When a comment landed here today from Diane O’Donovan about the (sometimes asserted, sometimes denied) connection between the Voynich Manuscript’s Q13 (the ‘balneo’ folios) and the late 12th century De Balneis Putolanis by Peter of Eboli, it reminded me that there’s a 15th century balneological manuscript out there I really want to know a lot more about – MS Aldini 488 “Collectio de balneis”.
Q13A vs Q13B (again)
However, before I launch into all that, I first need to recap various codicological features of Q13 before we start trying to work with it.
The first thing to know about Q13 is that its bifolios have ended up bound in the wrong order. We can tell this because a bifolio that was originally at the centre of a quire / gathering has ended up not at the middle. Moreover, following the logical through to the end leads (as per The Curse of the Voynich back in 2006) to a situation where you can reconstruct the central two bifolios’ nesting order: f84 – f78 (centre) f81 – f75.
The second thing to notice is that the drawings on these two nested Q13 bifolios (which are all about bathing ‘nymphs’) seem to sit in a quite different category from the drawings on the other three Q13 bifolios (which largely revolve around plumbing, though whether this is real or imagined is hard to say). Voynich researcher Glen Claston proposed that the first two bifolios form a balneological quire on their own (which he called “Q13B”), while the other three form a medical quire (which he called “Q13A”). Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with his specific interpretation, his basic codicological division into two separate artifacts has stood the test of time: so it seems we are looking at two separate (though similar-looking) things whose constituent bifolios have ended up interleaved. Glen also proposed that Q13B was constructed before Q13A.
The third thing to be aware of is that on the Voynich Manuscript’s page f81r (in Q13B, the bathing nymphs section), there is apparently a poem. I raised this poem section as something which we might look for parallels with in other texts when I started discussing the ‘block paradigm’ approach (where you look for structural matches between a page of enciphered text and plaintext pages from similar contemporary or earlier manuscripts). Interestingly, it seems (from the line-initial gallows characters) that the f81r poem has a 7 / 8 / 8 / 8 line structure, which would be consistent with the writer / copyist having accidentally skipped past a line within the first block of the poem.
Putting all these pieces together, the implication is that we should be looking for a block-sized match between the contents of the two “bathing nymphs” bifolios and 14th / early 15th century balneological texts (which are possibly but not necessarily illustrated). The poem embedded in the middle (it’s on the right half of the central bifolio) seems to be structured as three verses, each containing four couplets (i.e. eight lines). This is because if we can find a source match that’s tolerably close to this basic ‘block specification’, we might just be in business.
Arnold C. Klebs
Back when I was writing The Curse of the Voynich in 2006, to be honest I hadn’t yet found much balneological source material at all. It was only a little later (in 2009) that I found an online version of the (1916) article “Balneology in the Middle Ages” by Arnold C. Klebs. This mentioned a number of late medieval / early modern people who had written on the subject of baths, e.g.:
- Giovanni de Dondis
- Gentile da Foligno (d. 1348)
- Ugolino Caccino of Montecatini (d. 1425)
- Matteo Bendinelli (1489)
- Michele Savonarola (who I already knew about)
Klebs also mentioned the printed book “De Balneis omnia quae extant” Venice, Giunta, 1553, fol., 447 leaves, which he describes as “the first text-book on balneology“.
A source Klebs also refers to specifically for German bath history is:
- Martin, Alfred “Deutsches Badewvesen in vergangenen Tagen,” Jena, Diederichs, 1906. With 159 illustrations from old originals.
Giunta’s (1553) De Balneis Omnia
Google Books lists two separate copies of Giunta’s (1553) “De Balneis Omnia Quae Extant apud Graecos, Latinos et Arabas” (etc etc), both of which freely downloadable:
The bad news is that this is a super-heavyweight Latin compendium of balneological sources (the PDF runs to 1033 pages). However, the good news is that Giunta has assembled it from just about everyone pre-1553 who had written about baths, water etc: so there are large sections excerpting books from early authors such as Pliny, Avicenna, Aristotle, Galen, Hippocrates, along with selections from 16th century authors such as Gesner, Fuchs etc.
