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+--- Thread: Listen to the violets. (/thread-2037.html)
Listen to the violets. - R. Sale - 06-08-2017
There are many discrepancies and incongruities in the VMs. Can it be a valid historical artifact approximating the parchment dates? Or is is a modern forgery? Clearly there is a certain cumulative uneasiness with calling these odd illustrations a clear and accurate representation of reality, but is there sufficient evidence to substantiate invalidation?
Everyone knows that there is an illustration of violets early on in the VMs. Unlike many of the other botanical illustrations in the VMs, the violets are quite realistic, with the single caveat that the flowers are all upside down. Why are the flowers inverted? Either they have wilted or there is some other reason.
Virtually anyone who would try to draw a violet, would have seen an actual violet (or an illustration of an actual violet) and therefore would know the proper orientation of a violet blossom. And a person who intended to draw an accurate representation of a violet would probably draw the blossoms in their natural (not inverted) orientation. The depiction of violets in a wilted condition is an unexpected representation.
Is there another reason to depict inverted violet blossoms? Are the blossoms inverted in the attempt to create something of an exotic appearance? Considering the rest of the botanical illustrations, that might be a possibility. There are these stories coming out of the early medieval era as to whether the Earth was flat or round. Whether things in the southern hemisphere were upside down and so on. This might be part of an attempt to create a document that appears to come from an exotic and unknown culture and location. If so, then the VMs is a hoax. It may not have been verifiable at the time, but the land of inverted violets is not real. It is imaginary. And as a text purporting to originate in an imaginary location, the VMs is a hoax.
Is the VMs a modern forgery? I think of a forgery as a copy or imitation of something, like a work of art, that is similar enough in its replication, that it can pass as authentic. The intent of imitation is to enhance similarity and to avoid what is different, unexpected and exotic, to make something that is indistinguishable from the genuine. The difference in the inverted violets may be subtle and easily overlooked. The difference in the VMs Zodiac is plainly blatant. How hard could it be to simply use the traditional zodiac sequence and structure, rather than Pisces first, Aries and Taurus split, etc., etc? This is not forgery by imitation.
RE: Listen to the violets. - -JKP- - 06-08-2017
I have a fairly extensive herbarium and something I have to do occasionally to get the plants to flatten properly so the stems don't break is to pull up the blossoms or leaves (which inverts them if they are asymmetrical) and hold them while folding over the paper that presses them.
I don't know if this is why the VMS violet blossoms are upside-down, there are lots of oddnesses in the VMS—like the legs coming out of the crayfish tails, like the backwards back legs of animals, like the missing back shoulder on many nymphs (many structural anomalies)—but it's one possible reason.
RE: Listen to the violets. - R. Sale - 06-08-2017
Of course that is possible, but that would more imply that the illustration is a representation of one particular folded, possibly dried, clump of violets and not a good, general representation of violets in their natural state, which I feel would be more probable in a standard presentation - whether through the artist's ignorance, though that seems unlikely in this case, or for some other reason.
RE: Listen to the violets. - -JKP- - 07-08-2017
(06-08-2017, 09:16 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Of course that is possible, but that would more imply that the illustration is a representation of one particular folded, possibly dried, clump of violets and not a good, general representation of violets in their natural state, which I feel would be more probable in a standard presentation - whether through the artist's ignorance, though that seems unlikely in this case, or for some other reason.
The way the VMS violet is drawn looks more like a specimen than a live plant. These violets are quite bushy, it's hard to see individual stems and leaves when they are in the wild. When you dry and flatten them, these details are easy to see. Notice how all the leaves are facing the viewer. That's how specimens look. Live plants don't look like this at all, the leaves are in and around and behind each other, and the stems, and they face in many directions.