09-09-2016, 08:26 PM
Anton - I think the point is the following:
Questions to a person like Touwaide are very specific: does this manuscript have anything in common with the manuscripts you know everything about.
Answer: yes, BUT.....
Questions to people who are supposed to provenance imagery without making (expensive) mistakes have to approach an object with a very wide, open lens. Hence, when I asked a museum curator if the style of the VM feline reminded her of anything, she sent me an image of a Syrian mosaic. I did not guide the question in any way, because both Syria and the period of the mosaic had not been on my "Voynich radar" before.
So the thing is, when an expert comments about the VM, we have to keep in mind which question they are answering.
The opinion of a Touwaide can be extremely valuable, if he includes the precise reasons why he thinks the VM is like X manuscript.
The opinion of someone like Diane is also extremely valuable because we get a broad view of the different cultural influences at work.
For me it doesn't have to be one or the other. A manuscript with different cultural influences is bound to have traces of the culture and time in which it was ultimately copied. Enter Touwaide. But it is such a shame to stop there and not take a good look under the hood. And for that I rely on the opinions of people who, by their professional experience, have seen and worked with artifacts from a wide cultural and historical range.
Questions to a person like Touwaide are very specific: does this manuscript have anything in common with the manuscripts you know everything about.
Answer: yes, BUT.....
Questions to people who are supposed to provenance imagery without making (expensive) mistakes have to approach an object with a very wide, open lens. Hence, when I asked a museum curator if the style of the VM feline reminded her of anything, she sent me an image of a Syrian mosaic. I did not guide the question in any way, because both Syria and the period of the mosaic had not been on my "Voynich radar" before.
So the thing is, when an expert comments about the VM, we have to keep in mind which question they are answering.
The opinion of a Touwaide can be extremely valuable, if he includes the precise reasons why he thinks the VM is like X manuscript.
The opinion of someone like Diane is also extremely valuable because we get a broad view of the different cultural influences at work.
For me it doesn't have to be one or the other. A manuscript with different cultural influences is bound to have traces of the culture and time in which it was ultimately copied. Enter Touwaide. But it is such a shame to stop there and not take a good look under the hood. And for that I rely on the opinions of people who, by their professional experience, have seen and worked with artifacts from a wide cultural and historical range.