The nymphs are possibly inspired from Dante manuscripts

[Rafal]

As for the background of the artist, one potential (of several) ideas I like is that he may have travelled as a student, as many did.

I like "student hypothesis" and some time ago suggested it could be a student (or a group of students) but a "naughty" one, someone in a style of goliards or clerici vagantes who travelled a lot, had poor grades at school but was street-smart :

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I'd like to add one comment about the author skill and style. People often evaluated Voynich Manuscript on Medieval vs Renaissance dimension. Even in recent thread we had the words of Panofski who considered VM to be "provincial" as it didn't show much traces of Renaissance.

I wouldn't agree that the author was someone unfamiliar with recent trends. We have strong hints that he knew the works of Taccola which are rather Renaissance or Renaissance forerunner. They contain shading, perspective and all this fancy stuff that changed between our epochs. 

If we consider that carbon dating of VM ends in 1438 and Taccola manuscript appeared in late 1420s then our author made VM when Taccola work was very fresh and new. So he had access to recent styles and fashions.

If he knew Taccola, why he didn't draw like Taccola? The answer is simple for me - he couldn't. He wasn't skilled enough. If we took a random, modern person and tell him to draw something like VM it will be probably equally poor even if our man has seen a lot of better stuff in his life.

Voynich drawings are "medieval" because medieval style is easier, not because our artist didn't knew Renaissance (he knew, he knew Taccola).

By the way, we have no idea if his style got better later or it was his limit. We only knew his skill at the moment he drew Voynich.