22-04-2017, 06:19 PM
(22-04-2017, 09:51 AM)Koen Gh. wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
My best guess is that it mimics a form of decorative plant setup that may have been common in the area at the time. I do agree that any exemplar images used for the VM were likely in "portable" form. On the other hand, the distance from Carthage to Sicily is about one third the distance from Brussels to Berlin, in other words really close. Even if one demands that al proposed Voynich sources must have been witnessed firsthand by a travelling author, it is not unlikely that an Italian individual witnessed decorations like these in his surroundings.
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Very interesting images, Koen, and an intriguing suggestion for a parallel.
As for distance, that didn't appear to be a problem for them. I'm constantly impressed with how much and how far they traveled.
Medical students regularly traveled between Heidelberg, Paris, and London and the medical schools in Naples/Salerno and I've mentioned before that the Lombard-colonies connection between Naples/Salerno/Bari and what was then a larger Lombardy (now northern Italy) fits right in with Naples-area herbals ending up in Lombardy (and being copied there).
As far as I can tell, from reading about it for the last few years, they often traveled by land to Genoa or Venice (or one of the other big ports of the time) and then sailed to the southern boot. There are some tragic stories of manuscript collectors losing whole trunkloads of books in stormy seas (and almost losing their lives, as well), items they collected while in the south (including parts of Africa) that they were bringing back north.