Monthly Archives: February 2019

Head and Shoulders

25 Feb. 2019

I’ve frequently mentioned that the VMS illustrator had difficulty visualizing three dimensions. This weakness is especially apparent in the joints of humans and animals. Joints are attached to the torso with interlocking sockets and a specific pattern of controlling muscles, and the VMS illustrator didn’t “get” this (or wasn’t able to picture it in his or her mind) and thus relied on formulas (or imperfect copies of exemplars) instead.

When I first looked at the VMS “zodiac” figures, I noticed that the hind limbs of VMS critters were distinctly quirky. I searched for examples of this anatomical eccentricity for years and they were harder to find than I expected. Even illustrators with weak drawing skills usually understood that the hind limbs of these animals angle backward, and yet the VMS illustrator did not (click to see larger):

Comparing VMS animal joints ot other drawings.

When I did find a creature with similarly odd hind limbs, it was in a Lauber manuscript that I blogged about in January 2016. It wasn’t just the hind limbs that were anatomically peculiar, the drawing was similar to the VMS in other ways, including subject matter and palette—and both were pond critters. Even the face of the vaguely defined critter was somewhat similar in form and expression to the VMS.

I will post the example again with arrows added so I don’t have to repeat the commentary from the previous blog:

Pic of VMS pond critter & Lauber pond critter.

Obviously the illustrator on the right is more skilled, but the subject matter, general idea, and even some of the execution is similar.

Now let’s look at human joints where there is a similar VMS anomaly.

Note in these samples how the shoulder joint is almost missing. There is a line connecting the neck to the upper arm that never really defines the shoulder correctly. As a result, the neck looks unusually thick and the arm has a vague snake-like appearance. In one case, the arm is coming out of the nymph’s cheek!

pics of VMS nymphs showing the unusual shoulders

The illustrator adapted a formula and rarely varied from it.

Are the Faces Also Unusual?

If we momentarily ignore the arm coming out of the neck, the VMS faces are not especially unusual. Below left are six examples from approximately the same angle. Note that they have similarly rounded bumps for the cheek, vague chins, and almost absent jawlines on the side facing the viewer.

Many of the faces on the right, from other manuscripts, follow the same basic formula. The L-shaped nose is also quite common, as are the ruddy cheeks. The main difference is that the eyes and lips are defined a little better than those in the VMS:

Medieval faces similar to the VMS faces.

So the misplaced shoulder is rather unusual, but the general form of the faces is not.

What about the details?

There are many places in the VMS where breasts and other parts appear to have been added later, sometimes in a darker ink, maybe by a different hand, maybe not. It’s difficult to know if another hand added them since the breasts vary from one drawing to the next, not just from one group to the next. Maybe they were added by the same person sometime later. The only place they seem significantly different is where they are drawn like big round eyeballs.

Note the faces on the left in the following examples. The majority of VMS faces are drawn this way, with a bumpy line defining the outer contour, similar to those in the previous chart. But there are a few that are drawn like the ones on the right, with a distinctive shape that defines a melon-shaped forehead and connects it in a continuous curve to the nose. Like the nose on one of the Aries figures, this looks suspiciously like a different hand, more confident and slightly more skilled, even if it’s an odd way to draw a face:

Different drawing style in some VMS faces.

The added lines on the right have an almost cartoon-like quality. So far, I haven’t found faces in other manuscripts drawn this way.

I thought the over-inking and melon-shaped foreheads might have been done at a later time (perhaps much later), but the more I looked at the faces with this peculiar forehead, the more I realized that other figures with this difference looked like original drawings rather than ones that were inked in later. Here are some examples. Note the hollow-looking eyes:

There’s another variation in the VMS faces that caught my attention. Even though most of the facial features are essentially the same, a few of the VMS nymphs have an extra little point in their chins, a variation that is less common than the rounded or almost-absent chin:

This is the feature that seems most distinctive, next to the melon-foreheads. The weirdly attached shoulder is also unusual enough that it could be spotted in another manuscript.

Summary

I have more information on VMS bodies, but this is enough for now. There are certain facial formulae in the VMS that are distinctive, particularly the melon-forehead and chin with a tiny point, combined with the vaguely defined closer side, L-shaped nose, and ruddy cheeks.

This was not an artist drawing from a variety of angles who was thinking about light and composition. The VMS illustrator learned a simple “outline” approach with little consideration for the underlying muscles or joints. The resultant drawings are clumsy, but have the advantage of speed—many figures could be drawn in a short time.

