(06-07-2026, 05:24 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It turned out that creating that description was much more informative than reading it -- because it forced me to systematically look at every detail of every page.
Still, maybe you find something useful in there. Like the tables with nymph attributes.
Whoever drew the VMS zodiacs were either copying directly, or copying from memory. That means the
broad strokes of the design probably hold more statistical insight than the very detailed aspects, which may have been a unique style trait of a single artist or a one off depiction.
If I were to copy the VMS virgo sign from memory multiple times, would it always share the exact details? Probably not. But she would be wearing a blue hat, blue dress, would be holding a star, and would be facing the same way every time, that's for sure. And whichever source the VMS was sourcing from likely had those same traits.
Here is a genuine(ly awful) attempt in paint from memory, without looking:
And I would wager that if we asked 50 people to copy from memory without looking in the same way, we would have 50 reasonably similar images with some wildly different styles. But the common aspects shared by all of them would represent what we're looking for, imo.
Edit: I thought I would actually test that, so with my partner's permission, here is her attempt. She isn't a VMS enthousiast, and she copied from memory. You can certainly see it's the VMS virgo, but can also clearly see it's totally different from both mine and the original.(and you can perhaps clearly see she is the more talented artist..)
Also note that both of our depictions kept the double line for the neck area, the wideness of the dress, as well as the inclusion of the hat.
So I think there should be a distinction between
what the VMS author was trying to draw, and the exact
style of how they drew it. I would say that finding an example like my drawn version would be quite exciting, honestly, even though it's an awful copy and most of the actual details are totally off.