(05-01-2017, 11:10 AM)Sam G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I can see that they could be seed heads. How common is it for seed heads to actually have blue seeds?
Are seed heads ever colored this way in other types of botanical illustrations?
Compared to many old herbal manuscripts, the VMS colors are more true to life, even though the palette is quite limited (red, blue, green, and a faded yellow plus the brown from the gall ink). It doesn't match some of the best herbals, of course, but it is more naturalistic than those that are highly stylized. In the parts that are painted by the more careful hand, the greens have been intermixed with the yellow and blue to create different shades of green. The blue is sometimes watered down to create a lighter blue, a "wash" effect. The red and blue are less often mixed.
In the very stylized medieval herbals, plant parts can be almost any color and sometimes almost any shape, and the only way one can recognize the plant or the part is by the tradition it follows or by the labels.
The VMS is not entirely naturalistic. Some of the plants appear stylized or possibly mythical. With a limited palette, I get the feeling that blue was sometimes chosen simply to designate "dark" (a range of dark colors). Whether it might have a symbolic meaning in the plants you posted, I'm not sure. The squared-off heads seem rather stylized but the blue has been watered down slightly to create a different shade, indicating some attention to detail.
I should mention though, that the possible proportion of plants with seed heads (if that's what they are) may be higher in the VMS than in other herbal manuscripts. Many herbals show only flowers, or mostly flowers, and sometimes no flowers at all. Some herbals only show the parts of the plant that are medicinal (which makes identification difficult without the accompanying text) and some show enough of the plant to identify it.
I have seen a very small number of plant images where the illustrator included both the flowers and the seed heads (showing the plant at two different times of the year to help identification or possibly to indicate that both parts were medicinal), but this is uncommon in the middle ages and didn't become common practice until about the 17th century. When it does happen, it tends to be plants that have unusual spiny, or animalistic seed heads that stand out in a person's mind, like Devil's claw. Thus, what we're seeing in the blue seedlike parts of the VMS seems to be slightly different from the more common traditions.