10-10-2016, 04:49 PM
About the full-blown "Alchemical" style in European imagery...
Adam McLean, whose erudition on the subject none could doubt, long ago looked carefully through the manuscript and gave it as his opinion that the imagery was not alchemical imagery of that sort. To judge by his silence on the subject, and his general dismissal of the manuscript, one could say that Lynn Thorndike evidently held the same opinion.
The 'crossed hands' imagery ... I think you will find that apart from the astronomical 'Twins' , imagery of this sort derived from one of four types.
In descending order of age they are (1) Asklepios, (Lat. Aesculapius) with his daughter Hygeia (2) signifier of abduction/rape (3) imagery of Roman betrothal (4) physician taking a patient's pulse.
(2) is not common convention in the medieval Latin tradition.
The classical Roman 'betrothal' will normally show the man holding the marriage document - as in the example cited by Koen.
The interesting thing about the Voynich image is that while now serving as sign of the 'Gemini' month, the gesture is the old Aslepios-Hygeia type, while it is plain that the fifteenth-century copyist interprets it as a 'betrothal' form.
The same habit would become common in Europe from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, though as a rule images of that type in Europe will include the third figure - as the woman's father or the officiant priest.
Adam McLean, whose erudition on the subject none could doubt, long ago looked carefully through the manuscript and gave it as his opinion that the imagery was not alchemical imagery of that sort. To judge by his silence on the subject, and his general dismissal of the manuscript, one could say that Lynn Thorndike evidently held the same opinion.
The 'crossed hands' imagery ... I think you will find that apart from the astronomical 'Twins' , imagery of this sort derived from one of four types.
In descending order of age they are (1) Asklepios, (Lat. Aesculapius) with his daughter Hygeia (2) signifier of abduction/rape (3) imagery of Roman betrothal (4) physician taking a patient's pulse.
(2) is not common convention in the medieval Latin tradition.
The classical Roman 'betrothal' will normally show the man holding the marriage document - as in the example cited by Koen.
The interesting thing about the Voynich image is that while now serving as sign of the 'Gemini' month, the gesture is the old Aslepios-Hygeia type, while it is plain that the fifteenth-century copyist interprets it as a 'betrothal' form.
The same habit would become common in Europe from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, though as a rule images of that type in Europe will include the third figure - as the woman's father or the officiant priest.