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Favorite Plant Tournament GROUP D
- Favorite Plant Tournament GROUP D
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RE: Favorite Plant Tournament GROUP D
ReneZ > 02-05-2025, 10:18 AM
Many herbals draw from different sources. A good case is the Vermont herbal, which has 'alchemical' plants intermixed with more 'serious' ones ('serious' according to modern tastes of course. -
RE: Favorite Plant Tournament GROUP D
Bernd > 02-05-2025, 01:02 PM
I think the VM plants have a quite complex back-story and there is no easy and universal explanation for their 'weirdness'.
It is likely the artist(s) drew inspiration from several herbals regarding roots, leaves and plant-shape and some elements are quite faithfully copied, but I believe the flowers are their unique invention. Also some plants look more realistic than others and the quality varies greatly. I suspect that some plants were drawn after pressed specimens, others copied as a whole, some cobbled together from different sources and others fully invented by the artist. The 'stacking' of common building blocks is also a hint that the artist did not copy but drew some plants or at least plant elements from his imagination.
It is not unlikely that misinterpretations of both text and illustrations also played a role. Some elements of VM plants like the stem loops, flowers in flowers, flowers above flowers or root tables show a lack of botanical understanding. Even children know plants don't grow like that and even the most rudimentary herbal drawings do not show such behavior. See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for how some weird elements might me explained by misunderstanding of accurate botanical drawings.
I know it appears to be an unpopular opinion but I still believe the artist/author had a certain lack of common-sense or difficulties correctly interpreting elements like perspective. He was also obsessed with stacking repetitive patterns and building blocks, both in imagery and the text.
As of why and what the overall purpose of the illustrations (if any) was, no idea. But to me it feels like the entire manuscript is an organic whole made up by a person with a certain mindset. -
RE: Favorite Plant Tournament GROUP D
MarcoP > 02-05-2025, 03:23 PM
(02-05-2025, 01:02 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I know it appears to be an unpopular opinion but I still believe the artist/author had a certain lack of common-sense or difficulties correctly interpreting elements like perspective.
I don’t know about “unpopular”, but personally I don’t see any specific evidence of the author’s lack of common-sense (tough I am open to any possibility). Common-sense is a cultural product and the culture that created the Voynich manuscript was very different from our own. Blaming this on the author does not sound justified to me. What about Hildegard von Bingen’s common sense? And what about the anonymous author of the Alchemical Herbal?
The subject of perspective on the other hand is very interesting. The Voynich manuscript is contemporary to the invention of scientific perspective by Italian Renaissance artists (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
Quote:It was not until the mid-1420s that paintings fully designed according to the principles of perspective science began to appear. One of the first accurate employments of precise central convergence was in The Healing of the Cripple and Raising of Tabitha (1426–1427) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., by Masolino da Panicale (c. 1383–c. 1447).
As Panofsky said, the style of Voynich illustrations “is fairly provincial,” and it shows “no influence of the Italian Renaissance style”. But the artist was clearly interested in perspective and they made efforts to render 3D shapes (though they had no access to the leading-edge techniques being developed in major Renaissance cities like Florence). Again, from a modern point of view, the artist clearly struggled with perspective. As a provincial artist from the early 15th Century, they were quite bold and effective, in my opinion. -
RE: Favorite Plant Tournament GROUP D
Bernd > 05-05-2025, 04:36 PM
By common sense I mean intuitively understanding that when a drawing of a plant shows two branches overlapping, it means one is behind the other and they are not in the same plane and thus physically connected. And that plant shoots generally do not form loops. This is not an achievement of Renaissance, it is basic knowledge of how things work from experience since people began to draw and independent of any culture.
I also propose that root tables originally depicted a patch of soil with plants emerging. Such drawings are sometimes found in contemporary herbals like Munich Cim.79. In Chig.F.VII.159, water plants are depicted in stone basins. The VM author may have misunderstood this soil or stone blocks as part of the rootstock. The 'grass' on some VM roots is evidence of that.
And then there is also the likely misunderstanding of perspective in the 'zodiac' section where the animal eats the small shrub in the foreground that originally was a large tree in the background.
Combine this with the odd low-entropy text built from similar stacked building blocks as the images and the nonsensical marginalia. As isolated cases, all these quirks could be seen as coincidence, artistic style or clever encipherment. Maybe it is, but I feel it all fits into the picture of someone non-neurotypical who struggles with certain concepts, perceives the world in an unique way and has trouble to express himself normally. But this person might have found a way to do so in the VM's unique style. But that's just my personal opinion and I admit it's hard to falsify without a generally accepted solution of the VM. That's not good. All I can do is collect evidence for and against this hypothesis and try to weight them. I am equally satisfied if we find strong evidence that points in a different dirtection, I have no personal preference of what the VM 'should' be about and frankly I do not really care. It's just interesting to explore different possibilities.
I have no idea how to reconcile this hypothesis with 5+ scribes and a possible painter though. If the scribes or hands were really were distinct individuals and not a person's artistic evolution over time, and they drew their images too, this would make a mental impairment far less likely. -
RE: Favorite Plant Tournament GROUP D
bi3mw > 05-05-2025, 05:03 PM
(05-05-2025, 04:36 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I have no idea how to reconcile this hypothesis with 5+ scribes and a possible painter though. If the scribes or hands were really were distinct individuals and not a person's artistic evolution over time, and they drew their images too, this would make a mental impairment far less likely.
It is an interesting question whether the illustrations can be attributed to individual scribes or not. Someone here in the forum once looked into this question, but I can't remember exactly ( Video ? ). -
RE: Favorite Plant Tournament GROUP D
Koen G > 05-05-2025, 05:05 PM
(05-05-2025, 05:03 PM)bi3mw Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It is an interesting question whether the illustrations can be attributed to individual scribes or not. Someone here in the forum once looked into this question, but I can't remember exactly ( Video ? ).
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -
RE: Favorite Plant Tournament GROUP D
oshfdk > 05-05-2025, 06:09 PM
(05-05-2025, 04:36 PM)Bernd Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.By common sense I mean intuitively understanding that when a drawing of a plant shows two branches overlapping, it means one is behind the other and they are not in the same plane and thus physically connected. And that plant shoots generally do not form loops. This is not an achievement of Renaissance, it is basic knowledge of how things work from experience since people began to draw and independent of any culture.
Actually looking at pairs of images you provided, I'd say the VMS images are more skillful, if you ignore the paint job. Overall composition is better and I see no obvious failures with the perspective. They are more abstract and they are definitely unrealistic, but I'm sure they are unrealistic by design, as exemplified in roots shaped like animals, deliberately weird connections between the roots and the stalk, etc. There is a loop in shoots, and it looks like a deliberate and well designed loop, as far as I can tell, with a split separation at the bottom and a smooth merge at the top. This could very well be a mnemonic device or something else entirely.
Also, same as with the text, don't forget the actual size of these images. Some of them are almost miniatures. Here's the loopy plant with a USB plug roughly to scale. If you consider that most leaves are 20 mm long and 7-8 mm across (1/3 of an inch), parts of these drawings are made very carefully.
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RE: Favorite Plant Tournament GROUP D
Koen G > 05-05-2025, 06:22 PM
I'm also not sure if we have to see the loopy bit as a failure rather than "creative sculpting" for some underlying reason. The resulting mandorla shape is not without meaning in medieval art.