02-03-2016, 04:32 AM
The only reason for assuming that the plant-pictures in the VMS must have been copied from some Latin herbal is that it is already assumed that the copyist came from the Latin environment and had no other existing model for depicting plants.
It's a pretty circular argument when the chief issue is where the content came from - that is provenancing the content.
Rene re-caps my earlier points about the drawings' qualities - thanks for that.
There are customs of drawing in the botanical folios which are not those of the Latin west, let alone of its more limited range in manuscript art.
Just by way of example, many of the stylistic details find their nearest correspondence in certain fabric arts, and for the way of drawing many of the plant-roots (I'd say the majority, but haven't had time to count) the closest comparison is certainly the images made by a Yemeni, a Christian, in a manuscript produced in Rayy.
Other very close comparisons occur in areas adjacent to, or in constant interraction with those areas.
Personally, I concluded that the occasional similarity in western works is better explained as one of distant 'cousinship', rather than 'parent-offspring'. The whole idea of the draughtsman creating his work 'by inspiration', even from the 'inspiration' of another text, seems fairly out of keeping with the way artisans worked in earlier times. Drawings with similar characteristics are not unknown; what is really unusual is the quality of the intelligence informing the drawings, and the near-absolute (I'd in fact say 'absolute') lack of the usual cultural hierarchy whose expression is inextricable from both Christian and Muslim manuscript art of that time. It is plainly present in every herbal I've seen where any human figures appear, and sometimes even when they don't. There's no sign of anything similar in the VMS. I don't believe any Latin could have so far stepped outside his place and time, his upbringing and environment, even if he had travelled to the places he would have to in order to draw some of the plants.
IMO
It's a pretty circular argument when the chief issue is where the content came from - that is provenancing the content.
Rene re-caps my earlier points about the drawings' qualities - thanks for that.
There are customs of drawing in the botanical folios which are not those of the Latin west, let alone of its more limited range in manuscript art.
Just by way of example, many of the stylistic details find their nearest correspondence in certain fabric arts, and for the way of drawing many of the plant-roots (I'd say the majority, but haven't had time to count) the closest comparison is certainly the images made by a Yemeni, a Christian, in a manuscript produced in Rayy.
Other very close comparisons occur in areas adjacent to, or in constant interraction with those areas.
Personally, I concluded that the occasional similarity in western works is better explained as one of distant 'cousinship', rather than 'parent-offspring'. The whole idea of the draughtsman creating his work 'by inspiration', even from the 'inspiration' of another text, seems fairly out of keeping with the way artisans worked in earlier times. Drawings with similar characteristics are not unknown; what is really unusual is the quality of the intelligence informing the drawings, and the near-absolute (I'd in fact say 'absolute') lack of the usual cultural hierarchy whose expression is inextricable from both Christian and Muslim manuscript art of that time. It is plainly present in every herbal I've seen where any human figures appear, and sometimes even when they don't. There's no sign of anything similar in the VMS. I don't believe any Latin could have so far stepped outside his place and time, his upbringing and environment, even if he had travelled to the places he would have to in order to draw some of the plants.
IMO