One thing I found was that, Pietro d’Abano’s “De Balneis” aside (which is written in hexameters), almost none of the balneo sources quoted by Giunta seem to appear in verse form. Even the promising-looking verse section on p.90 by “Ioannis et Iacobi De Dondis Patavinorum” turned out to be a poem by Claudian (370AD-404AD) (“Fons, Antenoreae vitam qui porrigis urbi, / Fataque vicinis noxia pellis aquis“).
Having said that, Giunta’s selection is entirely in Latin and far from complete. So it may well be that, if we can somehow go back to some fifteenth century collection of balneo manuscripts, we can see these in their original form – which may well be in Tuscan (rather than Latin), in verse (rather than in prose), and illustrated (rather than just text).
But where on earth would we find such an unlikely-sounding text?
Pavia, MS Aldini 488
It turns out that there really is such a text: and it is at the University of Pavia. Sadly, this “Collectio de Balneis” hasn’t yet been digitized (or if it has, its digital pages have not yet been shared outside the University of Pavia). But we do know the contents of MS Aldini 488:
Aldini 488, Collectio de Balneis. Cart., sec. XV, cc. 78 n.n., 232 x 154 mm.
c. 1: Savonarola Michele, De balneo et termis naturalibus omnibus Italiae sicque totius orbis proprietatibusque earum
c. 45: Ugolino da Montecatini, De balneis mineralibus et artificialibus
c. 61: Epigrammata de balneis puteolanis
c. 66: Consilium pro balneis de Corsena in comitatu luchano pro domino Lanzaloto de Crotis ducali consiliario
c. 67: Tura di Castello, Regula et tractatus balnei de poreta
c. 68v: Tractatus pro balneis de aquis per Petrum de Tussignano
c. 70v: Antonii Guaynerii papiensis de balneis aquis ciuitatis antiquissime que in marchionatu montisferrati sita sunt tractatus
c. 74v: De balneis secundum Petrum de Ebano
c. 75v: Tractatus de balneis secundum Gentillem
c. 76v: De balneis de Burmio secundum magistrum Petrum de Tussignano
c. 77v: Regula balnei loci de Aquaria in territorio regii
c. 78v: De balneo aque porrete
Collocazione cd: Mediateca nas bu 269
Collocazione vol. originale: Aldini 488
Because this is not yet available online, it is where – unless you happen to know better? – our current breakneck tour of balneological sources stops,
Note that there are a fair few monographs on individual balneo authors:
- This Spanish Prezi presentation by Sergio P on Michele Savonarola lists eight manuscript versions of his book on baths (including Paris BNF Nouv. Acq. Lat 889, dating to 1452), seven printed versions of the same (1485-1562), plus four separate monographs.
- Pietro da Tossignano’s (d. 1401) “Tractatus de regimine sanitatis” was printed in 1535 (his medical recipes are online here). Giuseppe Mazzini wrote “Vita e opera di maestro Pietro da Tossignano” in 1926 (reprinted in 2007).
As an aside, I also found an interesting chapter (in French) on the balneo literature – “Les traités médicaux sur les bains d’Acqui Terme, entre XIVe et XVIe siècles“, by Gabriella Zuccolin – from a recent book, “Sejourner au bain”. Zuccolin further notes that many of the treatises are covered at speed by Lynn Thorndike, but… they would be, wouldn’t they?
I had not heard of this MS before, and a quick look round led to a few minor points that you are rather likely to have seen, but you did not mention them in your post, so here goes:
– There seems to be a four-page description of MS Aldini 488 in: “Pavia Biblioteca universitaria: *Fondo Aldini / a cura di Carla Casagrande, Maria Antonietta Casagrande Mazzoli, Silvana Vecchio”, Olschki 1993, pp. 251-254
– Petrus de Tussignano (a.k.a. Pietro Curialti), author of one of the treatises, was a close friend and private physician of Giangaleazzo Visconti
– Paris, Nouvelle Acq. Lat. 211 seems somewhat related to the Aldini MS and might be online (I did not put any effort in checking).
Rene: thanks very much for taking the time to have a look at this, much appreciated!
