[Zodiac Rating] VIRGO

[eggyk]

I had some "aha moment" and realized this depiction is most probably connected to Holy Mary. The colour of Virgin Mary is blue, see for example here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
This symbolism is connected to royalty as it was born in the Byzantine empire and blue was there "the color of an empress". It is also a color of sky/heaven and Mary is the Queen of Heaven (Regina Caeli) so we have a double connection there. Also in expensive manuscripts Mary was painted with ultramarine which was a very expensive paint and therefore a symbol of "prestige".

Through Virgin Mary blue color became connected to other virgins and became a symbol of purity and innocence. "Lady in blue" is just an archetypical virgin.

So maybe Voynich Virgo should be compared not only to Zodiacs but also some other, chosen works where similarity is high (like the white collar in pictures below)?

Yes, absolutely! This is something I noticed when looking at all of the french books of hours in particular. Basically all of them are chock full of the virgin mary in flowing blue dresses. Mix this with extremely common poses (like holding both hands forward like in your second example) and you end up with hundreds of similar examples. 

I picked a 15thC book of hours from the list (completely randomly) and there are reasonably close examples:
       

There are also really commonly "virgo like" women depicted constantly, which out of context could absolutely be a virgo depiction:
           

Not to mention the staggering amount of libra entries that are effectively held by virgo:
       

When and where this "lady in blue" motif was chosen to depict the zodiac sign virgo is one of the most important points we're trying to work out. So all in all, if the image isn't coming from a context related to the zodiac, it would have to be extremely similar (or include multiple rare qualities, such as jagged sleeves, a star, a voynichy blue hat) to justify being added and rated as an entry on the spreadsheet. Otherwise we're talking about rating 1000s of extra examples.  

That's one of the biggest issues with rating virgo to be honest: at the end of the day it's just a woman wearing a dress, in a relatively common dress colour, in a relatively common body position. But what you're saying is also completely correct, namely that the inspiration could definitely have been drawn from those non-zodiac sources.

Edit: That second image you added is from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.