Guys, please be careful with the huge quotes, this is really annoying for people trying to follow the conversation.

Anyway, I think the point that should not be forgotten is that medieval drawings of architecture are often not meant as accurate pictures. Here's an image of Cadmus' men founding Thebes, an event that took place well before the Trojan war. They are building what looks like a church, with a typical medieval gate and even an onion dome.



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While in a modern image this practice would be ridiculous, this "familiarization" was expected in the Middle Ages. Don't draw a realistic portrait of the thing, but rather evoke it in terms your audience can understand and relate to.

(03-10-2019, 07:18 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Guys, please be careful with the huge quotes, this is really annoying for people trying to follow the conversation.

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While in a modern image this practice would be ridiculous, this "familiarization" was expected in the Middle Ages. Don't draw a realistic portrait of the thing, but rather evoke it in terms your audience can understand and relate to.

Sorry about the many quotes. I wonder whether I should just create a new comment rather than replying directly to an existing comment as it automatically includes all the quotes.

Whilst it is certainly possible that in some instances drawings of buildings may not accurately reflect the buildings in question I think we should be careful not to assume that authors did not do their best to accurately represent the buildings. I think a drawing of a building often was of a specific landmark that was normally associated with a specific location such as a town.(In modern times we might have a drawing of the Eiffel Tower to represent the city of Paris.)

THANK YOU Koen for the comment about quotes. 
It is so annoying when people get lazy with that and it makes the whole thread less readable. 

Mark, you can indeed use new reply, but you can also just manually edit out the parts of posts that you aren't directly replying to. It really isn't that much of an effort and still allows you to quote what is relevant to your reply.

(03-10-2019, 02:08 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Also i couldn't find the Paris version but maybe it would shed some light?

Mas. 0116, f. 178r You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.=

BNF Latin 6823 f. 25v You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Lines 6-7: circa babilloniam reperitur (found near Babylon) ... septem fontes (7 water wells).

Egerton 747 f. 12r You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Chig.F.VII.158 f. 95v You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(03-10-2019, 08:41 PM)nablator Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

(03-10-2019, 02:08 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Also i couldn't find the Paris version but maybe it would shed some light?

Mas. 0116, f. 178r You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.=

BNF Latin 6823 f. 25v You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Egerton 747 f. 12r You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Chig.F.VII.158 f. 95v You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I can't seem to see page descriptions as with the Sloane.

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(03-10-2019, 08:40 PM)VViews Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.THANK YOU Koen for the comment about quotes. 
It is so annoying when people get lazy with that and it makes the whole thread less readable. 

Mark, you can indeed use new reply, but you can also just manually edit out the parts of posts that you aren't directly replying to. It really isn't that much of an effort and still allows you to quote what is relevant to your reply.

When using my mobile phone with Voynich Ninja I can find manually editing out the part of posts more difficult, nevertheless I will do my best to remove quotes.

On my phone I'm just using the normal theme, not the mobile one. Then you can just use quick reply. Or you can just say the person's name you're replying to if the post is a recent one.

Many thanks to Nablator for the set of links in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

I was thinking about doing the same and this saved me a considerable amount of work ...

Let me just add Munich You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Quote:Edit: the link to the specific page in the Chigi MS is a bit more tricky to figure out:
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The point of all these manuscripts, written over a span of more than two centuries, is that they were written and illustrated somewhere in Italy, and show how Balsam was gained from trees in a walled city.
The earlier manuscripts, from Southern Italy, show rectangular crenelations on the walls, the 15th century copies that were made in Northern Italy show swallow-tail crenelations.

This detail is clearly not trying to reflect what Cairo looked like, but how the illustrator liked to draw walls and reflect his local environment.

Quote:Mark Knowles: Yes, all the references to the Sloane image say Cairo, but the text appears to have been copied from the BL source. It is possible the description is correct, but I would be inclined to question it as the accompanying text doesn't seem to quite fit that description and neither do the drawings including the swallow-tailed merlons. Maybe I will contact them, if I can be bothered.

It didn't matter to them that the architecture didn't match the real thing. Most of them had never seen the real thing and even if they had, this was the Middle Ages, the line between fact and fiction was a lot different then. People believed the stories of "John de Mandeville".

The balsam trees (the real balsam, not the various species that are sometimes substituted and sometimes called balsam) exuded a rare and expensive resin that was used in medicine and perfume (which is why it is frequently drawn within walled guarded gardens).

It did not grow in the colder climates (it's from around the Arabian sea), so it is indeed an interesting juxtaposition (and a good example) of a southern plant drawn with northern themes (like Ghibelline merlons, northern clothing, etc.).


This is very common in manuscripts, northerners drawing southern themes with northern attributes (probably to make it easier for themselves, and also so they didn't alienate their reading audience). I see it very frequently.



It still happens today. Look at all the paintings of Jesus with light skin, light brown hair and blue eyes.



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If the rosette folio is a map, it's more likely the merlons are literal, but if the rosette folio is something else (a fairytale world, a cosmological diagram, an engineering diagram, or a journal (which could be part truth, part myth in those days)), then maybe the merlons are just embellishments.

I still lean toward it being a map, but... that doesn't mean all of it is necessarily a map.

(03-10-2019, 02:08 PM)Linda Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There is another garden on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. with merlons but without the towers, with vms-like containers or water wells for the balsam this time.

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This illustration says 'xilobalsamus' and is very similar to the Masson 116 illustration that was already linked by Nablator.

The 'septem fontes' are interpreted differently in the two illustrations in Sloane 4016.

Edit:
the other 'balsamus' (without xilo-) can also be found in Masson 116: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

I posted some balsam-garden pics on this blog:

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I didn't include all the pics, just enough to get the idea across that what they had in common, even if the image didn't have walls or guards, is that there are little collecting jugs for the sap or, alternately, little drawings of enlarged droplets (this is what is similar to the VMS "droplet" plant).