(22-05-2020, 01:36 AM)R. Sale wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.As far as winter being slack time, so who cares. The fact of the matter is that where these months would be expected to be, there is a place where a page has been cut out. There are in fact several places where this has occurred in the VMs. And where the missing months are concerned, this is in a sequence where the right hand side of the book is all fold-outs, so potentially four images are missing, which could accommodate those two months split into pairs, or the two months and two other illustrations...
You're right that there are missing pages in the VMS and clear evidence of a cut folio, but the obverse folio to Pisces is a cosmo page, so it is not possible that a folio directly preceding Pisces (e.g., Aquarius) could have been cut.
There is a cut in the folio that is bound in after the archer, so if the VMS zodiac-figures were in an uncommon order (with Aquarius at the end, rather than the beginning) then perhaps folio 74 related to the zodiac sequence in some way.
We are, of course, assuming that the current order is what was intended (it probably was, since the foldouts follow the traditional order).