Though only in black and white, BNF Nouv. Acq Lat. 211 (which I had somehow managed to miss) is viewable online, and indeed looks to be a close-to-exact 1483 copy of MS Aldini 488. The only obvious poem in it is Pietro d’Abano’s hexameters, and there are no illustrations (nymphs or otherwise). So… nothing obvious to bite on at first glance. But I’ll be taking a closer look regardless.
I’m now wondering whether there might be numerous 14th/15th century balneo manuscripts we know absolutely nothing about. A substantial modern literature has built up on individual physicians and spas, so this needs revisiting.
An interesting post, Nick. I am near certain that Q13B was influenced by illustrations from the Balneis, though I doubt that its actual meaning is balneological.
One thing I wonder is this: since we are going by the VM illustrations, shouldn’t we focus on illustrated traditions? The alternative is that the VM encoded some other balneological poem while drawing on imagery from the Balneis. Which would mean that it’s an enciphered, illustrated rendition of a previously unillustrated text.
Which would mean that they *obscured* a text about bathing and then *illumiated* it with new pictures about bathing…
Nick –
Nice references. I’ve followed up the others you kindly provided, too.
I always liked that story in The Little Prince, where he draws a form that looks like a hat but is about an elephant swallowed by a snake.
Regards
Koen: as I understand it, the majority of 14th and 15th century balneological texts are (like BNF Nouv Acq Lat 211) unillustrated, with the various illustrated De balneis Puteolanis manuscripts the shining counter-examples to that general trend. I was kind of hoping that Aldini 488 was going to be a bound collection of random balneological MSS (i.e. with a chance one or more may have been illustrated), but – alas – this seems not to have been the case.
I’m not sure I follow your reasoning re illustrations: Q13B could very easily have had an illustrated predecessor source we don’t happen to have seen or which has not survived (etc). So I would tend to think that we should collectively try to draw up a list of illustrated balneological texts (particularly non-De balneis Puteolanis ones), before drawing any further inferences about Q13B based on our incomplete knowledge of a relatively small illustrated subset of a larger tradition. 🙂
PS: we might even end up finding a copy of a balneological work with gaps where illustrations were not copied, that is something we see not infrequently in other manuscript copy traditions, as you know. So even an absence of illustrations might be a big enough tell to provide a block-level match. 😉
Nick: certainly, it would be naive to assume that all we have available now is all that ever existed. So it might be worthwhile to hunt through unillustrated MSS after all, especially if you have the “poem” to look out for.
I still wonder though, that if Q13B was influenced by balneological imagery (which is probably the case), would this source be a hypothetical genre of such illustrations or rather the Balneis in particular?
I know that the Balneis was influenced to a significant degree by the original frescos that at the time could still be seen on the walls of some of the baths. But besides this connection I don’t know if any other imagery was affected to the extent Q13B may have been.
There is one folio in particular where the Balneis shines through, the one with the blue “windows” under the nymphs. As Marco demonstrated, this composition also exists in Balneis MSS. https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-1050-post-16664.html#pid16664
Of course any other text about bathing could also be illustrated with images from the Balneis tradition, so I guess the search remains worthwhile.
This is also true of many medieval books with plants (they are unillustrated).
Nick,
Koen’s comment hadn’t been published when I wrote my previous note.
I agree with him in the main, though I’d say my position is that some illustrations in this part of the ‘ladies’ section(s) have been influenced by illustrations from the Balneis and also that I too do not think its actual meaning is balneological, and never have done.
Since we may now add Touwaide’s name to the nine decades’ long list of eminent specialists denying the Vms any place in those areas in which they are specialists, I wonder how wide the gulf will become before we see dropped theories asserting the content merely an aberrant version of pretty standard late medieval European texts, especially when those weren’t difficult to acquire, and some even procurable in print by the public at large.
Now Touwaide has seen so clearly that the content doesn’t belong to any tradition of European medical or herbal works or handbooks, nor to Byzantine or Arab medical works, one would hope for new perspectives. Touwaide himself is being reported as saying it’s probably a fake, though the reasons offered are curious, viz ‘precision of script and imprecision[sic] of the imagery’.
