The VMs *appears* "foreign", but it is fakey "foreign". It is pseudo-exotic. It appears to come from an unknown culture, something that would have seemed plausible in the 1400s, but cannot be reasonably substantiated in modern investigation. The artist has created a bizarre, imaginary situation in which disguised versions and altered representations of various historical, cultural, traditional, and religious 'realities' have been have been subtly sequestered - hidden like Easter eggs in a video game. There is a growing set of references to valid, medieval data, contained within and obscured by an intentionally false façade
One cannot find Oresme's cosmos (BNF Fr. 565) in the VMs, if one does not know the details of Oresme's cosmos. Likewise with Melusine and the Fieschi popes and elsewhere. The way in which these disguised representations of historical 'facts' are hidden in these otherwise imaginary illustrations shows that there is an intentionally created puzzle of recognition and recovery in store for the modern investigator hoping to make sense of the VMs illustrations.
One cannot find Oresme's cosmos (BNF Fr. 565) in the VMs, if one does not know the details of Oresme's cosmos. Likewise with Melusine and the Fieschi popes and elsewhere. The way in which these disguised representations of historical 'facts' are hidden in these otherwise imaginary illustrations shows that there is an intentionally created puzzle of recognition and recovery in store for the modern investigator hoping to make sense of the VMs illustrations.