Quire and bifolio patterns for strangely-aligned text

[pfeaster]

At a resolution of 400 dpi, your version of the connection between sheet You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and sheet You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is confirmed.

Thanks for this!  These scans show quite a bit more of both pages than the ones at "Voyage the Voynich," apart from the issue of resolution -- it looks like I might need to revisit the question of where to go for best available images.

Minimally, this appears to show that, at the time You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. were drawn/written, the margin between them wasn't physically concealed by any intervening bifolios.  I suppose someone could still have had a whole pre-formed quire on hand while working, but only loosely assembled, so that further-in bifolios could be shifted aside for convenience while working on individual pages, regardless of sequence or relationship.  But if the content meaningfully spans both pages, that would seem to imply that f76v/f83r really was conceived as a "centerfold," like f78v/f81r (with its telltale pair of left-to-right-linking streams).

From your reconstruction, it's easy to interpret the stream from the left as directed towards the nymph on the right, even though it doesn't extend all the way to the nymph as I'd suspected it might.  The apparent "dribbles" falling from the nymph's hand directly underneath could perhaps further support that interpretation.  But since this is what we were potentially expecting to see, confirmation bias might be rearing its ugly head -- there are other cases of streams seeming to lead nowhere in particular (e.g. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. at upper left), so maybe the top right figure on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. was intended similarly, and its placement relative to the nymph at the top left of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is just a coincidence.  Thoughts?

If we were to conclude that f78v/f81r and f76v/f83r were both originally "centerfolds" in some non-trivial sense, I suppose there could be a few ways to interpret that, including:

1. The bifolios now belonging to the "oversized" Quire 13 were originally arranged into two or more separate quires, and f78/f81 and f76/f83 occupied the center positions in two of them.

2. All the bifolios in Quire 13 were prepared individually, and any arrangement of them into quires happened later, without regard for their original relationships or order or layout.