery, it is still worth keeping in mind that it was made by people who would be considered religious fundamentalists in our modern day. They could hardly draw a world map without mixing Bible stuff in there.
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Jorge_Stolfi - 20-02-2026
(20-02-2026, 02:15 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Even if the VM does not overtly show any recognizable Judeo-Christian religious imagery, it is still worth keeping in mind that it was made by people who would be considered religious fundamentalists in our modern day. They could hardly draw a world map without mixing Bible stuff in there.
Which makes the absence of any definitely recognizable religious imagery even more remarkable.
All the best, --stolfi
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Koen G - 20-02-2026
(20-02-2026, 09:26 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Which makes the absence of any definitely recognizable religious imagery even more remarkable.
I've long believed that too. Even in books about what we consider secular stuff, you'll have the odd Jesus here and there. But it is possible to have illustration cycles without religious scenes. In those cases, the texts makes it clear that everything still connects to Christian dogma and morality. See bestiaries, Ovide Moralisé...
Now, the vast majority of the manuscript shows plants, astrology or text-only pages. So the room for folios where we can call the lack of religious imagery confusing is rather limited. Quire 13, basically. And who knows what that is about...
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Bluetoes101 - 21-02-2026
It's an interesting thought I think. Personally I see a lot of religious imagery (Q13 mainly) but it's just interpretation.
What at the time would have extremely limited religious imagery? If we call religious imagery "a cross" or "a (insert religious symbol)".
Today it would probably be "a scientific work", what was it in 14-15c?
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Bernd - 21-02-2026
tavie will ban us all for going offtopic, but what strikes me even more than the apparent lack of religious imagery is the utter lack of violence. There are no fights, no weapons, no demons devouring sinners - it is all very peaceful.
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Antonio García Jiménez - 21-02-2026
It is simply a scientific book, scientific for its time of course. It is true that there are not many religious symbols, but there are enough to consider it a work of Christian tradition.
We have the female figure holding a cross (f79v); what I believe to be the dove of the Holy Spirit (f86v3); a stem that coils like a bishop's staff (f56r); and the image that I think has the strongest Christian flavor in the entire book: The herb has a root shaped like a beast, leaves shaped like spears, and flowers resembling the nails with which Christ was nailed to the cross. This image by f90v1 has a powerful symbolic meaning.
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Koen G - 21-02-2026
(21-02-2026, 12:47 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.tavie will ban us all for going offtopic, but what strikes me even more than the apparent lack of religious imagery is the utter lack of violence. There are no fights, no weapons, no demons devouring sinners - it is all very peaceful.
Much of this is a consequence of the way handheld items function in Q13: like attributes instead of tools. They hold nothing that suggests any meaningful interaction with each other or the world.
Regarding violence, I would say there are a few nymph pairs in Q13 that show acts of violence. It's all on f80, recto and verso.
First, the woman with her hands crossed behind her back: this is an unnatural pose and the artist goes out of their way to show us the crossed hands. The man pushes her forward in what I can only read as a captor/captive dynamic. The other clip is from the verso, where one person is standing over another one who's lying on her back in a state that's not exactly relaxed, grabbing her by the hair. I guarantee that this would have been read as an act of violence.
When I talked about these years ago, it was said that the woman is just leading her boyfriend to the pool and that the one nymph is helping the other one make a pony tail. This made me lose all hope in ever collectively understanding Voynich imagery.