I do not see that the images are imprecise; I would say they are very precise and, at the same time, display complete indifference to that obsession with superficial likeness which would become the hallmark of western art from the late fifteenth century onwards. Should we call the ‘hat’ an imprecise drawing of a swallowed elephant, or the latter an ‘imprecise’ definition of a hat?
The person who makes that call is the person who made the image.
Diane: something could be both balneological and yet secret at the same time. We know explicitly that Filarete claimed (in a manner of speaking) to have written a book of secrets of water, so the notion that you can tell from other writings whether or not a book of secrets in the same genre could not have existed doesn’t really, errrm, hold water.
The pictures in the “de balneis” are copied, I have seen them before. F.e. I looked quickly at the waterwheel, the original is a “Holzschnitt by Konrad Gesner”, 1553.
For those interested in the Balneis, you could simply buy a good summary book, such as G. Pictorius or any other, it saves a lot of time.
Nick – but you know, I’m sure, that what were called ‘secrets’ were what today we’d tend to call rather technical instructions, or tricks-of-trade: trade secrets, if you like. Agreed that as an architect, Filarete might well know technical matter connected with baths, plumbing, ideal line-of-fall for piping and so on and put them in a book. It was quite the thing to do by his time. I don’t know how many works of that sort we have that were enciphered or encoded but I find it impossible to believe that a Renaissance architect would (or physically could) record his secrets in a style of drawing like that in the Vms. In the eyes of his contemporaries, it would seem such ‘bad drawing’ that he’d be a laughing stock.
I find it interesting, too, that Davidsch believes the content in the Voynich had such range and interest for others that it is (still) reflected in works made at least a hundred years later. In the normal way, this might indicate that the text itself exists somewhere in plain copy. The rein one has to maintain, of course, is against the tendency to form a subjective or pre-emptive opinion, and then be diverted into documenting that opinion, rather than taking account of whether the idea is consistent with the historical context, the context provided by the other sections and what we know about modes of expression in one cultural context against another.
I realise that most Voynicheros are aware of these issues to some degree, which is why all expositions of the imagery tend to be assumed no more than subjective and judged chiefly by a show of hands, and how well an opinion fits a popular theory, than by any more objective standard.
In earlier years, I found this aspect of Voynich studies intensely frustrating, but less so now. One technical specialist knows when an opinion is, or isn’t rubbish (or ‘ill-founded’ to be polite), but a jury of twelve good men and true must rely on feelings about plausibility, and the advocates’ powers of persuasion to tell them what to think.
All one can do is cross-examine one’s own opinion fiercely before offering it, and raise every possible objection to it before wasting others’ time, I suppose. The aim is to have the poor manuscript fairly treated. 🙂
Diane: regardless of who wrote the Voynich, they did do it in such a way as to keep us moderns guessing, hmmm?
So, asserting that something you can only imperfectly understand would have been thought a “laughing stock” by people at the time might just be a tad presumptuous. We understand neither the context nor the content. 🙁
Nick, I can only reply to this in terms of my own area, so why moderns are kept guessing about the written part of the text I won’t presume to say.
When it comes to the pictorial text (which may, but won’t necessarily illustrate the written), I have very little patience with “guessing” and it seems to me that the reason most indulge in it because they (a) believe imagery is a sort of easy, girly work and so apply ‘girly’ approaches to it: individual, subjective impressions rather than the application of methods and external studies. If I claimed to translate the text by saying that one of the gallows glyphs ‘looked like’ a chair, and from that asserted that it was a chair, and then fitted that notion into a theory about woodworkers of the Andes, you’d have a fair parallel to the way in which the Voynich images have been … not just often but almost invariably.. treated.
I don’t expect this will change in the near future. I don’t necessarily expect it will change at all among a majority.
All I can do, and have done, is explain the historical, cultural and other context to show why and how the images express their content, and what that content is.
Those who listen, listen; those who won’t, won’t, but if they’re “left guessing” about the imagery I expect, now, that it’s only because they haven’t time, or interest, to read to the depth needed, or because they find it easier to adopt a theory and impose it upon the primary evidence – a much more traditional and ‘club-able’ approach, to be sure.
About your last sentence, though, I’m afraid I do not quite know who is, and who isn’t included when a Voynichero says “we”,
regards
Nick,
Sorry, previous comment a bit rant-y.
