D.N. O’Donovan: “What I meant to say was that your examples would be even more interesting if you labelled them with details of the manuscripts from which they come.”
D.N., you constantly rebuke me for not including shelf marks, but every example I posted above includes a shelf mark.
]]>I have also noticed that the intended audience of a manuscript has some influence. Some Months’ Labors series indicate the work that has to be done each month, while others (notably some of the French ones) include times of leisure (for the nobility) while only suggesting (or ignoring) the work done by others during that time.
]]>It makes sense when you think about it – obviously you can’t do the same things in Norway or Scotland, in February, than you can in southern France or Sicily. So while the month’s constellation was the same, the imagery adapts the labor to what is actually feasible in a given region.
When I hunted for examples of goats used for Aries, I found it had historical and political background, as well as geographic reasons, but since I covered all this aspect of the research when writing it up, I won’t risk boring you by repeating it. I found it especially interesting that the two Aries goats (first noted by a contributer to the first Voynich mailing list) omit the billy’s beard – and one tends to find goats drawn with such nicely formed jaws, and no beard, in the eastern Mediterranean. But again – I talked about all that before.
What I meant to say was that your examples would be even more interesting if you labelled them with details of the manuscripts from which they come. It helps other researchers form a clearer idea of geographic and chronological distributions.
Thanks
Koen, it suddenly occurred to me why Aquarius in the KB manuscript has the Janus-style head.
Sometimes the month’s labor for January has a two-headed figure. The illustrator may have combined (or confused) the January zodiac with the January labor.
]]>Yes, good observation.
Most of the zodiac figures in KB 76 E 4 follow traditional themes, but it’s unusual for Aquarius to have two figures. Two jugs is not unusual, but two figures is different.
I would have to check my files to be sure, but I don’t remember other Aquarius figures being drawn this way.