f82v: those rainbows

[MarcoP]

A helpful overview, Marco. It makes me think of how different the VM is, again. 

So if we were to draw up a typology of rainbows as they appear in medieval art, we have seen at least the following categories:

• Just a rainbow, no interaction with figures. See Linda's post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and Marco's post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for a labelled example.
  
• Part of general cosmological background to scene, no interaction with figures.
  
• Divine throne, with the function of indicating that the enthroned figure does not belong to the earthly realm.
  
• Illustration of Rainbow-like Iris stone, see Marco's post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
  
• Association with the elements - is this illustrated in a pre-VM document?
  
• Rainbows as essential part of a narrative, as in the story of Noah, see Marco's example You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
  

Did I miss any or make any mistakes?
In my opinion the first four examples can be excluded for the VM. The last two or a combination of both remain possible - or something else altogether of course.

Thank you, Koen.
The idea of a classification of rainbow illustrations seems interesting.

Here is a small, rather messy, table where I have collected a few of the images discussed in this thread by various users. I have arbitrarily chosen a few categories that seemed interesting to me.

My impression is that "scientific" works tend not to have figures (Bede, Hortus Sanitatis, Hrabanus). On the other hand, the presence of heavenly bodies correlates with an allegorical meaning (but for the sun, whose relation with the rainbow is factual).

In my opinion, some things seem peculiar with the Voynich rainbows:

• there are several of them, and they are all rather different from each other
  
• all have something flowing from the lower extremities
  
• there is a continuum from reasonably realistic rainbows (f82v) to weird artificial rainbow-like pipes (f83r - You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. per-se wouldn't even berecognizable as a rainbow); even the rather clear double rainbow at the bottom of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. appears in a scene that includes a bizarre pipe
  

I think I would also exclude a narrative, since neither the rainbows nor the figures appear to be very realistic. The association with the elements seems to me both thin and late. Anyway, the whole subject would definitely require more research: until now, I have not see anything that seems truly comparable in any specific way.

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