70v - Clothing

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Notice that dressed nymphs appear only at Aries and Taurus pages (f71r, f71v). These pages have their duplicates with naked nymphs (f72r1, f72r2). ... I feel that the illustrator first drew the clothed version, maybe only one sheet. Then he changed his mind and switched to naked version. He redid this one sheet and did all the rest naked.

It could be... 

I am still quite puzzled about the order in which the VMS pages were written.  Looking at the style of the nymphs, I think it is clear that the Zodiac nymphs were drawn before the Bio ones. And, among the former, it is clear that the four diagrams from Pisces to Taurus 1 ("Light") were done before the rest.

But the order among those four pages is unclear.  Dresses, tubs, breasts, and other features do not seem to appear and disappear in a linear sequence.  

Page You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Aries 2, "Light") seems more primitive than f70v1 (Aries 1, "Dark").  Most nymphs in Aries 2 are dressed, and most (even the naked ones) have no breasts.  The few breasts could be later additions.  There are other signs...

Pisces has tubs and breasts but no dresses.  By the latter, it should be the most recent of  the four, drawn between Taurus 1 and Taurus 2  But it is the earliest one  in physical order.  If it is the indeed the earliest of the four, then it seems that the Artist tried a 30-nymph schema for Pisces because he had more space on that folio, then went for 2 x 15 schema on the smaller folios for Aries 1 and 2 and Taurus 1 and 2, then went back to 30 per sign with more compact nymphoramas and/or overflow nymphs on top.  I can't decide  ...

All the best, --stolfi