RE: Gemini from wedding imagery
ReneZ > 11-09-2018, 09:58 AM
The topic is now appearing in several different places, and inevitably, discussions will be going on in parallel.
I see some very interesting and credible things in it, but also some more speculative and hasty considerations.
For me, it is completely convincing that the crossed arms are intentional, and derive from existing illustrations related to courtly love/marriage and the exchange of rings.
It is also right to search for possible precedents of this, but this cannot be done in just a couple of days.
One important question for the Voynch MS is whether the zodiac cycle as a whole was copied from one source MS, or it was put together from different sources. I daresay that this question cannot be answered yet, and it should be kept open. It would be dangerous to make assumptions about it, and use these assumptions to direct the search for precedents. The Voynich MS draughtsman may have been drawing from memory, combining things he had seen in different places. For the jaguarundi scorpio, there has not yet been any close precedent.
I find the possible precedent of the Hagenau workshop(s) far less convincing.
Of course, a priori, there is nothing against them. They do not create any inconsistency with what has been observed before, related to place or time. However, as far as I have seen:
- they didn't actually create new illustration types, just copied existing ones, with slight modifications. As such, one should also try to find their precedents.
- I have not seen one image of a crossed-arms couple in their output (maybe I overlooked it). This is the key feature that should be relevant.
The fact that there are some images with similar clothing and similar colours cannot be sufficient, because this is likely to be found throughout central Europe during this time.
A more general search is needed, and Marco already found an interesting example in another thread.