Possibility of Fake Drawings/Paintings and a Delayed Timeline.

[Jorge_Stolfi]

What if the paintings and drawings in the VMS are not of anything relating to the actual meaning of the text?

My personal theory is that the Author had copied the Herbal texts from some "foreign" herbal, but not the figures.  He only had a drawings of a few parts, like the root of one plant, the leaves of another, etc.   Some of there are in the Pharma section.

In order to make the book more appealing to Europeans, the Author had to provide drawings of the whole plants for the Herbal texts.  So he instructed the Scribe to copy the details from Pharma when available, and make up the rest of the plant, using some European herbals as "inspiration".

So the drawings of the plants are mostly fake, although each is supposed to be the plant discussed in the accompanying text.

All the best, --jorge