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Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
- Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
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RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Aurara84 > 24-05-2018, 09:46 PM
(24-05-2018, 08:50 PM)MarcoP Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All image-only speculation remains rather sterile until we make progress on the language:
The ball's in your court then! That's something I cannot have a perspective on. Although I will say, the script is visually very beautiful and so carefully done, much more carefully than many of the drawings. Any consensus on whether they're by the same hand? -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Koen G > 24-05-2018, 09:59 PM
(24-05-2018, 08:11 PM)Aurara84 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There are elements of some of the drawings that imply the author had a good understanding of the underlying structure of both plants and bodies, but the execution is rather shoddy.
You are very observant
It's true, some things are really well drawn, while others look weird even for a non-standard medieval work.
For example, many nymphs' arms look like weird rubber appendages. But then the horizontal proportions of their bodies (head to body, knee to navel etc) are really quite consistent. And as you say, some faces are quite well drawn. Circles are drawn with care (just look at the large foldout) while lines are almost never straight - there are hardly any squares, triangles etc.
I think many of the large plant drawings are actually well done, but they are ruined by the paint job. This is why some researchers even prefer to ignore color altogether because the painting is so irregular, and some of the thicker paint may have been added later.
BUT then again, on some pages the paint job is decent! Just look at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , the leaves on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and so on. There are many examples. Now compare this to the sloppy painting on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for example. Just to say, it's complicated... -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Aurara84 > 24-05-2018, 11:20 PM
(24-05-2018, 09:59 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think many of the large plant drawings are actually well done, but they are ruined by the paint job. This is why some researchers even prefer to ignore color altogether because the painting is so irregular, and some of the thicker paint may have been added later.
BUT then again, on some pages the paint job is decent! Just look at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , the leaves on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and so on. There are many examples. Now compare this to the sloppy painting on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for example. Just to say, it's complicated...
I've just been reading the fascinating thread on colour annotations and the paint job in general (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.)
Interesting to note the difference in seeming importance and/or origins of the colours chosen for the 'bathing' section (or plant biology pages if you're me
) compared to the large plant illustrations. And I hadn't studied it hard enough to pick up on the pointers that there was possibly more than one colourer.
By the way. I really appreciate you all taking the time to engage with my (amateur) questions. There's so much fascinating discussion going on on this site and I'm going to enjoy reading through more of it.
Already the colour annotations have grabbed my imagination... medieval paint-by-numbers!
I realise I probably have quite different motivations for being here compared to most. I would love to see the VM decoded and it's purpose/content become clearer, but as a visual artist I am also enamoured with the multiplicity of possibilities it affords at present.
I hope no one minds my newbie comments cropping up on other posts occasionally.
I just wanted to be clear I know I know nothing! And I appreciate being included in the conversation.
Plus obvs I need to prove my plant biology textbook theory
Laura
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RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Koen G > 25-05-2018, 02:26 AM
No worries Laura, most of us love to show off our VM knowledge so just ask away
With theories it's like Marco says though, it's difficult to escape the speculation stage based on imagery alone. Especially when it comes to quire 13, where there are really as many interpretations as there are people. -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Antonio García Jiménez > 25-05-2018, 06:00 PM
Very good ideas Laura!
Althoug, I think there aren't real women in the Voynich. They are the personification of the stars. What you call life-force of the women, I call the virtue that the stars give to medicinal herbs. You will have observed that some nymphs weare a crown. They aren't queens; it is a form of saying its character of astral spirits. I think this idea is more medieval -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Aurara84 > 26-05-2018, 02:22 AM
(25-05-2018, 06:00 PM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Very good ideas Laura!
Althoug, I think there aren't real women in the Voynich. They are the personification of the stars. What you call life-force of the women, I call the virtue that the stars give to medicinal herbs. You will have observed that some nymphs weare a crown. They aren't queens; it is a form of saying its character of astral spirits. I think this idea is more medieval
I've just been reading more about this and it seems like it fits well both with the manuscript and the medieval context in which it was written. I suppose this could still fit with my reading of the illustrations in a way, although perhaps I'm just trying to force the two together because I don't want to give up on the theory of it being about how plants work! (I suppose in the 15th Century the scientific study of plants was very intertwined with 'magical thinking' / religion though - I don't suppose you could have one without the other, or even, that they were the same thing). Thanks for commenting, I'm still reading so many ideas here which are new to me and trying to assimilate it all. It's going to take me a while! -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
R. Sale > 26-05-2018, 10:00 PM
Perhaps it is not the people as plants, but the barrels as pots. With an artistic background, these tub patterns might be compared with certain, traditional heraldic examples such as paley, bendy, barry, chevrony and so on from heraldica.org or other sources.
Rather than images that need to wait till the ability to interpret the text has been achieved, perhaps the illustrations will guide the investigation to the segments of text that are needed to begin that process of interpretation. -
RE: Women as allegory for the life force of plants - or just a plant biology lesson?
Aurara84 > 27-05-2018, 09:37 AM
(26-05-2018, 10:00 PM)R. Sale Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Perhaps it is not the people as plants, but the barrels as pots. With an artistic background, these tub patterns might be compared with certain, traditional heraldic examples such as paley, bendy, barry, chevrony and so on from heraldica.org or other sources.
Rather than images that need to wait till the ability to interpret the text has been achieved, perhaps the illustrations will guide the investigation to the segments of text that are needed to begin that process of interpretation.
That's an interesting perspective - the tub patterns had caught my attention as they seem to disassociate the tubs with ordinary baths/barrels. I thought the various patterns on the tubs could have similarities with patterns we find on parts of some of the plants. And on f70v2 (Pisces), the way the inner circle of people are emerging from horizontal tubs makes them look more like sections of tubes to me. My original post mainly referred to the women pictured 'bathing' in Quire 13 as the zodiac pages seem to me (with my limited knowledge of medieval philosophy) less open to interpretation - or to my interpretation, at least!
I definitely don't think that the women represent real people, or the plants themselves. Some kind of animistic life force, perhaps not distinct to the plants themselves, maybe coming from the stars and bringing with them their associated virtues, as others have suggested (and thereby animating the plant). I still feel there's a stronger thematic link between the bathing pages and the large plants than is usually implied.