Assumptions baked into the VMS carbon dating

[Koen G]

I've said this a million times but I'll say it once more: the VM sun face is not standard. The medieval standard is a disk with a smiley face. The sun itself has eyes, a mouth, a nose. In the VM, a separate personification is inserted into the sun. This is not just me nitpicking, it's a big difference. Some time ago I posted a MS where such personifications in celestial bodies had been erased, presumably because they felt too pagan. Giving the sun facial features is fine, but drawing a person who is the Sun is questionable (unless in some cases where it's a Jesus/God image).

You can find full "heads" in the sun in a few contexts:

• Early MSS, still close to classical models
  
• Renaissance, including proto-renaissance works like Taccola.
  
• The moon is more flexible, and some German MSS for example depict it as a veiled woman.
  

The VM sun is not a disk with a face. There is a full personification's head inside the rays. This sun-person, likely male, has a hair style, a chin, a visible ear. It is even separated from the rays by a band with text inside. This is a personification who radiates like the sun. I know I'm being repetitive, just hoping it will stick that this is a different class of depiction from the standard "sun with a face". In Taccola, very similarly, the person in the sun is a clean-shaven young male with a neutral-to-slightly-grumpy expression. It is also separated from the rays by a band, though much smaller and without text.