Studies on De Balneis Puteolanis

[DG97EEB]

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Guess this version has been looked at? It's chock full of naked women in green pools

Folio 29r in particular reminds me of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in Voynich
Folio 46r appears to have a phantom retracer

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Folio 46r appears to have a phantom retracer

Indeed! And, like the VMS later retracer, he focused on very specific details...

All the best, --stolfi

[Koen G]

I don't recall which Balneis MSS have been discussed before. People have been linking it to the VM from before I joined the research. I remember the scene with the higher up tents being discussed as relevant, but I don't remember this particular version. Well found! 

I would be very interested in seeing how this exact illustration compares in other Balneis versions.

[ReneZ]

It's one of these things that keep coming back, after a sufficiently long time to not exactly remember the details anymore.

In any case, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has links to a few digitised copies.

One of the most famous ones is (was?) in the Bibliotheca Angelica in Rome, but this one does look least like the Voynich MS (IMHO). My favourite one is in the Biblioteca Rossiana (now in the Vatican), which has a bit of the amateurish feel of the Voynich MS.

I'd need to look in my notes (find them back first) to get a few more MS shelf marks.

Edit: unfortunately, some of those links are broken, or have been re-routed to totally unrelated topics.

[Koen G]

Thread moved to Imagery.

I will elaborate a bit about why I find this particular page interesting (apart from the obvious: theme, color scheme and use of patterns).

Around the time of the first Malta conference, I was briefly obsessed with representations of tents and canopies in the VM. Throughout its non-botanical sections, it seemed to me like the MS has a preference for the tensile and the textile. One of the strongest indications of "intentionality" is atop f75r. The layout of this page mirrors that of Taccola's "rainbow bridge", but the structure atop You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , from which the water appears to emerge, remains unexplained.

Just to be clear, even taking the Balneis into account, it is still unexplained, because Q13 is, as far as we can tell, an idiosyncratic composition. We need to assume the VM artist did combining, creative copying and/or miscopying from any source materials.

Below, I quickly isolated the fabric-like part from f75r, highlighting why I think this behaves like fabric rather than, say, a stone roof. And the same kind of undulating, uneven, open structure can be observed in the leftmost tent of the Balneis illustration.

   

[Jimmy123]

Is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. a cipher disk? Like Alberti? There is alphabet in inner circle and words in other circles. Like Voynich You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
It is stabilis/mobilis mechanism?

[oshfdk]

Is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. a cipher disk?

Looks like a calendar for Easter or something like that. I think it's called "computus".

[Rafal]

In any case, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has links to a few digitised copies.

I got some versions of De Balneis from the web. Here is the list if you want to search for them:

BarbLat311
Bodmer135
Francais1313
I6_Ambrosiana
Latin8161
Ms1474_Angelica
Ms838Valencia
Ms_G74_Morgan
OttLat2110
Ross379

And just for fun, here is comparison of Christ picture in them:
   

[R. Sale]

If anyone finds an illustration with examples of nebuly lines, that would be interesting. The VMs artist clearly had a thing for nebuly lines - in the cosmos, as pool boundaries, as leaf margins, and more. Once the pattern goes bulbous, it can do anything.

In those final few images above, is the wavy background supposed to represent water?

[DG97EEB]

If anyone finds an illustration with examples of nebuly lines, that would be interesting. The VMs artist clearly had a thing for nebuly lines - in the cosmos, as pool boundaries, as leaf margins, and more. Once the pattern goes bulbous, it can do anything.

In those final few images above, is the wavy background supposed to represent water?

This is a really beautiful Book of Hours written by a contemporary and friend of Dante and with some of the earliest depictions of Dante's works. The guy I think was also friends with Giotto who painted the frescos in Padua.. Far too early in my view and not sure it would have been known about, but it's beautiful.. 

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Couple of Voynich like ideas... There's a lady standing on what look like nebuly to me, and there's people in tubs...  But either way it's simply a beautiful manuscript..