25-02-2016, 01:59 PM
Rene,
These examples have been cited many times, and the difficulty with their being used to justify theories about what the Vms images are about is that the comparisons are limited to "looks-like" in an entirely personal apprehension.
One could just as well say that the use of interlace on a piece of Icelandic ivory carving "looks like" a piece of interlace ornamenting a Coptic manuscript. It is possible that some historical link is responsible for that perceived likeness, but one has to provide a bit more in the way of historical and comparative material to assert any particular connection.
There is so much about the corpus of imagery in copies of the Balneis Puteolanis which tells us that while the text is innocuous, and was composed in Europe, its copying was an excuse to circulate imagery which might be considered, in modern terms, salacious.
It appears to be a deliberate subversion of imagery obtained either from works by European Jews, or from the near east - possibly from Antioch. When one compares the style of drawing (that is, drawing as such) with, for example, copies of some Haggadah, the difference in attitudes becomes clear although the forms are often similar. That is to say, that comparable imagery in the Haggadah is not in the least salacious, where some of the imagery in Copies of the Balneis Puteolanis (a title which one might consider a deliberate double entendre) is plainly and unmistakeably medieval pronography. I see nothing of a similar character in MS Beinecke 408, and should argue strongly that a common use of green for water is insufficient argument against their having very different intent and widely different origins.
IMO
These examples have been cited many times, and the difficulty with their being used to justify theories about what the Vms images are about is that the comparisons are limited to "looks-like" in an entirely personal apprehension.
One could just as well say that the use of interlace on a piece of Icelandic ivory carving "looks like" a piece of interlace ornamenting a Coptic manuscript. It is possible that some historical link is responsible for that perceived likeness, but one has to provide a bit more in the way of historical and comparative material to assert any particular connection.
There is so much about the corpus of imagery in copies of the Balneis Puteolanis which tells us that while the text is innocuous, and was composed in Europe, its copying was an excuse to circulate imagery which might be considered, in modern terms, salacious.
It appears to be a deliberate subversion of imagery obtained either from works by European Jews, or from the near east - possibly from Antioch. When one compares the style of drawing (that is, drawing as such) with, for example, copies of some Haggadah, the difference in attitudes becomes clear although the forms are often similar. That is to say, that comparable imagery in the Haggadah is not in the least salacious, where some of the imagery in Copies of the Balneis Puteolanis (a title which one might consider a deliberate double entendre) is plainly and unmistakeably medieval pronography. I see nothing of a similar character in MS Beinecke 408, and should argue strongly that a common use of green for water is insufficient argument against their having very different intent and widely different origins.
IMO