J.K. Petersen

Through a Glass Lightly

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The container on f89r of the Voynich manuscript has always struck me as an attempt to draw transparency. The bulbous part near the top (below the finial), and the narrow stem, seem to be encased in an outer layer. It would be difficult to create patterns like this out of crystalline stone, but fused glasses sometimes look like this.

I don’t want to get too tied to the idea of glass, but if it is glass, could such a container be fabricated in the 15th century?

Antique Glass

I’m familiar with Murano glass and Bohemian glass in general, I have antique glass in my personal collection. I saw some exquisite etched glass while traveling through Hungary. Italian glass is well-known and has been actively traded through Venice for hundreds of years, but was glass technology sufficiently advanced in the 15th century to create vessels as fabulous as the one in the VMS?

I don’t have enough free time to research and answer this intriguing question, but I gathered a few pictures of amphoriska that demonstrate that glass-making in Greece, the Levant, and the Roman Empire, were quite sophisticated in earlier times. Most of the following artifacts were created 2,600 to 1,500 years ago.

We can see from the examples, that glassmakers knew how to create translucent, feathered glass in multiple colors approximately 2,500 years ago, and that iridescence and the use of sliced canes (the ancient equivalent of millefiori) had also been achieved by the Roman era. Molded and patterned surface textures (both added and intrinsic) were also part of the glassmaker’s repertoire (click to see larger):

The detail in these little amphorae is extraordinary, considering they were only about 3″ high. Note that the detail in the carved rock crystal (bottom-right) was also remarkable—equal to that of many blown-glass vessels.

Signed pieces from the early Roman era also demonstrate a high level of skill in creating molded pieces, some of which compare favorably to glass housewares from the 1940s.

Layered Glass

But what about cased glass, one of the techniques that might result in a container similar to the VMS drawing? Cased glass is glass that is fused so one color shows through another (e.g., transparent glass over colored glass) and is sometimes cut to further reveal the underlying layer. It’s more difficult than fusing multiple colors within the same layer.

Blue Vase, Pompeii — The Blue Vase with cameo technique from Pompeii, Photo courtesy of m.violante, Wikipedia

Bohemian glass from the last couple of centuries is well-known for this technique (Egermann and Moser pioneered some of the modern methods). Beads made from slices of caned glass (sometimes called “eye” glass) go back to the ancients but I was not able to find ancient artifacts that had a layer of translucent glass fused on top of colored glass in a curved vessel.

The closest I was able to find was “cameo glass” like the magnificent Blue Vase from Pompeii (right), held in the Naples museum (a museum that was “on strike” when I attempted to visit it years ago), but it does not have the same effect as cased glass in which translucent over colored is used instead of the other way around. Still, it does demonstrate the great level of sophistication achieved in ancient times. Some of these techniques disappeared for a few centuries during the Middle Ages.

Medieval Glass

Progress does not occur in a straight line and knowledge is sometimes lost. Millions died in famines, plagues, and wars, and their skills and trade secrets died with them. The techniques illustrated by the ancient amphoras can all be found in Europe in the 16th century, and a century later many new techniques were developed to reproduce ancient styles. But how much was known in the 15th and 14th centuries?

c. 1300 patterned glass courtesy of The Met

It was quite common for medieval glassmakers to add blobs of transparent or translucent glass as decorative additions. Engraved glass was not uncommon either. Glass enameling and a medieval form of “carnival” glass existed by the 15th century. Metal and glass were frequently combined, but it’s a struggle to find vessels in which a layer of translucent glass was fused on top of a colored layer.

If the VMS container is glass (or possibly glass with a metal base), it might not be cased glass. It might be translucent glass with an embedded pattern of colored glasses. The pattern does not look feathered, and appears too even and regular to be caned glass, so it is not an example of the most common styles, but if the vessel is partly imaginary, or a design for something that was not practical to fabricate, then the imagination of the illustrator may have embellished it.

Maybe it’s not glass at all. Maybe it’s one vessel behind another, or two different ideas for the same vessel. Or maybe it’s like a Russian doll, one vessel inside another, but drawn to show both.

I’m hoping that it’s at least partly glass, I like glass, but I’d better not hold my breath. VMS research has a way of stretching out longer than one expects.

