Aries Design: Truly Aries, or actually based on Capricorn?

[eggyk]

That is not an artistic tradition.  It is one of the characteristic differences between goat and sheep.  I leaned just last month that

• Goats will stand on the hind legs to reach leaves and branches.  Sheep will not.
  
• Goats have a prehensile tongue that they can extend out to grab bush leaves. Sheep can't do that.
  

So the pictures of Capricorn doing these things, and Ares mt doing them, are merely good realistic drawings.  Although the artist may have been a city boy who did not know those differences, but just happened to copy their Capricorn and Aries from a correct drawing.

All the best, --stolfi

It's certainly both. It's true what you say about goats vs sheep and the tendencies of goats to reach leaves and branches, and that these capricorns are "correct" in that sense. 

However, the chosen depictions of capricorns overwhelmingly did not use this motif. Out of ~420 sources (~200 from france), only ~25 used it. And a large majority of those were from northern france in the 15th century. If this was generally expected due to people simply drawing the animal correctly, we would expect to see many german examples showing the same thing. We don't. 

So I would cautiously say that if VMS aries was indeed copied from such a depiction, it is more likely that it was from a northern french -or northern french inspired- source.

Ok, this is fascinating... But reading the rest of the spreadsheet, my inference is that the remaining symbols are overwhelmingly found in Germany..ne c'est Pas?

Well.. a lot of work still needs doing in this area; my metasheets are incomplete and the scoring isn't finished yet. I don't think it's that simple.

My vibe of the situation (wip) is something like the following: 

Pisces 
leans nowhere? Stars are more likely in germany. 
Aries 
leans nowhere (slightly french based on horns?), capricorn leans France N. 
Taurus
leans towards the alemmanic speaking areas of alsace and southern germany (spreading into switzerland and austria somewhat)
Gemini 
leans everywhere a little bit (body positions lean french, but the best appropriately clothed adult geminis lean to Czechia or Southern germany)
Cancer 
lobster style leans strongly to Alsace and southern Germany (double lobster absent as a tradition anywhere)
Leo 
leans nowhere (body position leans more germany I guess?)
Virgo 
leans towards Southern Germany on average for the body posture and the likelihood of a star, but the best lone entry is from czechia. France contains far more ladies in blue dresses with golden trim (virgo + virgin mary) but often wrongly positioned.
Libra 
idk
Scorpio
Lizard scorpios lean strongly to northern france or england, although southern german scorpios from the 13th/14th century had a weird turtle/ flying lizard thing going on. 
Sagittarius with crossbow 
leans overwhelingly to germany/austria. Some alsace sources are good too. 

Tl;dr, many signs fit with the broad alemmanic speaking areas stretching from alsace to austria, where many sources were similar in style. Capricorn and scorpio are far better in northern france. None of the signs fit Italy, especially scorpio. Actually, the highest rated Italian signs tend to just be from Astrolabium planum (printed by a southern german).