To be specific
Your first sentence ‘in such a way…’ seems to imply an intention to deceive. For the written part of the text, that may be so – not my field – but I find no evidence of it in the imagery, apart from a couple of the ladies folios from Q.13, and there I’d be more inclined to call it a sort of visual shorthand, an allusive expression of the matter, so to day.
On your second point – saying that none of the imagery displays the characteristics of European Renaissance art and techniques is not presumptuous, unless you call it presumptuous to presume that historians of art and related disciplines know nothing.
That the images aren’t a product of the Italian renaissance was evident to Panofsky after two hours with the manuscript and though I wouldn’t presume to suggest I’ve been gifted with his genius, several years’ researching one specific question after another about this imagery has shown nothing that would lead me to disagree with him.
Just as you speak, in another thread, of parsing the text, so too images are to be ‘parsed’, and for that a person needs the equipment, and be prepared to do a good deal of study and serious research.
But the short answer is that it is possible to tell the difference between drawings which have, and haven’t origin in medieval Europe, Renaissance Europe. In fact, I have colleagues able to tell at a glance whether an isolated initial was painted in Tuscany in 1410 or in Sicily in 1430.
When I say the style of drawing in the Voynich manuscript is incompatible with a theory of drawing by a Renaissance Italian architect, I’m not presuming or guessing… just saying. In the same way I’ve tried to get across that the ‘cloudband’ isn’t a sign of Germanic character, or that the use of curved, roughly parallel lines isn’t renaissance-style hatching.
It troubles me less that people won’t take my word for it than that so few bother to check whether it is true, or not. Admittedly I came to the study with quite a solid background in my field, and three decades’ experience in cross-cultural studies, but I would still be faintly offended if anything I said were supposed true just because I say it. That’s why I add lists of references and ‘further reading’.
Diane,
Are there studies of Art Brut/Outsider Art covering material outside Western cultures/prior to the 19th Century? If the mss is Art Brut/Outsider Art, could that account for e.g. naked women in a 15th Cent. European mss , or does AB/OA not stray that far from the artistic conventions of the artist’s native environment?
Karl
Karl,
Thank you so much for asking a question. It has not been a frequent thing in this area.
For readers unaware of the term ‘art brut’: roughly speaking the coinage as such supposed “insider” art ruled by intelligence-as-logic, and “outsider” art as an expression of raw emotion.
Personally I find the informing ideas for such classification disturbing whenever it is offered. To imagine that a human being’s capacity for intelligence can be cut out from his/her capacity for human emotion, and then to falsely conflate intelligence with mere logic is something that has had a long and unfortunate history in Europe and it is, itself, irrational.
Nonetheless, in the nineteenth century the fantasy was so general that many in England (for example) imagined that a person born in England was ‘rational’ but those born in warmer climates were ’emotional’. Other European myths of that time had it that [all] men were ‘rational’ and [all] women ’emotional’; that one type of Christian sect (the Protestant) was rational, while other Christian sects were irrational; that Europeans were rational by contrast with the invaded peoples …and so on.
When that thinly-disguised mechanism of prejudice it disguised as scientific classification, it becomes all the more foolish. An Irishwoman’s graffiti is not thereby to be deemed an expression of raw emotion alone, uninformed by intelligence, skill, information, reason, and competence (as well as intention) to communicate – now, is it?
So if I were you I’d chuck the “art brut” hypothesis in relation to images in the Vms, but it’s up to you.
More to the point – for the study of the images in the study as a whole – I only wish I could persuade Voynicheros to realise that supposing that messages and ideas expressed through the drawn line are simpler and more superficial than those expressed in the written line is an error.
When the text’s written part is unreadable, the assumption has been that one needs to learn certain skills, think rationally, and test one’s ideas.
Precisely the opposite approach has been taken towards the images and that, above, all is the caltrop in the path.
The voynich images are far from superficial, not incompetent in any sense, nor do they evince any knowledge of that attitude to the individual, or to the use of art, which we call expressionism – knowledge of which informs the very idea of an ‘art brut’. It is not be found in traditional art anywhere, though I suppose you could call Roman graffiti on Egyptian steles, or marginalia expressing personal emotions, scrawled in a manuscript, a sort of art brut.