J.K. Petersen

Postscript Feb 22, 2019:

I didn’t post this image in the above article because it’s a rights-managed Getty image, and blog readers often don’t click on external links, but I wish I had because it illustrates similarities to the VMS containers that are strongly associated with the 15th century.

It’s a goblet made in Murano with a finial similar to the VMS container (which could be glass or metal). This kind of finial is not difficult to make in glass and is also common to Egyptian glass, so it’s not the primary reason I chose this example. What I suggest you pay attention to is the regular pattern of raised, applied enamel dots, a style and fabrication technique that was not typical of ancient glass:

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/light-blue-goblet-decorated-with-polychrome-high-res-stock-photography/159620064

Now hold that dot style in your mind and imagine it applied to a raised, translucent pattern, as in these Murano vessels (in the Museo del Vetro). Clear glass was a significant innovation of the early 1400s and from that point on was often combined with colored elements:

Scale motifs are found in almost all cultures, they are not exclusive to glass or to Murano, so I try not to get too excited when I see them, but every time I come across them, I am reminded of the many scaly patterns in various sections of the VMS.

Postscript Feb. 24, 2019:

I thought it might be helpful to include a few examples that illustrate regional differences in enameled glass motifs from about the late 1200s to the late 1400s:

13th to 15 century enameled glass patterns

Smoke or Springs?

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The upper-left rotum in the VMS “map” is often called a “volcano”—a handy term that most people intuitively comprehend even if we don’t know what the drawing represents.

Volcanic eruptions have long been memorialized in drawings and chronicles, including a Pseudo-Dionysius description from the 6th century:

Such was the violent and harsh disaster, which was sent from heaven, that fire alight and consumed those who had escaped from the terrible vehemence of the cataclysm of the earthquake and the collapse: the sparks flew and set fire to everything on which they settled. The earth itself from below, from within the soil, surged, seethed and burned everything which was there. Thus the foundations as well, together with all the storeys above them, were lifted up, heaved up and down and burst apart, collapsed, fell and burned with fire… In the end no house or church or building of any kind remained, not even the garden fences, which had not been torn asunder or damaged, or had not disintegrated and fallen. The rest burned, crumbled away and became like an extended putrefaction.

It’s possible volcanic eruptions were depicted in ancient cave paintings, but this particular cataclysm was not especially common in medieval art, which makes it difficult to identify illustrative traditions.

This clip is from a 1580 Portolan map (BSB Cod.icon.137) and might look like a volcano at first glance…

but it actually represents the source of the Nile River:

which I thought was interesting because there is speculation about whether the wavy shapes inside the VMS “volcano” might represent flames, water, or something else.

This clip from 1587 is drawn in a similar way (except that the poof is red instead of blue) and represents a volcano in Sicily (in fact volcanic eruptions changed the coastline so dramatically, it’s hard to know what it looked like in the Middle Ages):

In one version of De Balneis by Petrus de Ebulo (BNF Latin 8161), bathers enjoy the healing waters at the base of a volcano:

(Note the scalloped pattern around the rim of the archway.)

In another version of De Balneis (Angelica) the volcanic activity is more explicit:

In yet another version of De Balneis (Edinburgh), the fumes are rising on the far right, and radiating as heat (and possibly also as fumes) toward the bathers:

There is a more detailed history of the baths here (which were eventually destroyed by volcanic eruptions):

By 1585, depictions of volcanic eruptions were more naturalistic, as in Ortelius’s map of Mt. Hekla erupting in Iceland:

One of the significant thermal sources at Pozzuoli was known as The Solfatar, which was commemorated in a fresco in Rome in the early 1600s:

Baratta and Perrey (1680) recorded volcanic activity in Naples in the following engraving, at the site of the former Pozzuoli baths and the island of Nisida.

In the past, I have suggested Nisida as a possible source for the top-right VMS rotum. I have numerous ideas for this rotum, but the island of Nisida is on my Top-5 list because it matches several of the topological features of the VMS “map”.

Nisida is shaped like a horseshoe, with a “bowl” of seawater facing deeper water, and may have been connected to the mainland by a stone jetty as it is today. Sea levels were lower in the early Middle Ages and apparently rose again a couple of centuries before the eruption of Monte Nuovo in 1538.

