The question whether herbs in any herbal were drawn from nature or not has always been one of the key questions in the study of illustrated herbals. Helmut, maybe you have seen:
Felix Baumann, Das Erbario Carrarese und die Bildtradition des Tractatus de herbis, Bern, 1974. (*)
If not, I can recommend it (obviously to all German readers). It closely analyses this question mainly for this herbal, which has very accurately painted herbs.
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He concludes that the illustrations in this MS can be subdivided into different types:
- observation from nature
- observation from pressed (dried) samples
- following a schema, with some details from nature
Of course, the quality of these illustrations is greatly superior to those in the Voynich MS, and they have been executed (painted, not drawn) by an artist. This herbal is bit of an exception to the traditions prevalent in the early 15th century. However, the author also looks at other herbals.
The main problem in understanding these illustrations is that for a modern person, illustrations automatically and naturally have the purpose of accurately representing the object. Assuming this purpose for illustrated medieval herbals is quite a big assumption.
In the early 15th century there was hardly any awareness of which features are determining the identity of a plant. The typical example for this type of question is whether the leaves are opposite or alternate. Even if a drawing has clearly one or the other, this does not mean that this is an accurate reflection of the intended plant, and it can happen easily that a drawing has a mixture of them.
It is not impossible that the person making the Voynich MS plant drawings was accurate, but this would be quite an exception for the time.
This is of course independent from the question of drawing from nature, because it is entirely possible to make bad drawings from nature.
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Note (*): I am not aware of an English translation, which is quite a pity.