Rosettes as a ... magic altar

[Rafal]

I find your theory quite convincing. How can we test it? By looking for fortune tellers in 15th century northern Italy? Do we even have a way of finding a register of charlatans or fortune tellers?

Another big question is the connection with the Taccola sketchbook. The charlatan must have had access to it at some point, for at least the sun face and the bridge illustrations. How would a charlatan get hold of such a rare manuscript?

I believe charlatan wasn't personally making the manuscript. My guess is that he paid some students to do it that had access to university libraries or even knew some masters personally. I don't know if they had to know Taccola personally or were some copies of his works already circulating, let's say, 10 years after they were created.

That could explain access to different sources combined with poor drawing skill.

But proving anything may be very difficult.

First, Voynich Manuscript doesn't contain any obvious fortune telling imagery. It it contained such, it would be recognized 100 years ago and it didn't happen. I build my theory on assumption stars = fortune telling by similarity to Losbuch imagery and general connection of "stargazers" with prophesing. But it's not enough and may not be true in some cases.

And finding decent list of charlatans from the 15 century may be hard if not impossible. I guess finding list of charlatans from the 20th century could be hard   They were shady guys doing illegal business in dirty booths.

But it all begins to be logical for me.
Meaningless text? Why not if the goal was to impress and cheat people?
Many people working on the manuscript? It may be a problem for theories that assume some maniac or genius doing it but if it was a practical thing made to earn money that you are paid for it then why not?