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The prisoner scenario: a though experiment
- The prisoner scenario: a though experiment
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RE: The prisoner scenario: a though experiment
Koen G > 03-12-2025, 08:43 PM
(03-12-2025, 06:47 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Nothing here that would require photographic memory, neither the garments, nor the footwear are perfect match?
For the record, I don't think "photographic memory" is a helpful term to use here (or anywhere for that matter, memory is more of a continuum).
But on the art-historian side of things, I'll just object here that "clothing being a perfect match" is not a useful thing to ask of medieval imagery. They would copy poses, compositions, many other things... but clothing? Always the first thing to change.
The fact that so much is similar in the top-right image and the Voynich one is remarkable in that regard. The other images are meant to somewhat kaleidoscopically show how often poses were copied, and how the attributes of the garments can be found in the same context (in this case, successive workshops in Haguenau).
If you want to know how to draw this differently, open any other manuscript and find a couple of people. Or better, try to find a Gemini pair that's more "like" the one in the Voynich. (If you do, I'd genuinely love to see it
) That should give you some idea of how close these actually are.
Anyway, the bottom line for me is that the Voynich artist was aware of the culture around them and very likely had regular access to relevant images. They may or may not have attempted to copy some of those exactly, but even if they did, the results would look different given their poor drawing skills and the strong medieval tendency to alter garments.
To put it differently, people underestimate how much of the artist's cultural surroundings are packed into an image, even if the image itself is unique. For me, the "hermit" scenario is as likely as any New World theory (i.e. extremely unlikely). Everything shows that the manuscript's makers were well-aware of the 15th century European world around them, including iconographic conventions. How they approached that world and how that resulted in this thing that keeps baffling us, that's another question. -
RE: The prisoner scenario: a though experiment
R. Sale > 03-12-2025, 09:07 PM
<Given the general idea "gemini are a man and a woman standing holding hands",> every artist would draw this image differently.
VMs Gemini is a zodiac sign, the comparable images from 'marriages' etc. are not zodiac signs. In a fair number of zodiac depictions male and female are 'sans garments'. That would be different. Why are they clothed in the VMs when so many of the nymphs are au naturel? The representations of the garments tell us so much more. -
RE: The prisoner scenario: a though experiment
oshfdk > 03-12-2025, 09:36 PM
(03-12-2025, 08:43 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(03-12-2025, 06:47 PM)oshfdk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Nothing here that would require photographic memory, neither the garments, nor the footwear are perfect match?
If you want to know how to draw this differently, open any other manuscript and find a couple of people. Or better, try to find a Gemini pair that's more "like" the one in the Voynich. (If you do, I'd genuinely love to see it) That should give you some idea of how close these actually are.
I don't know anything about comparative analysis of images, so the below is just my layperson opinion on the matter, how I would approach it if we talked, for example, about the text.
As you just said, there are many (hundreds?) different depictions of Gemini in medieval works. With all combinations of garments, poses, hairstyles, etc. The fact that after carefully examining this collection someone found an item that is very close to one in the Voynich Manuscipt, but not exact in most details, is no more remarkable than finding two very similar looking pebbles on a beach. This doesn't mean that one of the pebbles was crafted in the image of the other. It's just the simple outcome of examining a large enough sample of pebbles or large enough sample of drawings.
If these three Gemini images above were the only known medieval Gemini images to us, yes, I would say Voynich Gemini is remarkably close to standard medieval depictions of Gemini. But after realizing that there is a considerably large image collection from which people manually picked these three images as the most similar to the Voynich Gemini, I don't find this remarkable and frankly now I'm not even sure the artist of the Voynich MS ever saw these particular images, let alone used them as a reference. Suppose the author randomly drew some other version of Gemini with a different pose, just the same there would be some other three images of Gemini that look the most similar to the new Voynich image. Nothing strange about that.
In any case, even if the author used one of these three images as a reference, a mixup of details makes it more likely to me that she or he didn't have an actual copy on hand. What do you think?
(03-12-2025, 08:43 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.To put it differently, people underestimate how much of the artist's cultural surroundings are packed into an image, even if the image itself is unique. For me, the "hermit" scenario is as likely as any New World theory (i.e. extremely unlikely). Everything shows that the manuscript's makers were well-aware of the 15th century European world around them, including iconographic conventions. How they approached that world and how that resulted in this thing that keeps baffling us, that's another question.
To me a "hermit" is usually a person who withdraws from society, not a person born and raised as an outcast. So a hermit could very well be familiar with most cultural trends up to the point when they left the society. -
RE: The prisoner scenario: a though experiment
Aga Tentakulus > Yesterday, 11:34 AM
People forget that it doesn't always have to be a book. In the past, walls were also painted. Here is an example from a town hall. Today, only remnants can be found in churches and castles. Perhaps he often saw similar things in inns or on house walls.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Example: Draw a house. You don't need a template. But I'll find one for you that matches your imagination. It's the quantity that counts.
I'm thinking of Pompeii right now. If it weren't for the ashes, no pictures would be found either. How colourful everything was.