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Analysis of the beast on f25v - Printable Version

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Analysis of the beast on f25v - davidjackson - 11-01-2017

I think a little bit of analysis of the beast in question on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. may be called for, so we can narrow down what we are looking for in identifying it. This is my first draft of my ideas and I though I'd put them out there for some feedback.
[Image: image.jpg?q=f25v-1095-1429-353-478]

Questions:
  1. How many limbs are displayed?
  2. Why is the back limb stuck up like that?
  3. What are the ripples on its back?
  4. In what order were the plant, beast, paint drawn / applied?
As always, nothing is easy, mainly because the perspective is screwed on the beast. Its body is drawn at an angle but the head is side on. Let's just look at the body:

[Image: image.jpg?q=f25v-1163-1637-232-196]
By cutting off the head it's a bit easier to see what I mean here. The chest is exposed on the animal and an attempt at perspective is made by drawing the nearside top limb in its entirety (event to the point of joining the shoulder onto the chest, albeit in a funny position) and showing only the paw of the back top limb. Also note that both paws have different number of toes (or claws) - the nearside has three, the farside four.
The end limb clearly appears to end in a paw and we must thus assume this is a limb, not a tail. It has three toes, same as the top nearside paw.
In fact, if that end limb went at a straight line instead of at a sudden angle up, the perspective works. Imagine the green smudge (the ground) wasn't there and the limb goes out. We're seeing the animal side-on, as we would expect to.
But the body is then twisted round. JKP has posted an image of a You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but I don't think anyone has found one with three legs.
More-ever, there is something scribbled in the distance between the body and the end limb. This could be an attempt to depict the fourth leg - it's impossible to say. 
[Image: image.jpg?q=f25v-1301-1757-65-67]
If that scribble there is not an attempt to depict a fourth limb, then what is it?
There are also some scribbles around where the bottom limb connects to the body. It's so small that I can't get a proper resolution on it, even with the big TIFFs from the Beineicke. It looks like three vertical marks where the limb joins the body. It could just because the artist wanted to shade in the shoulderblade.

In summary: I think this is a four legged animal and the artist drew it too close to the ground. He then didn't leave room for the tail, and tried to draw it in the gap between the third leg and rear of the beast.


Let us look at the second question: why is the back limb sticking up at that angle? It is clearly anti-natural (not that this matters too much in a 15th century depiction).
My suggestion is that it's because the body was too close to the ground to be drawn in its proper place. I think the leg was going to be drawn in the correct fashion, but it was so close to the ground that someone had to draw it sticking upwards at an un-natural angle.

Let us look at the third question: what's that stuff on its back?

[Image: image.jpg?q=f25v-1241-1529-112-188]
We see the body of the animal quite clearly. The artist has drawn the animal. He's then thought that more detail is needed and drawn these loops and whirls over the body and above the neck. The whirls also continue over the back of the beast. It's a covering of some kind.
  • It could be scales, but then why draw them ontop of the body?
  • It could be wool.
  • It could be a crest and scales, but then why extend the crest around the neck?
  • It could be an attempt to depict skin markings.
Finally, the question of how the illustration was drawn. Plant, beast, paint.

Well, I think the paint and ground came first. The beast was then drawn, and finally the leaf it is nibbling on.
Look at the way the beast is eating the leaf. The leaf is drawn to vanish into the beast's mouth - ie, the mouth was there and then the leaf was drawn around it.
[Image: image.jpg?q=f25v-1157-1502-97-114]

RE: Analysis of the beast on f25v - Koen G - 11-01-2017

It's funny that you see it as having been drawn too close to the ground - I thought this was intentional. To me it looks like a creature that normally walks or crawls close to the ground, but it now stretching its body, even standing on its tail a bit, raising a little paw to gain another centimeter and extending its neck just to nibble on some tasty Voynich leaves Big Grin


Ooh it's like a cross between one of those common two-legged medieval dragons and one of these:

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RE: Analysis of the beast on f25v - davidjackson - 11-01-2017

I did wonder if it's a tortoise, although I'm not ready to abandon my Tartary sheep theory yet

RE: Analysis of the beast on f25v - Wladimir D - 11-01-2017

The blue and red - the hind legs with four fingers.

The right front paw not got to the image.

RE: Analysis of the beast on f25v - -JKP- - 11-01-2017

(11-01-2017, 04:51 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....

Ooh it's like a cross between one of those common two-legged medieval dragons and one of these:

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When I suggested a giraffe-head earlier upthread, no one seemed interested, so I'm glad you linked to the picture. It was the lumps in the head, the narrow snout, and the mane that made me think giraffe.


Overall, I think the mammal-basilisk comes closer to the VMS than most options. A basilisk typically has two legs, which seems to fit if one accepts the strange third limb as a flower-tail.

RE: Analysis of the beast on f25v - Koen G - 11-01-2017

Sorry JKP, so many different beasts got mentioned that I kind of lost track.

My current view, two options:
a) It's a drawing of a dragon, added at a later stage in the material's development.
b) It was originally a real animal that really ate this plant. The copyist did not recognize this animal and turned it into some strange hybrid.

RE: Analysis of the beast on f25v - davidjackson - 13-01-2017

Afflicted by the dreaded daemon meridianus I pulled my copy of the Yale Voynich book off the shelves and checked it. The beast appears in quite good resolution there. So I hauled out my macro lens and took some photos.

   

I still can't work out what's going on with that tail. I zoomed in as much as I could before it physically pixelated in front of me (a good example this of why higher resolution photos aren't necessarily a good thing) and got this:

   

I popped it into the Gimp, blew it up and traced the outlines as best I could. I then deleted the background and got this traced image:

   

Whatever that end limb is supposed to be, the artist hasn't connected the paw onto it. Note the little curve on the right hand side of the paw - this is an extension of the limb.

My guess is still that this is a four legged beast with a tail, and the artist screwed it up by drawing it too close to the "ground" (green smudge) and panicked.

RE: Analysis of the beast on f25v - Wladimir D - 09-02-2017

The Coptic manuscript (7-8 century) painted a dragon sitting, with a very a similar head.
From the shattered chest dragon comes front paw with three round fingers.
It seems, that the end  tail of the branching (round the fingers, as in MV) 
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RE: Analysis of the beast on f25v - Koen G - 09-02-2017

Good eye, Wladimir! Are you sure this animal is a dragon though? It's such a shame that the drawing has been damaged.

But the stylistics are similar, which is the most important thing. You are right about the tail. Also, something about the face looks very Voynichy to me. The style, at least. I don't think this is a trivial similarity.

   

RE: Analysis of the beast on f25v - Linda - 10-02-2017

[Image: www-St-Takla-org__Coloring-029-Dragon.gif]

St. Takla Haymanout Coptic Orthodox Website
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this struck me as very similar to what's drawn, in a different style.