- Options
- Login
- Desktop Style
Options
Thread for random remarks and questions about Voynich images
- Thread for random remarks and questions about Voynich images
-
RE: Thread for random remarks and questions about Voynich images
Bernd > 24-01-2026, 01:06 AM
More imagery from the Wellcome Apocalypse
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Surely this has been discussed before:
f30v-The Ages of Men grouped around a wheel
f31r-Dying man with cane and rosary walking to his grave
f61r-Towers with one and two prongs on top of the roof resembling the ones in the VM Rosette
f64r-VM style campanulate flowers with 3-lobed calyx, complete with sloppy blue paint job - but better shading.
It's interesting that every star in the Wellcome Apocalypse has exactly 6 rays while the VM stars almost all have 7+ rays. Also water is always green, not blue. Perhaps it was too expensive for large areas? -
RE: Thread for random remarks and questions about Voynich images
Jorge_Stolfi > 24-01-2026, 12:31 PM
(24-01-2026, 01:06 AM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.f30v-The Ages of Men grouped around a
f31r-Dying man with cane and rosary walking to his grave wheel
For VMS f87r2 f85r2 we already have a much better candidate for the source: some German book with a poem and an illustration for each season. It is in a thread somehwere. It includes a version of the "Dying Man" (above f31r), but also sources for the other three people ...
... with the usual copying mistakes, like a triple-ring rosary and turning a doctor's urine sample bottle into a perfume jar...
Quote:f61r-Towers with one and two prongs on top of the roof resembling the ones in the VM Rosette
Those must be everywhere in Central Europe. One that is a good match to the Rosettes is in downtown Prague, at the end of the Nepomuk(?) bridge. It is even flanked by two smaller towers, like in the VMS.
Quote:the VM stars almost all have 7+ rays.
There are a few with 6 rays, e.g. on f68r3, f70v2, . I have tabulated all those in the Zodiac and most of Cosmo, if you are interested...
Quote:Also water is always green, not blue. Perhaps it was too expensive for large areas?
According to McCrone, the blue pigment is azurite, a copper mineral, often used as pigment. They could not identify the green pigment but said it was some copper "resinate, I suppose they meant "salt of an organic acid", like what one gets by mixing a copper salt with common soap.
Azurite was much cheaper than the luxury pigment ultramarine (lapis lazuli), but probably more expensive than that green "copper resinate". So cost may have been a reason for why the Painter painted pools and big tubs green.
On the other hand, "water is blue" is a cultural dogma, like "tree trunks are brown". In reality bodies of water are often green, and tree trunks usually are more often gray, green, black, ...
All the best --stolfi -
RE: Thread for random remarks and questions about Voynich images
Koen G > 24-01-2026, 12:42 PM
I agree, Bernd, there are lots of similarities. But I hadn't spotted the shading on those flowers yet. They illustrate very well why I think we have so much White-Blue in the VM flowers. -
RE: Thread for random remarks and questions about Voynich images
DONJCH > 24-01-2026, 02:52 PM
(24-01-2026, 12:31 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For VMS f87r2 we already have a much better candidate for the source: some German book with a poem and an illustration for each season. It is in a thread somehwere. It includes a version of the "Dying Man" (above f31r), but also sources for the other three people ...
The thread is "Getting close to a source for f85r2", I think.
(you sure you mean f87r2?)
With this particular image, I can see how the "rosary" twists into 3 loops now! -
RE: Thread for random remarks and questions about Voynich images
Jorge_Stolfi > 24-01-2026, 04:51 PM
(24-01-2026, 02:52 PM)DONJCH Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The thread is "Getting close to a source for f85r2", I think.
(you sure you mean f87r2?)
Yes, f85r2, sorry.
Quote:With this particular image, I can see how the "rosary" twists into 3 loops now!
Indeed, it shows that the rosary in depicitons of that allegory could have round white beads, like those in f85r2.
Which raises the question: if the Scribe was copying the scene from a book -- like your citation above, or any of the other sources that have been posted -- how could he not understand that the "loop of little circles" was a rosary?
Maybe he was not a very bright person (and that may be why he became a second-rate Scribe and not a merchant or University professor...)
Maybe he was a 13-year-old boy who did not yet know how to "read" such allegorical paintings.
Maybe he did not know what a rosary was...
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: Thread for random remarks and questions about Voynich images
Bernd > 24-01-2026, 05:02 PM
Yes, it's this thread, I hope you don't mind I posted the same imagery there too to keep things together.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Regarding the buildings, note that Wellcome Apocalypse 61r has both the 2prong trapezoid tower with matching shape, 1prong cone towers with matching shape, caste wall with merlons and the high arched gate. I'm not arguing this is any existing building, I don't think the buildings in the VM rosette depict actual places. It's generic castle imagery derived from a source that must have some connection or a common ancestor with the Wellcome Apocalypse. Far too many coincidences for an independent evolution and combination of all these elements.
(24-01-2026, 04:51 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.if the Scribe was copying the scene from a book -- like your citation above, or any of the other sources that have been posted -- how could he not understand that the "loop of little circles" was a rosary?
Yes, we see such misinterpretations throughout the VM. Why - we just don't know. But it raises doubt on the claim the VM was the product of some highly educated genius. I said it before but looking at the weird interconnected plants that no child would draw like this, I doubt it is simply a lack of life experience or cultural knowledge. More like a lack of basic understanding how the world works.
Maybe he was not a very bright person (and that may be why he became a second-rate Scribe and not a merchant or University professor...)
Maybe he was a 13-year-old boy who did not yet know how to "read" such allegorical paintings.
Maybe he did not know what a rosary was... -
RE: Thread for random remarks and questions about Voynich images
Koen G > 24-01-2026, 05:11 PM
(24-01-2026, 04:51 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Which raises the question: if the Scribe was copying the scene from a book -- like your citation above, or any of the other sources that have been posted -- how could he not understand that the "loop of little circles" was a rosary?
I used to tell people that the drawings in the MS actually weren't all that bad, which is now something I wish I'd never said. In many parts, the drawings are really bad, and it's clear that the artist misinterpreted sources. I'm currently making (read: struggling with) a video about the animals in the MS, and let's say I've gotten a renewed appreciation for how dire the situation is.
I'll add though, that artists misinterpreting exemplars is not exceptional at all, and it doesn't say much about their intellectual capacities. More often than not, these changes are incremental: at one point in the transmission, an artists draws an ambiguous object, and the next time it is copied, the thing has changed.
Given the fact that the Voynich manuscript likely wasn't produced as a high-end product, there's also a good chance that its source material (which it definitely had) was not of the highest accuracy. -
RE: Thread for random remarks and questions about Voynich images
RobGea > 24-01-2026, 05:47 PM
(24-01-2026, 05:11 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. I'm currently making (read: struggling with) a video about the animals in the MS, and let's say I've gotten a renewed appreciation for how dire the situation is.
I wonder, if one cropped out the vms creatures and showed them to people unfamiliar with the vms, how many would be positively identified, or at least assigned a unique identity. -
RE: Thread for random remarks and questions about Voynich images
Bernd > 24-01-2026, 05:47 PM
I would say the interconnected plants and stem loops are quite exceptional. Or am I wrong? There's 'the vine married to the elm' imagery where vines penetrate the trunk of the tree, but apart from that?