Let's rate some bulls

[JustAnotherTheory]

"Forest cow", haha, almost spit out my drink  

Anyway, those feet, the way they're drawn, once again makes me question what kind of person the VMS Artist really was. I mean, it should be obvious for any human being that it's not how feet work. He drew the knuckle so far backwards that it looks like a separate hoof.

Which echoes many other apsects of the Artist's style, it seems to me that he/she was wholly unaware of the basic properties of things surrounding him/her. It's not just a bad copy, it's a complete and utter misunderstanding of the components of an "animal". Like the lobster, too.

What kind of person was the Artist? A cave dweller? A hermit? A prisoner?

Is it possible to apply some profiling techniques to this person based on his/her drawings? 

To be honest, there are times where I even doubt that we are dealing with a human here.

[Koen G]

Medieval artists didn't necessarily have the modern reflex to "correct" back to nature what was in their example. Quite often, they copied what was in their example and made it worse. The living animal as it is projected on the retina is a separate thing from the way a culture depicts it. 

When I was little, me and my classmates all drew houses with pointed roofs and rounded shingles. But shingles in this area are mostly straight-edged, like rectangles. But this was how we saw others draw a house, so we just adopted the technique. There was no possible sequence of events that would have made us go outside, observe shingles, and note that we were drawing them weird. Or that we had the orientation of the roof flipped compared to the usual position of the front door. Or that our layout of doors and windows didn't make sense, or that our chimney was in an impossible position. We just drew houses the way we saw others draw houses.

It is possible, maybe even likely, that when the VM artist copied this bull, the thought "what do actual bulls look like" did not cross their mind a single time. They were just copying the image, which was the only referent at that moment. If their example was already flawed or confusing, unclear, faded, degraded, they would have compounded these features rather than go out to the pastures, holding up a pencil to a bull while squinting one eye to take its proportions and shapes.

[eggyk]

Anyway, those feet, the way they're drawn, once again makes me question what kind of person the VMS Artist really was. I mean, it should be obvious for any human being that it's not how feet work. He drew the knuckle so far backwards that it looks like a separate hoof.

None of them are even THAT bad. Why are we acting like people had access to google images, or the desire to go sit next to a bull to copy their feet? 

   

If the VMS artist had drawn human feet on the cow or something, I would agree. But it's clearly a hoof, which is good enough for pretty much all intents and purposes.

[Oscroft]

Anyway, those feet, the way they're drawn, once again makes me question what kind of person the VMS Artist really was. I mean, it should be obvious for any human being that it's not how feet work. He drew the knuckle so far backwards that it looks like a separate hoof.

None of them are even THAT bad. Why are we acting like people had access to google images, or the desire to go sit next to a bull to copy their feet? 

If the VMS artist had drawn human feet on the cow or something, I would agree. But it's clearly a hoof, which is good enough for pretty much all intents and purposes.

Those hoofs are better than some of the human anatomy we see on some of the nymphs!

[Koen G]

The way the bull's hind legs bend is a worse issue though, comparable to the stuff we see with the nymphs. This is one of the reasons I think it's fair to say that the artist wasn't very experienced. Maybe young, or maybe someone who had never thought about how to represent skeletal anatomy.

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Fun fact: when I point out the bull's legs bend the wrong way, people don't always realize I'm talking about the hind legs. That's how easy it is to get confused about these things if you don't have much artistic experience.

[Rafal]

"Forest cow" is probably aurochs or wisent.

[R. Sale]

The second one is better.

Here's a small herd of cows and bulls. Some of them may be dancing on their toes.

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[Jorge_Stolfi]

What kind of person was the Artist? A cave dweller? A hermit? A prisoner? To be honest, there are times where I even doubt that we are dealing with a human here.  

Maybe an incomplete human?  

I think it is quite possible that the Scribe was the Author's 13-year-old nephew, who agreed to work for Uncle Michiton for one candy's worth per page...

All the best, --stolfi

[eggyk]

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1475-1500AD (manuscript is dated 14thC, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has the illuminations dated to the 4th quarter of the 15thC)
Germany S, Hebrew Language

           

The mouth matches nicely with taurus 2, and the raised 90° leg matches nicely with taurus 1.

[Koen G]

Nice! It looks relevant.

By the way, looking at that Zodiac sequence, I'd have dated it half a century earlier. If they were done in the last quarter of the 15th century, they were exactly copied from a ca.1400-1440 model.