Water, earth and air

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Naming depends on how you want to define a wolkenband. Is it only a simple line with singular knobs and cosmic connections? Is it any old nebuly line around a green pool? Is it embellished like the VMs Central Rosette?

Again, a "nebuly line" is a term of heraldry that specifies a wavy line with the peaks and throughs swollen into knobs.  AFAIK it does not specify any additional detail, just a simple line (although it may be realized with fancifications, I suppose).  The examples I have seen have a straight midline crossing the enclosing area; I have not seen any bent into a closed loop.  I don't know what it is supposed to "mean", but it does not seem to be a Earth-Heavens boundary.

A "wolkenband" is a more elaborate band that in theory is supposed to represent the edge of a cloud (and sometimes still looks more like that); but by the 1400s it had long evolved into a specific stylized and symbolic design element, like the halos around the heads of saints or the pointy rays on the sun.  The overall shape is like a nebuly line, but the knobs have a thick edge with little knobs, and the thing is shaded and painted as if it was a frilled 3D ribbon.  (because of that stylization I prefer to call it "wolkenband" than "cloud-band".) The band is usually curved, often closed, and it definitely means a boundary between Earthly and Heavnly domains, when they are both depicted in the same image.

The VMS has several wavy lines with swollen knobs, but most of them are neither nebuly lines (because there is no heraldry involved) nor wolkenbands (because they are missing the key details and are not  Earth-Heavens boundaries).  They are mostly in the Bio section, and there they clearly are meant to be edges of pools or flowing water.  The exceptions that I know of are the Central and East Rosettes -- where they look just as they should, and may be serving that function.

We now know that the "galaxy" f68v3 was supposed to be one too, but was so badly copied that it would not be recognized if it wasn't for the Oresme examples.

I think these terms are not (and should not be) used to refer to just any densely patterned band, like those of f86v4 or of the other seven Rosettes.

All the best, --stolfi