Dragons, Dogs & Amadillos?

[-JKP-]

The point I am hoping to make about the VMs illustration and the discussion of animal identification is that it is not just a matter of finding an animal that is the best subjective match. This is a tewfer - double or nothing. Most attempts to identify the VMs animal have simply ignored the wobbly lines as if they were irrelevant. And those who have named them them have called them a pillow, a filter, an alter or a cushion. According to heraldic tradition however, this is a nebuly line. And given the traditional interpretation, these lines represent clouds.

I believe that the presence of the lines is as important as the identification of the animal. Therefore the requirement to match the VMs illustration is to have both elements: the animal and the clouds. This criterion admits few examples.

I can't say what the VMS illustrator means by the nebuly but every medieval manuscript I've seen with nebuly has meant heaven or heavenly or "of heaven" or some spiritual presence.

A picture of a lion could be a bestiary animal, a zodiac animal, a heraldic animal or an animal from a chronicle, but as soon as the illustrator added nebuly or wings, it represented St. Mark, the evangelist or something "heavenly" or godly, depending on the subject at hand.



I agree with you that nebuly weren't added as random design elements. In those days, they had meaning, the same way a halo or royal orb in a picture had meaning.