09-01-2026, 11:00 PM
(09-01-2026, 08:04 PM)R. Sale wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The plain version is used in heraldry. Variations are found in the depiction of religious images and in cosmic diagrams
I believe that the latter are called "wolkenbands" or "cloud-bands", right? AFAIK there is no relation between the two; they arose in very different domains and mean (or not) very different things.
The cloud-bands are clearly symbolic, not pictorial. They have only a very vague resemblance to the edges of real clouds, but are usually very much similar across manuscripts. They are an established scribal/artistc "idiom", like the halos around saints' heads, and the pointy rays on images of the sun and stars.
The VMS has instances of both. Cloud-bands occur in the Cosmo section (including the central island of the big fold-out f85v2) and seem to be used for their "official" purpose, namely to indicate the boundary between earthly and heavenly domains on the same drawing.
"Nebuly" lines, on the other hand, seem to be used mostly for the edges of ponds and pools in the Bio section. The edge of the starry section of the "spiral nebula" is a doubly-traced nebuly line. Neither use suggests a heraldry connection. And I suspect that some, if not all, of these "nebuly" lines are late additions...
All the best, --stolfi