28-04-2026, 01:14 PM
Any student of art history (and there don't seem to be many here) is familiar with Panofsky's method of the three levels of interpretation of artistic images: pre-iconographic, iconographic and iconological. Each of them involves a deeper exploration to clarify what we see.
Leaving aside the iconological aspect, which would be the cultural study of the period, we can apply the Panofsky method to the zodiacal section of the Voynich.The first level, pre-iconographic, would be a careful description of what we see; for example, and in a schematic way, we see women each holding a star in each of the circles of the zodiac.
If we move on to the second level, the iconographic one, we enter fully into the field of symbols and allegories, which requires a certain knowledge on the part of the interpreter. What I do then is compare those figures with others from the same period and geographical area. And what I learn is that the human figures served to represent ideas or objects, which in this way came to life.
A contemporary example is a well-known miniature from Christine de Pisan's La cité des dames. In that image, next to the author, Christine, I see three crowned women, each carrying an object. They are allegorical figures, and each object represents a virtue: reason, rectitude, and justice. In other words, women only serve to give life to the objects they carry and that represent virtues. It is the same iconographic procedure as the female zodiacal figures of the Voynich, who hold a star to which they give life, which signifies a representation of astral influence.
Leaving aside the iconological aspect, which would be the cultural study of the period, we can apply the Panofsky method to the zodiacal section of the Voynich.The first level, pre-iconographic, would be a careful description of what we see; for example, and in a schematic way, we see women each holding a star in each of the circles of the zodiac.
If we move on to the second level, the iconographic one, we enter fully into the field of symbols and allegories, which requires a certain knowledge on the part of the interpreter. What I do then is compare those figures with others from the same period and geographical area. And what I learn is that the human figures served to represent ideas or objects, which in this way came to life.
A contemporary example is a well-known miniature from Christine de Pisan's La cité des dames. In that image, next to the author, Christine, I see three crowned women, each carrying an object. They are allegorical figures, and each object represents a virtue: reason, rectitude, and justice. In other words, women only serve to give life to the objects they carry and that represent virtues. It is the same iconographic procedure as the female zodiacal figures of the Voynich, who hold a star to which they give life, which signifies a representation of astral influence.