01-03-2016, 03:58 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-03-2016, 04:31 AM by Diane.
Edit Reason: typ
)
VViews
re:
...all the botanical folios show a composite.
...
some of the plants... are perfectly depicted in our manuscript.
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Perhaps I have expressed myself too briefly, but a lot of people here already know my views so I tried to be succinct.
I should have said "each of the botanical folios is a composite image of a perceived plant-group"
and
"some ... (e.g. the Musaceae group) ... are perfectly depicted in our manuscript although their [actual] appearance would remain unknown to illustrators of western botanical works until as much as a couple of centuries after 1438.
For details, and the historical matter, including western allusions to the Musaceae, the easiest thing I can do is suggest you search "Musaceae" on voynichimagery.wordpress.com
I believe that before I identified the 'banana' group on that folio, "a" banana had been earlier seen there by one or more researchers. The posts probably mention the people, but my first write-up was several years ago, and I don't recall offhand. I think perhaps Sherwood was one.
PS - I take the point that not everyone is a native speaker of English, and I shall make the effort to write in more formal, and less colloquial style in future.
Yes, I agree with you about the creeping rhizome, and (as I said) the leaf looks to me like a succulent leaf.
However, it has taken a century it seems for anyone to notice that the flower can't possibly be that of a water-lily, at least not one from the old world.
I'm not sure that the makers of these drawings would have been particularly concerned with the sort of details we fuss over in our own botanical imagery. The point is not to create images for some leisured person to consult in a nice library edition. This is a working handbook, filled with a variety of information useful to the persons for whom it was made. It might have been enough to see at a glance that the leaf was 'like' a kidney. I don't know. As I said, I wasn't as satisfied with the results of analysing this folio as I was with the majority of others.
What I continually wonder is when we have such acutely critical minds as yours these days, the 'water lily' idea managed to survive and almost become canonical. No-one 'saw" the key indicators which tell us that it can't be.
Speaking from experience, visually illiterate people really and truly cannot "see" details, and stylistics, a lot of the time. With some you have to be quite diplomatic because otherwise they will excuse their own incapacity by suggesting what what they cannot register isn't actually there. I guess the tone-deaf do much the same?
re:
...all the botanical folios show a composite.
...
some of the plants... are perfectly depicted in our manuscript.
--------
Perhaps I have expressed myself too briefly, but a lot of people here already know my views so I tried to be succinct.
I should have said "each of the botanical folios is a composite image of a perceived plant-group"
and
"some ... (e.g. the Musaceae group) ... are perfectly depicted in our manuscript although their [actual] appearance would remain unknown to illustrators of western botanical works until as much as a couple of centuries after 1438.
For details, and the historical matter, including western allusions to the Musaceae, the easiest thing I can do is suggest you search "Musaceae" on voynichimagery.wordpress.com
I believe that before I identified the 'banana' group on that folio, "a" banana had been earlier seen there by one or more researchers. The posts probably mention the people, but my first write-up was several years ago, and I don't recall offhand. I think perhaps Sherwood was one.
PS - I take the point that not everyone is a native speaker of English, and I shall make the effort to write in more formal, and less colloquial style in future.
Yes, I agree with you about the creeping rhizome, and (as I said) the leaf looks to me like a succulent leaf.
However, it has taken a century it seems for anyone to notice that the flower can't possibly be that of a water-lily, at least not one from the old world.
I'm not sure that the makers of these drawings would have been particularly concerned with the sort of details we fuss over in our own botanical imagery. The point is not to create images for some leisured person to consult in a nice library edition. This is a working handbook, filled with a variety of information useful to the persons for whom it was made. It might have been enough to see at a glance that the leaf was 'like' a kidney. I don't know. As I said, I wasn't as satisfied with the results of analysing this folio as I was with the majority of others.
What I continually wonder is when we have such acutely critical minds as yours these days, the 'water lily' idea managed to survive and almost become canonical. No-one 'saw" the key indicators which tell us that it can't be.
Speaking from experience, visually illiterate people really and truly cannot "see" details, and stylistics, a lot of the time. With some you have to be quite diplomatic because otherwise they will excuse their own incapacity by suggesting what what they cannot register isn't actually there. I guess the tone-deaf do much the same?