Herbal ms Florence 106 (1400 ca)

[MarcoP]

Personally I agree with Jennifer M. Rampling, historian of medieval science, medicine, and alchemy (Yale facsimile):

In the absence of decipherable text, the most promising guide to understanding the written content of the Voynich manuscript is its extensive set of illustrations. Yet these enigmatic images often serve to complicate the mystery further. … Of all the manuscript’s iconographical puzzles, none is more perplexing than the so-called biological or balneological section, with its many illustrations of unclothed female figures sporting within a complex system of waterworks, whether bathing in pools of green liquid or emerging from mysterious arrangements of pipes.

The sequence of the zodiac medallions is the better understood part of the illustrations, and good parallels have been found. But the arrangement of the zodiac pages as a whole (with the radially arranged “nymphs”) is only vaguely paralleled by Alfonso X’s Astromagia and Lapidario, from a different time and (probably) region than the Voynich manuscript.

The “De Balneis” was an influential medical work by the Salerno school and is a decent parallel for some of the Quire13 pools (but not the pipes, as the attached image). Other parallels like Astromagia or Fontana are unique works and not “commonplace” at all. The Alchemical Herbal was widespread in Italy, but it is also mysterious and only partially understood, in particular, its origin is unclear. And there is the fact that all these parallels are only partially similar, with no clear signs of being a direct influence. So I think that Rampling’s view of Voynich images as enigmatic rather than commonplace is fully justified.