(Does that help?)
Diane: I think you may have dismissed the question rather than actually answered it. 🙁
Nick,
You mean the answer to Karl’s question?
It may have seemed to you a simple question, but it implies a great many ideas which are absolutely opposed, theoretically and in fact, to the nature of image-making in earlier times and in regions beyond Europe.
Karl’s statement that the images in the Vms are of the class ‘art brut’ was not expressed as a question, but as if it were something true. Which made that the chief issue. I will try to put more clearly why it is inappropriate to try imposing such ideas upon older and/or non-European art as ‘outsider’ art. The European is one style, from one region. For the period of the Vms is it entirely wrong to approach the Vms imagery by presuming the art of Latin Europe (or even of the Mediterranean monotheistic cultures) as if it represented a global norm, from which all divergence was a descent. And that’s what terms such as ‘art brut’ imply.
So – to re-phrase my answer, in case it was a bit quick…
The definition of ‘art brut’ refers to ideas, and ideas about the purpose of expression through imagery, which are dependent on developments in western art much later than the medieval era.
Since older peoples did not see the uses of imagery in that way, the application of those ideas after the fact is problematic, to say the least.
For example, it might be argued that since art brut includes – today – pictures made by persons who are classed as insane in our own societies (in which the standard model for sanity is a 30-yr old American male, and religious faith is defined as less-than-sane by definition), the art of/attributed to Hildegard of Bingen might be defined as art of someone insane and informed only by ‘raw emotion’.
A medievalist might, or might not, let that definition pass. It suits modern classifications, but in the context of medieval life, a mystic was not a madman.
I’d describe her art as a little idiosyncratic but less because I’d consider her mad than that her access to education was relatively limited. And she certainly wasn’t an “outsider” – another aspect of definition as ‘art brut’.
The further back, and further from European self-referential “norms”, so such definitions become increasingly less applicable.
We include graffiti in ‘art brut’ on the model of the ‘Yankees go home’ sort of graffiti (as distinct from street art as such). So you might include Roman graffiti defacing an Egyptian monument.
There might be some book put out about ‘ancient art brut’ but decisions about what was, and wasn’t included would be fraught with theoretical as well as practical problems. Because in the end it comes down to this notion that one can distinguish between ‘rational’ and ‘non-rational’ approaches to art, and the habit of assuming the purpose of art is neither a ‘nice likeness’ or the expression of a sense of individual personality. Another imposition of western, and especially of modern western assumptions about the role and purpose of image-making.
As far as the Vms is concerned – I see no evidence that any of it (except perhaps some of the written marginalia) displays evidence of any of those characteristics which define ‘art brut’.. It is rational, not emotional; ‘conversational’ not personal; informative, not random; displays evidence of more than average technical competence.
So unless one wishes to define all which isn’t standard medieval western art as ‘outsider, irrational, mad, emotional’…. which would be unwise today… then there’s no relevance for study of the Vms.
However, as I said to Karl, it’s up to him. Someone might have had a go at imposing modern ideas of an ‘art brut’ on works of earlier and non-European cultures, of course. Some might call the Pazyryk tattoos ‘art brut’. I shouldn’t. Approaches to ‘art history’ can sometimes be fairly superficial in their definition of history… and, come to think of that, of ‘art’.
I’ll recommend titles that I know are likely to illuminate some aspect of the Vms. Since use of the term ‘art brut’ and an implied classification of all but mainstream medieval Latin monotheists as “outsiders”, and of the Vms draughtsmen as deranged, driven by emotion, indulging in self-expression and so forth are precisely what I’ve found, and shown, to be counter-productive (and just plain wrong) since 2008.
Diane: I agree that ‘art brut’ is a relatively modern categorization that makes no real sense to apply to the Voynich. But it is possible to say that clearly in a single short sentence.
Nick,
I try not to offer no opinion without its reason.
