The Rosettes Page - March 2024

[merrimacga]

If one accepts that all the sections of the VM are related and the text as a whole has a unifying theme, then the Rosettes page must have a related meaning. Given that the VM focuses predominantly on plants and pharmacopeia followed by astronomy/astrology and balneology, it seems unlikely the Rosettes would be a geographical map or have a religious connotation. If one disregards the castles depicted and zooms out, it looks more like an elaborate process map. It seems to contain pharmaceutical, balneological and astrological elements suggestive of an holistic production process wherein the center is the pharmaceutical end product with the nine surrounding images as elements that feed into each other and into that central production in various ways with additional outlying elements that have some importance as well. It repeats some image elements found elsewhere in the text suggesting the Rosettes may be some sort of diagram uniting and representing the rest of the text. To me it strongly suggests a naturalist philosophy demonstrating the interconnectivity of various elements and their dependence on each other.

Just a theory though. I haven't done any research yet.