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[split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy"
- [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy"
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RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy"
MarcoP > 22-04-2017, 06:57 PM
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RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy"
-JKP- > 22-04-2017, 07:00 PM
(22-04-2017, 06:57 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have been unable to understand where this image is from. I guess it's a page from the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., produced by Giovanni De' Grassi, who also worked at the illustrations of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Excellent!
It looks like the oak is playing host to a number of different kinds of grape vines. The way the trunk is thin and long and the leaves large and upright is a good parallel to the way many of the herbal oak/ivy-themed images are drawn.
I notice the tree in Casanatense is explicitly identified as an oak tree (Quercus arbore).
I have a feeling the host-shrub in Egerton 747 is something other than oak (it looks more like Hawthorne or something smaller and shrubbier), but one can see how a later illustrator might interpret it (or re-invent it) as oak. -
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy"
Koen G > 22-04-2017, 07:19 PM
(22-04-2017, 06:19 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are some tragic stories of manuscript collectors losing whole trunkloads of books in stormy seas (and almost losing their lives, as well), items they collected while in the south (including parts of Africa) that they were bringing back north.
This is something I always keep in the back of my mind. What we have left now is only part of what was once available. There is also the fact that manuscripts on a different material than parchment, like papyrus, would have needed regular copying because the material degraded when used. This is why most papyrus fragments are often preserved by accident, because they were left in a dry environment for example. The Johnson papyrus and some similar fragments offer a tantalizing glimpse of what may once have been more common.
What I like about wall decorations and mosaics is that people would have seen them every day, in some cases they would literally have them in the pavement. These images are for the ages, so to speak, and may have influenced illuminators at any point in time. -
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy"
-JKP- > 22-04-2017, 07:26 PM
Koen Gh.
What I like about wall decorations and mosaics is that people would have seen them every day, in some cases they would literally have them in the pavement. These images are for the ages, so to speak, and may have influenced illuminators at any point in time.
I feel the same way. Mosiacs in bathhouses and public squares, and carvings on churches, for example, were visible all day, every day, whereas only certain people had access to manuscripts and, even then, viewing time might be limited (as in chained libraries). -
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy"
Koen G > 02-05-2017, 06:30 PM
You know you've been reading too much Voynich when... you see a fake potted plant and you just have to snap a picture.
So yeah, I know this is a fake plant, but it's a well made one. Is this some kind of ficus with aerial roots? -
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy"
-JKP- > 02-05-2017, 07:34 PM
(02-05-2017, 06:30 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.You know you've been reading too much Voynich when... you see a fake potted plant and you just have to snap a picture.
So yeah, I know this is a fake plant, but it's a well made one. Is this some kind of ficus with aerial roots?
LOL! There's the helical twining.
The leaves are a bit dark, hard to see, but they do look like Ficus benjamina (the "houseplant" ficus). Ficus benjamina is kind of a delicate plant, finicky, needs just the right amount of sun and water to be happy and they don't like being moved from one environment to another.
They can be turned into bonsai by trimming the roots and branches (very carefully and slowly over many years) but I'm not aware of any of the Ficus species with this kind of leaf that have aerial roots. I'd be more inclined to think this was modeled after one where the branches were trimmed off and it was wound round the post as it grew, but even then, the texture and wiggliness of the stalks isn't quite right.
Here's another thought... okay the leaves are fake, modeled after ficus, but could the "stalks" be taken from an actual vine, like a grape vine (grape vines are wiggly, they grow fast and they are regularly pruned and thus would be available to florists and fake-tree makers for something like this). -
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy"
Koen G > 03-05-2017, 09:04 AM
You are right, the wood does look real - probably also the most effective way to make fake trees is to use parts of real ones.
Next time I see it I will have to take it apart - for science! -
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy"
Diane > 08-05-2017, 07:52 PM
-JKP-
re 'tragic stories'... One concerned manuscripts purchased from Baghdad (during the Caliphate) by people in India and Sri Lanka and which were among those collected by an Englishman in the late 19thC, only to have the ship founder.
I've mentioned it a couple of times, most recently as note 12 in a post called 'Clear Vision 6: Notes' (5th.Nov.2016)
Koen - We've already had a few thread-splits about the Trinity College MS (and maybe the way the thread evolved means it should be in imagery, not codicology and palaeography), but would it be too much to have a separate thread again to discuss the Greek-Hebrew section with its unprecedented and apparently non-European plants? The conversation so far as been about the usual Latin European texts, to which that section is evidently not related.
I'd like to talk about its differences from the Latin works - and maybe learn more about those 'plant stones'. I've never heard of them before, and no-one I've spoken to has, either. Have you? -
RE: [split] f35v parallels "oak and ivy"
Koen G > 22-02-2018, 02:27 PM
Here's a vine+host situation from the Leiden Dioscorides, f097a. What drew my attention are the loose winding of the vine and the similar "berry" clusters. I'm not sure if this is really ivy, it's got some large white flowers.