(03-05-2026, 03:15 PM)Bernd wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All accessible Sfera copies in the database post-date Taccola's Palatino 766, but some have quite taccolaesque illustrations. I would assume they were influenced by Tacola and not the other way round. Very few Sfera copies have the sun-star. But we'd have to find older Sfera copies to see if the sun-star comes from there, or from Taccola. So far I haven't come across the mention that Taccula used Dati's works as reference. There are 3 contemporary Siena copies listed in the database, but none appears to be digitized.
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Urb.lat.1754 from 1481 contains a lot of illustrations that remind me of Taccola. The landscape and - the famous Taccola tree. But no sun-star, though the sun has rays dripping down like in Taccola's image. I'm fairly certain the artist of copied from Taccola, and not the other way round. Also Palatino766 contains much more potential VM reference imagery as Koen has showed.
Ricc.2261 also has a sun star but it's dating range is 1426-75.
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One possibility I'd like to explore is that the VM artist had access to an early Florentine Strozzi library which contained Palatino 766 or a rare copy of it, as well as all the other famous works the VM drew its inspiration from, including De Sfera. I think it's possible the VM artists copied the star chart you showed, the castles and the green waterbodies in Balneo from a Sfera copy he had access to.
The thing that's off in all of these is the stars.. the closest I've found to almost perfect replicas was one of the Taccolas but I can't find back the right thread...
How do you know these aren't contemporaneous? We don't know the production date of VMS. The one I linked to above says mid 15th century..