The VMS has spewy things from 8 different directions. Even the long triangle shapes match up with triangle-shaped connections on the VMS "map".
And the long time gap doesn't matter in my view. Most of the illustrations and text in the first 200 years of book publishing can be traced back to earlier traditions. Look at all the herbal literature... 90% of it regurgitated from earlier sources, with better (and sometimes only slightly better) drawings. Engravers don't work in a vacuum. They find whatever resources are available to help them visualize a scene. They still do.
With plants they can switch to real plants rather than using historic drawings, but metaphysical drawings do not have "real" counterparts and cannot be understood unless older iconographical traditions are at least somewhat retained.
I'll keep hunting for earlier examples. I don't think a later drawing excludes earlier exemplars.
And the long time gap doesn't matter in my view. Most of the illustrations and text in the first 200 years of book publishing can be traced back to earlier traditions. Look at all the herbal literature... 90% of it regurgitated from earlier sources, with better (and sometimes only slightly better) drawings. Engravers don't work in a vacuum. They find whatever resources are available to help them visualize a scene. They still do.
With plants they can switch to real plants rather than using historic drawings, but metaphysical drawings do not have "real" counterparts and cannot be understood unless older iconographical traditions are at least somewhat retained.
I'll keep hunting for earlier examples. I don't think a later drawing excludes earlier exemplars.