Thanks Koen, I was hoping of exactly this imput from you! 
When I started working on the faces, I was convinced of a strong correlation to scribal hands but as it looks now, things are more complicated.
I generally agree with your evolutionary time-line of faces, but I struggle to explain the ups and downs in quality (which is also found in plants). The round-faced early Zodiac figures and the single root face in Pharma are very well executed and of good quality. The early Zodiac nymphs come in a variety of dynamic poses while the later ones are more rigid and often poorly drawn. Why is there such a decline throughout the zodiac? An exception appears to be the Sagittarius crossbowman which is also in early zodiac style with broader lines than the large ugly and skewed nymphs that accompany him. The style does not look congruent.
I had estimated the hand#1 4-figure diagram in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to be among the earliest drawing attempt of figures. Though the persons are large, the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. artwork is heinous even for VM standards. The hand#2 4-figure diagram of f85r2 with the persons painted blue is of much better quality, closer to early zodiac.
It can be argued that the artist got tired of drawing all the zodiac nymphs or that some pages were considered more important than others but is the bad artwork really sloppiness or lack of skill? I can't say. but I think we must consider that the VM was drawn in several layers and not all elements on a page were necessarily added at the same time.
One observation I made - if we assume an evolution from A to B plants and from early to late zodiac, we notice a trend from round organic to more rigid stylized drawings. Both in nymphs or plants. While unusual and counter-intuitive, this may be a development of the artist's own unique style that might as well be a fashion. Herbals also show a reductionist trend from the highly realistic works of late antiquity to the schematic and simple plants drawings in many late medieval works. Something like the transition from the neoclassicist photo-realism of late 19th century paintings to more abstract modern art.
I think the marginalia figures are extremely interesting. I agree that there is a strong similarity both in writing and imagery on the bifolio You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - f66r. Lots of rare singly glyphs and quite badly drawn figures. It's not clear if the figure (as on the last page) is really associated to the german-gibberish text but if so, it would mean it was made at the same time as the VM.
Things to work on:
compare the artwork across bifolia
compare quality of text with quality of drawings on each page
(06-06-2025, 10:10 AM)Koen G wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I wrote a long post here detailing my thoughts, but then deleted it because I'm not certain of anything.Now that's a bit harsh to yourself. There is not much regarding the VM we are truly certain of. I think it is good to discuss ideas and observations, even if they turn out to be wrong. There's a lot to learn especially from that.
When I started working on the faces, I was convinced of a strong correlation to scribal hands but as it looks now, things are more complicated.
I generally agree with your evolutionary time-line of faces, but I struggle to explain the ups and downs in quality (which is also found in plants). The round-faced early Zodiac figures and the single root face in Pharma are very well executed and of good quality. The early Zodiac nymphs come in a variety of dynamic poses while the later ones are more rigid and often poorly drawn. Why is there such a decline throughout the zodiac? An exception appears to be the Sagittarius crossbowman which is also in early zodiac style with broader lines than the large ugly and skewed nymphs that accompany him. The style does not look congruent.
I had estimated the hand#1 4-figure diagram in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to be among the earliest drawing attempt of figures. Though the persons are large, the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. artwork is heinous even for VM standards. The hand#2 4-figure diagram of f85r2 with the persons painted blue is of much better quality, closer to early zodiac.
It can be argued that the artist got tired of drawing all the zodiac nymphs or that some pages were considered more important than others but is the bad artwork really sloppiness or lack of skill? I can't say. but I think we must consider that the VM was drawn in several layers and not all elements on a page were necessarily added at the same time.
One observation I made - if we assume an evolution from A to B plants and from early to late zodiac, we notice a trend from round organic to more rigid stylized drawings. Both in nymphs or plants. While unusual and counter-intuitive, this may be a development of the artist's own unique style that might as well be a fashion. Herbals also show a reductionist trend from the highly realistic works of late antiquity to the schematic and simple plants drawings in many late medieval works. Something like the transition from the neoclassicist photo-realism of late 19th century paintings to more abstract modern art.
I think the marginalia figures are extremely interesting. I agree that there is a strong similarity both in writing and imagery on the bifolio You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - f66r. Lots of rare singly glyphs and quite badly drawn figures. It's not clear if the figure (as on the last page) is really associated to the german-gibberish text but if so, it would mean it was made at the same time as the VM.
Things to work on:
compare the artwork across bifolia
compare quality of text with quality of drawings on each page
(06-06-2025, 01:28 PM)Jorge_Stolfi wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The scanned images may give casual viewers a false sense of scale. The height of each page is actually ~23.5 cm. Thus the drawings are smaller than one may think, and the traces are quite thin -- 0.1 mm or so on the drawings, a bit more on the text. The face of a typical nymph is only ~3mm wide and ~5 mm tall. Could you draw consistent faces of that size? With a quill pen, on a rough vellum?That's true but the style often is remarkably consistent within pages or topic, independent from size. That is what I have posted above! Interestingly face quality also is not really associated to size. There are badly drawn large and well drawn small faces.