VMs f75r - Nymph Holding Spurtle

[Barbrey]

That’s fine, it’s one of the worst things about the VMS that the drawings are sometimes difficult to identify just as real things, let alone symbols. I base my opinion upon the other rainbows in this section, however, which are drawn the same way. I guess it could be argued that none of them are rainbows either?  It would be nice if the colourist had painted more than one or two colours though.

It cannot be stressed enough that, almost certainly, the colors in the VMS are not original.  They were applied centuries after the manuscript was scribed, by someone who had no understanding of the text or the figures -- even less than we do, did not care about accuracy, and had only 3-4 color paints in his/her/its palette, not including white, black, red, or yellow.  Thus, when trying to interpret the figures, one must ignore the colors and try to imagine what the page would have looked like without them. 

And one must also ignore later additions to the outlines themselves. Like the crowns of f72v1 and the "barrels" on f73v...

One form of Tibetan art was a portrait of a deity complete with all details, from horse to weapons and rings and earrings, minus the deity itself.   As a meditation exercise, Tibetan monks were supposed to stare at the painting until they could "see" the deity filling in the void.  Interpreting VMS images is like that exercise, but in reverse... 

All the best, --jorge

Yes the colours and some of those additions you mention are certainly pitfalls in any interpretation. I don’t think you need colours in the VMS to identify rainbows though, the concentric arches are enough for me. 

Pseudo-Dionysus (5th to 6th century Christian philosopher) described something very similar to the Tibetan meditation. It’s called apophatic (or negative) theology and you see it in Western European art but even more so in Eastern European or Byzantine art. The idea is that God is ultimately unknowable and can’t be limited by labels even when those labels are positive such as good, great, etc. What you get, then, is “traces”or “signs” of God or Jesus’s presence (such as spikes in a log!) but not God or Jesus themselves. You also get lots of blank spaces that the viewer can only populate through contemplation. 

The mandorla is a particularly good example of apophatic theology use, an almond-shaped framing device, usually filled by God, Jesus or Mary. There are many blank mandorlas, though, that must be filled in by your imagination with these figures in contemplation of these negative spaces. 

I suspect that the top left rosette,roughly mandorla shaped and ringed by moons signifying life everlasting but containing only a blank space inside is the VMS illustrator’s attempt at apophatic theology.