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+--- Thread: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens (/thread-5199.html)
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Koen G - 02-01-2026
What if the novelty is in the way things are combined and depicted, rather than in the things themselves?
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Koen G - 02-01-2026
For an example of the value of novel representation of biblical stuff, see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Stefan Wirtz_2 - 02-01-2026
(02-01-2026, 09:42 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Personally, I believe there's a "tents" theme in the Rosettes page, as discussed by Ellie Velinska and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
This is my rendering of how I read that detail from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Sorry for being somehow off-topic.
Yes, personally I see a baldachin or kind of market stand here. And three further tents which deserve this label in other roundels.
Theme of this thread are the center „towers“: to me, these are not towers at all, but clearly oriental-influenced, whatever they are - vessels are quite a good guess, even simple samowars or physical symbols.
And they don‘t „span“ the starry cover: the „tent“ roundels show enough spanning with ropes, but between „towers“ tips and those bulged rims is nothing.
In the castle roundel is also a kind of starred plain, and there is nothing like spanning as well.
I see those „star sheets“ and the streams from center roundel to some of the outer as the few abstract elements in a very solid and physical nap.
„Towers“ will seduce to count tower-like elements in all kinds of more-or-less interesting medieval cities, from the jerky Jerusalem idea (having nearly none valid christian symbols in whole VMS!) to Constantinople, Rome or whatever you like most. And going this far, it will not matter even if there are only five towers, or they are not centered, but spread over whole town, or not look any similar to those strange onion-pepper mills.
After harshly discussing about merlons/swallowtails whose „exactness“ founded a strong belief into the „italian“ origin for more than 110 years now, quite an elegant way to ignore what can be seen here and continuing the hope into a „could-be“.
No, these are not some towers of Constantinople or Moscow..
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - bi3mw - 02-01-2026
(02-01-2026, 11:02 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What if the novelty is in the way things are combined and depicted, rather than in the things themselves?
That's an interesting question. The author was also just a child of his time, meaning that he was familiar with certain traditions, which probably influenced his thinking. Behind the façade of the “idiosyncratic” VMS, there could therefore be a smorgasbord of different traditions and rather banal content, which the author enriched with his own ( unconventional ) ideas. In my opinion, the manuscript is in any case an compilation of various topics and not a work “from a single mold" ( such a composite manuscript was quite common ). This reinforces the assumption of rather ordinary content.
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - nablator - 02-01-2026
(02-01-2026, 06:10 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But, even dismissing that paper, we can ask whether the central rosette is meant to be Jerusalem. The problem is those onion domes. I have seen some images from the time, in which Jerusalem is shown with many towers of all sizes and shapes (not just six equal round ones) with conical or at most hemispherical domes. And the Scribe surely must have been familiar with those images. So, are there any Medieval images of Jerusalem that even remotely resemble the central plaza of f86v2?
I did not find a medieval illustration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This one is dated ca. 1546: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
1486: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
How many domes were there? 5 as in these images?
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Jorge_Stolfi - 03-01-2026
(02-01-2026, 11:37 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.if there are only five towers
There are six, actually. Arranged in a hexagon. One is mostly hidden, but its spire shows above the "starry sky".
All the best, --stolfi
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Jorge_Stolfi - 03-01-2026
(02-01-2026, 11:44 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The author was also just a child of his time
That is a theory, that I would dispute...
I believe that most of the decorative elements -- like the nymphs, Zodiac symbols, merlons, towers, dragons -- were almost certainly provided by the Scribe, who presumably was a "child of his time" (and maybe even literally a child...)
But the Author may well have been from anywhere, from Constantinople to Timbuktu to Mars. It is unclear what exactly he asked the Scribe to draw, and what he left to his discretion; and those parts of the contents that are likely to be "his" can't be recognized as "things of his time"...
All the best, --stolfi
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Jorge_Stolfi - 03-01-2026
(02-01-2026, 11:56 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This one is dated ca. 1546:
Those are typical Western European or Mediterranean domes, just hemispheres. The You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. "onion" domes instead bulged out, so that they were quite a bit wider than the tower below; and their top was pointy, rather than round.
That article suggests that the Russians may have borrowed the style from India or Persia.
St. Basil in Moscow dates from the 1500s, so the style must have been well established by the 1400s...
All the best, --stolfi
RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - Bluetoes101 - 03-01-2026
While looking at the pharma vessels for the last month or so, I have been educating myself on various techniques of the time in relation to various materials.
I can say that its been dull as dish water and I wish I never started.. but along the way I have learned certain things.
This is the sort of thing you see on the bases of the 6 objects in the centre of the ROS. It is not a part of building construction.
I'm pretty confident they are vessels of some sort. And, it would be odd that a scribe just thought this was ok to do based on just things they could draw.
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RE: Six onion-roof towers supporting heavens - bi3mw - 03-01-2026
(03-01-2026, 01:10 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.That is a theory, that I would dispute...
I believe that most of the decorative elements -- like the nymphs, Zodiac symbols, merlons, towers, dragons -- were almost certainly provided by the Scribe, who presumably was a "child of his time" (and maybe even literally a child...)
But the Author may well have been from anywhere, from Constantinople to Timbuktu to Mars. It is unclear what exactly he asked the Scribe to draw, and what he left to his discretion; and those parts of the contents that are likely to be "his" can't be recognized as "things of his time"...
All the best, --stolfi
Well, I wouldn't consider the nymphs, zodiac signs, battlements, towers, dragons, etc. to be decorative, but rather part of the narrative (but we already had a similar discussion about the colors, and I don't want to rehash that here).
What is true, however, is that the author could have come from anywhere. But the fact that there are almost no Christian symbols throughout the manuscript does not necessarily mean that the author was not a Christian. It is more likely due to non-religious themes.