Design influences were important. Each region had its own traditions.

I've noticed when illustrators copy manuscripts, they usually don't do it exactly, they interpret rather than copy... with updated fashions and hairstyles and often with the patterns and decorations that they learned for their region. Also, the pigments and palettes were often specific to the region.

The distinctive separator is also quite striking. Again I have no idea if these were common designs or unique to this manuscript.

The lines and points surrounding the outer edge of the central circle have always reminded me of this kind of enclosure:

   

I see the four-square pattern quite frequently. These are from different manuscripts:

         

I think these are called "diapers":

Quote:diaper: A pattern formed by small, repeated geometrical motifs set adjacent to one another, used to decorate stone surfaces in architecture and as a background to illuminations in manuscripts, wall painting or panel painting.

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(09-05-2020, 03:51 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I think these are called "diapers" ...

Yes. Diaper is a really common decorative motif and/or space-filler across lots of different types of medieval material culture. It was used for decorative stone and wood carving in buildings and on furniture, as well as a pattern-filler in manuscripts. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen it on embroidery or pottery, but that might be because I haven’t looked! It’s common as a single band and also as a chessboard-style space filler as well.

This is a very specific one.

I also often see one that is basically two diagonal lines with dots in the spaces in between.


And then there's an abstraction of a foliage pattern, a vine, simplified down to a wavy line with dots. It's not a diaper pattern, it's mostly within long moulding-like lines. This pattern occurs on the Rosettes folio (I was wondering if it might be a tent flap).

A couple of things I should have added above.

• Diaper in the strictest sense is the X shaped decorative motif in all of the examples above, but medievalists also use it to mean “repeated geometric decorative pattern in squares” even if the motif inside the boxes is a different shape.
  
• A lot of medieval diaper survives in medieval cathedrals (partly because they’re the main type of medieval building to have survived). Westminster Abbey in the UK has loads and they have a blog with some nice photographs including a ceiling that reminds me of the 9-rosette page when I’ve got nothing better to speculate wildly about 
  

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I see which picture you are talking about, that is beautiful, and indeed very similar.

This rectangular 'four square' pattern is all over the place, I tried calling them quatrifoils recently, and they were posted some time back in E. Velinska's blog. They were frequently one of the patterns used as backgrounds in some earlier (than VMs) French manuscripts. They were still used in the C-14 years.

See thread "Wallpaper patterns". [Nobody got excited about it then.]

I hadn't heard them called diapers, but diapering is a heraldic term referring to a type of patternation.

The VMs has several varieties of this pattern, a partial four way division of a quadrilateral. In the VMs, the dividing line can be a solid line or a loop. The four subsequent areas may be left empty or have a central dot for each area. Specific examples at top of Pisces and the circular text markers on White Aries. Otherwise, they're everywhere.