Can it be labeled as art? Let's call them illustrations, images, drawings etc. Thing is that there is a whole range of things going on in the VMs. They can be examined individually, but they do not necessarily predominate, or exist in a vacuum, as they say.
The large plants cover a range values regarding their recognizability. The viola and a few others seem reasonable to me, costmary has an interesting backstory. <If you know it.> But a lot of it doesn't make sense. However, various enthusiastic botanical investigations have rendered numerous results and found names for the vast majority. This is all well and good, but the hangup is the failure to establish any linguistic connections in order to interpret the written texts. Not to single out the botanical section, because no useful linguistic connections have been identified elsewhere either.
And so, we are left with the illustrations. Like the botanical section, much of the rest of the VMs is "difficult" to understand, but there are a few bright spots. Primarily, I suggest the VMs cosmos and the VMs mermaid. Since the publication of the parchment C-14 dates, this has promoted a more intense interest regarding the first half of the 1400s. From hats to sleeves, from quatrefoils to nebuly lines, from cosmic diagrams to religions tradition, history shows that the VMs drawings contain multiple elements of relevant history, if the investigator knows that history.
Take the nymphs of VMs Pisces and Aries (x 2) and their patterned 'tubs'. Do the patterns on the tubs mimic heraldry? [Sort of depends on what the investigator knows about heraldry. Sort of like Newbold's identification of Andromeda would have benefitted from more relevant information on medieval cosmic diagrams. BNF Fr. 565 & Harley 334 might have helped him.]
Just for starters.
The real question is how to recognize what the illustrations reveal unless there is some familiarity with the significant social memes of the era in which the images were created. Or ostensibly created, as the case may be.
Given the range of information borrowed and used in the VMs, there is a potential for the artist having traveled from Paris to Rome, with any points in between. And going outside, to Jerusalem, is not out of the question. Subtle religious inclusions provide certain knowledge regarding and may imply some affiliation with the Catholic Church. I sometimes tend to see the person behind the VMs as a well-educated older person, who might have retired to an abbey and may no longer have been in full firmness of body or mind, shall we say, yet still had the motivation and opportunity to create the VMs.
The large plants cover a range values regarding their recognizability. The viola and a few others seem reasonable to me, costmary has an interesting backstory. <If you know it.> But a lot of it doesn't make sense. However, various enthusiastic botanical investigations have rendered numerous results and found names for the vast majority. This is all well and good, but the hangup is the failure to establish any linguistic connections in order to interpret the written texts. Not to single out the botanical section, because no useful linguistic connections have been identified elsewhere either.
And so, we are left with the illustrations. Like the botanical section, much of the rest of the VMs is "difficult" to understand, but there are a few bright spots. Primarily, I suggest the VMs cosmos and the VMs mermaid. Since the publication of the parchment C-14 dates, this has promoted a more intense interest regarding the first half of the 1400s. From hats to sleeves, from quatrefoils to nebuly lines, from cosmic diagrams to religions tradition, history shows that the VMs drawings contain multiple elements of relevant history, if the investigator knows that history.
Take the nymphs of VMs Pisces and Aries (x 2) and their patterned 'tubs'. Do the patterns on the tubs mimic heraldry? [Sort of depends on what the investigator knows about heraldry. Sort of like Newbold's identification of Andromeda would have benefitted from more relevant information on medieval cosmic diagrams. BNF Fr. 565 & Harley 334 might have helped him.]
Just for starters.
The real question is how to recognize what the illustrations reveal unless there is some familiarity with the significant social memes of the era in which the images were created. Or ostensibly created, as the case may be.
Given the range of information borrowed and used in the VMs, there is a potential for the artist having traveled from Paris to Rome, with any points in between. And going outside, to Jerusalem, is not out of the question. Subtle religious inclusions provide certain knowledge regarding and may imply some affiliation with the Catholic Church. I sometimes tend to see the person behind the VMs as a well-educated older person, who might have retired to an abbey and may no longer have been in full firmness of body or mind, shall we say, yet still had the motivation and opportunity to create the VMs.