Here is a 1776 view of the Nisida crater, which formed a small harbor:

Note in the Baratta/Perrey engraving that there might be a lighthouse on one or more of the outcroppings. Could Rotum6 be an aerial view of a lighthouse with light streaming out from a central column and sea foam lapping against the rocks at the base?:

A 19th-century engraving shows a partly-submerged castle in shallow water near Nisida (perhaps connected to the island by a jetty?). There are also grottoes in the area (the VMS has a number of grotto-like images):

Below is a contemporary view of Nisida from the mainland, showing the white-stone jetty. Note the vantage point for the photo is quite high (there are escarpments in the VMS drawing between Rotum 2 and 3 that might correspond to cliffs).

It is a volcanically active area with many hilly craters and thermal vents. The horseshoe part of Nisida juts out to sea and is battered by rougher water when it’s stormy. There are castle ruins and traces of an old wall in the aerial photos.

Could the “channels” between the rota be jetties? Erosion and several changes in sea levels have probably increased the size of the hole in the center, but I don’t know how much this has changed since the 15th century.

If the “stars” in the center of Rotum 3 represent plants or water (or navigational symbols as VViews has shown might be a possible interpretation of star symbols), then they fit well with the idea of a crater island [Image credits: Wellcome Library Collection and Yale Beinecke Rare Books Library].

Other Possibilities

I have much more information on a possible connection to Naples, but what if it’s not a volcano? With the VMS, there are always other possibilities…

As I’ve written previously, the “volcano” in the VMS could be interpreted in many ways—as a volcano, or the biblical Mount of Olives, a coliseum flooded for water sports (which apparently were quite popular), a famous hill (e.g., the hills of Rome), a hell mouth (I think I heard the hellmouth idea from Ellie Velinska), the New Jerusalem (or some other metaphorical location or description of elemental order), the real Jerusalem, the Baths of Pozzuoli (Campi Flegrei or the sulphur craters), and a few others.

Usually a hellmouth was drawn as a dragon, whale, or crocodile with a toothy, gaping maw, as in this example from the Winchester Psalter (c. 1150):

but not always. Here is a schematic representation from the Huntington Library (Germany, c. 1487) that is reminiscent of the eye-shaped rotum in the VMS map (there are even round protrusions on the top-right of the doorway):

Original Ideas

K. Gheuens offered a provocative parallel to the eye-specked fringe of a mollusc. This is one of my favorites, since there are VMS plants suggestive of sea life, including roots that resemble crab, jellyfish, and octopus. Even if none of the imagery turns out to be sea life, the organic shapes give the feeling the illustrator might have lived near the coast for some part of his or her life.

Speaking of sea creatures, this drawing in Bodley 602 has a scallop-like critter that resembles some of the “umbrellas” and other textural motifs in the VMS:

If Rotum 1 really is a volcano, then I think locations like Naples and Sicily deserve serious consideration. If not, then there are many possibilities, maybe even some that haven’t yet been suggested.

J.K. Petersen

Postscript Feb. 23, 2019:

I planned to post this image of Vesuvius in this blog, but I couldn’t find my link. Then I remembered I had posted it on the Voynich.ninja forum in September 2018, along with some images of volcanoes in Sicily, and other structures (like coliseums) that are large and eye-shaped. It is a re-creation published in Popular Science Monthly in 1906 of what Vesuvius may have looked like in the Middle Ages before the significant eruption of 1631:

Vesuvius was the first volcano I looked at (because the crater is eye-shaped), but I soon realized there are many craters around Napoli that might qualify as a VMS “volcano”, and there are other regions with volcanoes that somewhat match the topology in the VMS rota.

It occurred to me when I first noticed the “pipes” on the rosette foldout, that they might be Medieval or Roman aqueducts, or perhaps “soffioni” (hot steam jets) that occur naturally (or might have been installed) in some of these thermally active areas.

Steam vents sometimes had spiritual significance. Lewis R. Freeman reported in Popular Mechanics that the Romans erected an oracle (and later a spa) at the steam vents of Larderello, near Volterra, Tuscany (look up Priest Consulting Oracle in the Museo Guarnacci Volterra to see a frieze). Could the temple-like dome in the central rotum be an oracle or later spiritual center? Even after Europe was Christianized, many of the Pagan oracle locations were retained as religious sites.

The Romans also built a coliseum in Volterra and, right next to it, a bath complex. Volterra was under Florentine rule in the 15th century and now is a major geothermal engineering center.

Voynich Portal

Ruminations about the mysterious 15th century "cipher manuscript"