Nick,
* I see no reason to assume that a smaller percentage of the population in the 15th Century had the sort of rich but idiosyncratic inner life that a Darger or Dellschau or Hampton had. Or for that matter that the percentage of such people in any particular geographical region or ethnicity is any lower than was in 20th Century America/Europe (although that’s not relevant to the question I was asking Diane).
* Having said that, it should go without saying (but probably safely can’t) that:
1) The _absolute number_ of such people was much smaller in the 15th Century, and
2) Within that group, a much more limited percentage had the leisure, access to resources, and ability to express heterodox ideas without fear of getting better acquainted with thumbscrews to *generate* what we would consider “Outsider Art” if it were created today, or the social status for it to have been considered worthy of being *preserved* if they did.
3) Which means it’s hardly shocking that there isn’t much (if any) of it, but doesn’t justify claiming that it didn’t/couldn’t exist.
So let’s consider a figure raised at least as far back in Voynich studies as D’Imperio: Hildegard of Bingen. While I’m not interested in getting into a citation count pissing match with anyone, I thought it would be prudent to verify that I wasn’t totally off-base in thinking of her as doing proto-, and lo and behold, here’s a quote from an essay from “the book True Visions, an Italian collection on visionary art that was edited by Massimiliano Geraci and Federica Timeto” (https://techgnosis.com/visionary-art-vanguard-tradition/): “Obviously the context and meaning of ‘visionary art’ in the premodern world is vastly different than contemporary art practices — something the more romantic proponents of contemporary visionary art sometimes forget. The ‘visions’ captured in the premodern era are, _with some exceptions (Bosch and Hildegard of Bingen come to mind)_, collective constructs, rendered by artists working anonymously within highly conservative cultural codes, and with little conception of ‘art’ as we know it. Even in the individualistic West, artists were constrained by strict conventions and ecclesiastic expectations.” (emphasis added). On the one hand, Diane says (rightly) that there would be no real effort involved in identifying her imagery as a product of a 12th Century Western Christian environment. On the other hand, if that wasn’t the case both her work (and she) would have probably ended up on a fire somewhere.
So let’s consider a couple hypotheticals involving a 25th Century art historian (dealing, for some reason, with the same issues of sampling and limited preservation that 20th/21st Century folks are dealing with wrt the 15th Century — maybe industrial civilization collapsed after the Climate Catastrophe of the 22nd Century):
If Charles Dellschau’s work (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dellschau) was rediscovered, and our art historian said, “Sure the clothing is late 19th/early 20th Century American clothing and some of the unenciphered text is in English, but every expert on the development of flight technology in Europe and the US who has been consulted has said ‘Not one of mine’, so it’s obviously not a product of US/European culture” would that be a valid argument?
Little girls with penises (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger) are definitely *not* something that occurs in mainstream 20th Century US art — does that mean that haring off after a milieu where such imagery was first enunciated would be productive?
If MS 408 were the product of an individual with (say) a medical background from a 15th Century Latin environment, but reflected the kind of rich but utterly personal inner life of a Dellschau or Darger, could that explain things like the unclothed female figures in the mss and the lack of Christian imagery? Or does the apple just not fall that far from the tree?
The irony, of course, is that if that’s the answer — that studies show the Outsider Art apple really doesn’t fall that far from the mainstream cultural environment tree that produced it — I would have been happy to cheerfully accept that. Instead, Diane chose to attack the question:
* “For readers unaware of the term ‘art brut’: roughly speaking the coinage as such supposed ‘insider’ art ruled by intelligence-as-logic, and ‘outsider’ art as an expression of raw emotion.” While that may be a fair representation of Dubuffet’s original concept, I’m not sure it’s a fair representation of the concept as it’s evolved (or at least of related but not necessarily coextensive terms like “Outsider Art”). Darger and Dellschau are firmly in the canon of Outsider Art (if Outsider Art can have a canon), but I think it would be hard to describe the content of their work as “an expression of raw emotion”.
