Garden of Virtues

[arca_libraria]

I found another image of the personification of one of the vices holding a chain. The image is extremely similar to the one from the Fitzwilliam MS and is also a French manuscript from the end of the 13th century so I think it is likely that the originate from a shared exemplar.

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[Koen G]

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Well found! That's one of the two manuscripts that started this thread, but I hadn't looked at its other images. Here is the Jardin des vertus image:
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So both the "seven rivers with women" and "vice with chain" are part of the same manuscript tradition. The plot thickens...

[arca_libraria]

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Well found! That's one of the two manuscripts that started this thread, but I hadn't looked at its other images. Here is the Jardin des vertus image:

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So both the "seven rivers with women" and "vice with chain" are part of the same manuscript tradition. The plot thickens...

I must have half-noticed the chain in the Mazarine MS when browsing all the garden imagery (I try to follow links to get a sense of the whole manuscript if it's one I haven't seen before) and then when I noticed the chain in the British Library/Fitz MS manuscript that reminded me of the chain(?) in the VMS I realised I had seen another chain somewhere recently. It's all strangely circular.

I found it again in another MS that has already been mentioned in this thread: BNF MS Fr 938 (f. 120v).

[R. Sale]

It appears that the two ladies are labelled 'Chastite' with the bird and 'Luxure' with the chain.
Google has several images of Chastite from BL Add MS 28162, but corresponding versions of Luxure not seen yet.

Google search: vices luxure "Somme le Roi"
This brings up most of the images seen so  far. Other variations may expand??

[Koen G]

There's also the matter why a sun should be in.the centre of the four figures.

Bosch puts Christ surrounded by rays of light in the middle of his seven sins, but this is rather late (1500). 
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Supposedly this represents the Eye of God, and it is accompanied by the Latin for "Beware, Beware, The Lord Sees".

[arca_libraria]

There's also the matter why a sun should be in.the centre of the four figures.

Exactly. I know there are several problems with my suggestion that the VMS image might be related to or an interpretation of the images of "luxuria" in medieval treatises on virtues and vices.

I liked JKP's suggestion that we're looking top-down at a fountain with a sun-dial in the centre, hence the sun in the middle of the illustration, but there's still a lot that doesn't work or needs additional support to make sense of this. I feel like we should be reading the sun and moon pages together, but I'm not sure if any of this can be applied to the moon diagram on the next page.

[Koen G]

The images in the Somme le roi also come in fours.. is there some pattern or progression to the way they are grouped?

[-JKP-]

...

Exactly. I know there are several problems with my suggestion that the VMS image might be related to or an interpretation of the images of "luxuria" in medieval treatises on virtues and vices.

I liked JKP's suggestion that we're looking top-down at a fountain with a sun-dial in the centre, hence the sun in the middle of the illustration, but there's still a lot that doesn't work or needs additional support to make sense of this. I feel like we should be reading the sun and moon pages together, but I'm not sure if any of this can be applied to the moon diagram on the next page.

That's actually how I feel about it too. Although a sundial might make sense in the physical world of gardens and fountains, in the VMS world (and the world of medieval illustrations in general), this kind of imagery tends to be symbolic and often the "parts" come in pairs, 4, or 8 in terms of relationships.