[split] breast stylistics

[nablator]

Yes, I did take out the breasts because breasts on small drawings are round with small dots on them. There are tens of thousands that look the same.

Well actually these don't look the same at all as the ones in the VMS. Are there any in XVth century manuscripts that look exactly like the antigravity boobs in the VMS?

[-JKP-]

There are many anti-gravity boobs in medieval manuscripts (some of them down to the navel), but when they draw them that way, they tend to drawn them very flat (like a piece of cardboard) rather than sticking forward.


The VMS boobs are fairly unusual. I've been collecting medieval boob pics while trying to find some that are similar. I'll post them when I have enough for the patterns to be clear. They're a hoot because often the breast comes out of the collar bone (much too high) rather than the chest. Sometimes even out of the neck. I don't understand why medieval artists, who were exposed to naked-women statues, naked-women mosaics, naked-women frescoes most days of their lives (churches are covered in them) would move the boobs up six inches from where they belong (maybe Freud has a word for it).


One of the things that strikes me as unique to the VMS is that the female forms are not idolized. That's why I thought, for a very long time, that it might have been written by a doctor with a clinical viewpoint. I still think it might have been masterminded by a doctor, but I no longer assume all of the VMS is medical. Now I try to look at it from as many sides as possible.

[Aga Tentakulus]

Not to mention.
You used to have a different kind of beauty.
It was considered to be wealthy and healthy.
Think of the Rubens women...

[-JKP-]

The VMS was created before Photoshop and Liposuction.

When someone asked a professional photo retoucher how many of the celebrity pictures in magazines and online are Photoshop retouched, he said, "All of them."

[Koen G]

Thread split. Actually I think the way VM breasts are drawn deserves a closer look. Which variations exist in the MS? Are there cases where they have not been retouched, and do those look different? How do they compare to contemporary images?

[-JKP-]

I think most of them are drawn by the same person, even some that have been inked in later.

But there are some "eyeball" breasts, very round, very different style. I think this is significant because, like the nose on Aries, it means more than one person was involved (maybe the same person who did the Aries nose, with a smooth confident style, but there's no way to know).

[Aga Tentakulus]

To be able to judge something correctly, you have to take it in your hand. 

[bi3mw]

For me, the breasts as Dee drew them, but also like the ones in the Liber Trotula, folio 10v and 30v, look like "standard". The ones in the VMS are, let's say, more individual, but some of them are poorly realized.


Liber Trotula, Ms. 593, 1451-1500, folio 10v

[nablator]

There are many anti-gravity boobs in medieval manuscripts (some of them down to the navel), but when they draw them that way, they tend to drawn them very flat (like a piece of cardboard) rather than sticking forward.

I've seen the flat ones. I would definitely not include those in the anti-gravity category.

I don't understand why medieval artists, who were exposed to naked-women statues, naked-women mosaics, naked-women frescoes most days of their lives (churches are covered in them)

Excluding the ones from antiquity or from antiquity models that became fashionable in the Renaissance, they weren't that common in churches... Adam and Eve, and Virgin breastfeeding baby Jesus, mostly.

[Linda]

The breasts in the vms are generally three quarter view, as opposed to head on. They are of various sizes and shapes, including different sizes and shapes in the same nymph, which can actually be pretty realistic. 

Some do seem to be anti gravity, or perhaps they are drawn with invisible garments in mind. (JKP i think navel breasts are gravity breasts, not anti gravity. Even those can look very different depending on what one wears to support them.)

These seem pretty anti gravity, up pointy, unrealistic


Some are more realistic in their physics


Some smaller, both uppy and downy


Some larger, rounder


Male nipples, frontals (more similar to Cinnamon girl, at least in that aspect)


This one seems unique in its circular rendition


Some seem like they have cancer or were maimed somehow


The one that was compared with the Cinammon girl was probably because she was one of the few in comparable stance,  (there is at least another but she is semi-clothed) but i don't find them to be drawn similarly at all, there are better examples above)