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+--- Thread: Oresme plus Shirakatsi (/thread-3022.html)
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RE: Oresme plus Shirakatsi - voynichbombe - 25-12-2019
It is curious though, the sloppy spiral spokes do not seem to be drawn completely by freehand.
If one does not have a compass at hand, there are several ways to improvise:
- take round objects of different sizes (here it would be two) to do outlines. Not very precise
- take a pin or needle, attach a string to it and fasten a pen to the other end. Slightly better, but also not very suitable for small scales
I cannot tell if there is a pinhole in the middle. Anyways, both methods will give sloppy results.
What I mean, the outer ends of the spokes seem more even than the inner ends, where the lines wiggle around letters sometimes (so possibly they were even applied after the writing).
A camera obscura with its many optical faults was certainly also used more as an "aid", to help, so to say. I personally took note of that when I hastily build one last minute to watch a solar eclipse (Alhazar mentions this kind of distortion in his book on optics). One of its most prominent users, the English landscape painter Hockney is known to have changed the images to his liking.
The grades of optical distortions are larger for small devices. I once went into a huge "walk-in" one, it was amazing.
Another interesting aspect of using a portable camera obscura is that you can use it to "photoshop", mixing two or more sources.
RE: Oresme plus Shirakatsi - -JKP- - 25-12-2019
I can't see a pinhole, but the circles and some of the spiral legs are drawn with a compass. There are also freehand lines but I wonder if the freehand ones are in places where the compass lines didn't come out dark enough.
RE: Oresme plus Shirakatsi - Linda - 25-12-2019
With the central circle the compass changed, it made an overlap rather than a join, and then it goes off into space, or started that way. I also do not see a pin mark so perhaps it was an outline of a cylindrical object as Gert mentioned, unless it was a collapsing compass. The secondary inner circle also doesn't meet.
RE: Oresme plus Shirakatsi - R. Sale - 27-12-2019
So, methodology is interesting, but my investigations are more concerned with sources. It seems to me that the best approximation of the VMs cosmos can be achieved through the combination of the Shirakatsi-style diagram and a close structural representation of the BNF Fr 565 version of the Oresme cosmos. That being said, it also appears IMHO that the VMs artist took intentional steps to create clear visual differences. The eight spokes curve in the opposite direction. The cosmic boundary is either an elaborate scallop-shell cloud band (BNF) of a simple, nebuly line (VMs). The stars around the earth are either scattered, asterisk-type (BNF) or they are sequential and of a polygonal-type (VMs). And the central, T-O earth is either pictorial (BNF) or linguistic (VMs).
So, clearly, it seems to me that the VMs cosmos is not a copy in the artistic sense. The copy of a pictorial Earth is another pictorial Earth, whatever the skill level of the secondary artist. This is something different. Something intended to be different, to look different. And yet the structure is very much the same: big outer wheel, eight curved spokes, a cloud-based cosmic boundary with 43 undulations, a surrounding field of stars, an inverted T-O earth, <and a partridge in a pear tree>.
WHY???? Is it a disguise, a distraction, some sort of test of the reader's knowledge? Perhaps some of each? And it is also an indicator of the level of 'sophistication' of trickery at which the VMs artist functioned. Hard to substantiate of the basis of a single example, but then we do have more than one example. The VMs 'critter' is an Agnus Dei image using the structure of the "Apocalypse of S. Jean" (1313) in combination with the representation from the Order of the Golden Fleece. The point again is not similarity of appearance. The point is similarity of structure, with just enough visual similarity to retain the ideological content and avoid / downplay contradiction.
The same applies to the heraldic patterns on the tubs in the outer ring of VMs Pisces, the imposed radial illusion that hides the Fieschi coats-of arms and the tradition of the red galero on VMs White Aries, the paired occurrence of the obscure heraldic fur that constitutes the structure of the papelonny pun.
If all this has been hidden, what more is there to find? The sources themselves provide more information. The cosmic illustrations of the c. 1410 Oresme cosmos and the 1425-1449 de Metz cosmos, with the woman in the fish's mouth, both connect to artistic productions in Paris. Both elements of the VMs Agnus Dei construction connect with the Dukes of Burgundy under Philip the Good. Even the Shirakatsi diagram might be included on the basis of communications between this Philip of Burgundy and the rulers of Trebizond. Furthermore, during the conflict between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, the Burgundians were in control of Paris for a period of time earlier on in the 1400s and relevant to this inquiry. And this has the potential to include both cosmic illustrations from the Oresme and de Metz manuscripts. (The Fieschi chronology is, of course, approximate to 1250 CE, but it initiates a tradition ongoing to this day.)
In combination with the dates from the Carbon-14 test results for the VMs parchment, this seems to put the VMs composition somewhere either within the sphere of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy (r. 1419-1467), or connect to someone quite familiar with the same information.
Remarkably clever of those Aztecs!
RE: Oresme plus Shirakatsi - RenegadeHealer - 01-12-2020
I'm currently looking into the origin and variations on this motif, which recently came up on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. At least superficially, it bears a striking resemblance to the two concentric circles with eight curved spokes, every other one of which reaches the inner circle. It's stamped into the end cap of a Qin Dynasty roof tile, and apparently relates to the sun.
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RE: Oresme plus Shirakatsi - R. Sale - 02-12-2020
That is an interesting pattern, with several similarities. However, I see the central sphere(?) as having four arms. So nothing crosses inner circle, and there are other differences. It's that same old question: Are these similar images from separate cultures? Or is there something deeper going on? Some pre-cultural connection to a wheel with eight curved spokes, or just a wheel in general?
There is sufficient ambiguity in the VMs illustrations that virtually nothing can stand on its own as an unquestioned example of factual information. That is to say, pretty much any thing can be and has been interpreted in various ways. And this collection of interpretations has grown over time. A new one flares up every now and then. But what it shows to me in the aggregate is a reference to the history and and traditions that were in sync with the Burgundian era of the Golden Fleece of 1430 and subsequent.
The cosmic comparison, cloud bands, Melusine and friends, the critter of f80v, the empty double rainbow, all possess their multiple interpretations. But when brought together in the VMs, they represent their own historical perspective. There is clearly a situation in which all of these pieces fit together. The structure of parts of the illustrated narrative depends on Deuteronomic pairings.
Oresme and Shiratski is one of the problematic situations that needed to fit together. There is evidence that the Shirakatsi diagram still existed in Constantinople in the mid-1400s. There was plenty of contact, including direct contact between Burgundy and Trebizond by the 1460s. Transmission would have had countless opportunities.
The creator of the VMs seems to have used basic structural forms comparable to particular, surviving, historical examples of a coincident provenance, as taken from the information provided by the history and the results of various investigations. Potentially the author took structural mages from certain sources and set them to a new purpose. To know this well one would have lived in this era, and known the history and the traditions, and the scientific theories of the time. Add in a pungent taste of trickery and deception and you've got the VMs.