(02-08-2017, 07:01 PM)Koen Gh. wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A random thought. The apparent accuracy and architectural detail in these little buildings keeps surprising me. I'm not ashamed to admit that I can't draw like the images on the large foldout. The same goes for the folio with the two birds, those are actually really well drawn and the items on that page seem to have the same DNA as the map. Now compare this to the Zodiac "bulls" for example, quite puzzling.
I wonder whether it would make sense to look for parallels for these buildings on things like portolan charts? Those are surely some of the closest things we know to this foldout...
I've always been impressed with the architectural details, as well—even the different styles of crenelations on the walls have been noted, including the shape and spacing of arrow slits.
What I find particularly interesting about the VMS rosettes page is the vantage point from which the details have been drawn. Most medieval maps with buildings were straight on (even if the map was at an angle) or "flattened" in odd ways but the VMS "map" makes you feel like whoever drew it flew over in a hot-air balloon—in other words, drawing many of the buildings from an angle that would have been impossible to see in real life in the 15th century unless one were at a great height.
I have sometimes wondered whether this area were seen from mountain tops, but it would have to be a very high (and impractical) one because the drawing seems to indicate quite a bit of height already, with several prominences and with the path becoming increasingly precipitous toward the top left.
There were a few medieval maps (mostly semi-realistic drawings of small towns in mountain valleys) which have obviously been drawn from partway up a mountain, but the VMS rosettes page seems broader in scale than these and drawn from a steeper angle.