Ugly Duckling

[Linda]

[quote="tavie" pid='63205' dateline='1735836592']
[quote="Mark Knowles" pid='63204' dateline='1735832147']
There is an kind of laziness to some of the illustrations and maybe that was ok as the work was intended to be functionally useful rather than visually appealing. Some of the painting looks kind of like a rushed job.

Also, even if the author(s) could afford to pay professional illustrators they may have been reluctant to do so as that would mean introducing more people to their possibly intended to be secret private manuscript.

I agree on both parts, and will add again that if you make it nice, people might notice it more and be interested in it. So you make it a bit shabby because it doesn't need to be nice to be functional.

Posted by GlennM - Yesterday, 10:10 AM
Could the nymphs be nothing more than doodles drawn by one who was a bit too far into his cups?

I don't think so, there seems to be a rigid structure to them, Koen did a blog post on it, about the facing legs pretty much always being straight...and sometimes the arms are in totally unnatural poses, seems purposeful.