* “The voynich images are far from superficial,” — I don’t doubt that — “not incompetent in any sense,” — there are certainly places where there is a more than a little roughness of technique; if you look at https://www.jasondavies.com/voynich/#f79r/0.129/0.839/5.00, not only is the pigment applied in a somewhat sloppy way (the right vertical pole is completely covered with it), but there have been some serious fails in hidden line removal — not just where the figure’s right arm is draped over the vertical pole, but also where the figure’s left arm crosses in front of the edge of the torso (my guess is you will now produce a list of 10 cultures which don’t represent occlusion of one object by another by removing hidden lines) — “nor do they evince any knowledge of that attitude to the individual, or to the use of art, which we call expressionism” — from the _Britannica_ (https://www.britannica.com/art/Expressionism): “Expressionism, artistic style in which the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person.”; again, I question whether that’s a fair (or even defensible) description of the style of the work of the subset of Outsider Artists that includes Darger and Dellschau (not because either was depicting objective reality, although Dellschau may well have *thought* he was, but because neither does their art depict “subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse within a person” — the definition sets up a false dichotomy).
* “Karl’s statement that the images in the Vms are of the class ‘art brut’ was not expressed as a question, but as if it were something true. ” I know Australian and American English dialects differ to a degree, but I’m pretty sure “If the mss is Art Brut/Outsider Art, could that account for e.g. naked women in a 15th Cent. European mss , or does AB/OA not stray that far from the artistic conventions of the artist’s native environment?” reads as a question in both. If you chose to interpret it as a rhetorical question, that’s on you.
* “For example, it might be argued that since art brut includes – today – pictures made by persons who are classed as insane in our own societies (in which the standard model for sanity is a 30-yr old American male, and religious faith is defined as less-than-sane by definition), the art of/attributed to Hildegard of Bingen might be defined as art of someone insane and informed only by ‘raw emotion’.” Without prejudice to the extent to which Dubuffet’s original definition (and collecting) focused on artists who were classified as mentally ill, the term as it’s evolved in usage (or at least the related if not totally coextensive term “Outsider Art”) is not in any way, shape, or form limited to artists who are presumed to be “insane”. This is your strawman, plain and simple.
* “There might be some book put out about ‘ancient art brut’ but decisions about what was, and wasn’t included would be fraught with theoretical as well as practical problems.” Decisions about what is and isn’t included in *contemporary* Art Brut or Outsider Art are fraught with theoretical as well as practical problems, but people still try to do it. What are the defining characteristics? Most definitions seem to involve artists who lack formal training in artistic techniques and conventions — that implies a culture with a professional artistic class, so there could certainly be cultures where Outsider Art was impossible because there was no such in-group to be outside of, but 15th Century Europe isn’t such a place. The other thing I’d identify as a defining characteristic is that it reflects a rich but individualized mental framework/worldview. That may be a little off-the-reservation with regard to usage in the art history community, but I think is a necessary phrasing to reconcile the inclusion of figures considered well within the term. The Sonora Aero Club may not have been *real*, but that’s not the same as being *irrational* or *emotional*, and in fact the world Dellschau created was coherent enough that some folks have gone haring off to look for evidence that it actually existed. If you look at the corpus of Darger’s drawings and maps and writings and then look at the corpus of Tolkein’s drawings and maps and writings, I’m not sure you could make a strong case that what distinguishes them is emotion or rationality (as opposed to polish and quality).
* “Since use of the term ‘art brut’ and an implied classification of all but mainstream medieval Latin monotheists as ‘outsiders’, and of the Vms draughtsmen as deranged, driven by emotion, indulging in self-expression and so forth are precisely what I’ve found, and shown, to be counter-productive (and just plain wrong) since 2008.” Again, this is an utter bullshit strawman misrepresentation of anything I actually said other than “indulging in self-expression”.
As a unrelated aside to Diane — you say, “It troubles me less that people won’t take my word for it than that so few bother to check whether it is true, or not.” Your mileage may vary, but if you really want to move the needle on this (especially with interested people who aren’t art historians by training), your best strategy is probably *not* publishing a book through an academic press — Tucker and Janick managed to accomplish that. Your best bet is probably publishing one or more papers in an art history journal that accompanies published papers with commentaries by reviewers (if such a critter exists in the field; they do in computer science).
Karl
…the cart before the horse.
Keep in mind this is not my area of expertise at all, and I have not read the primary sources on Outsider Art a.k.a. Art Brut that Diane has dutifully cited. My understanding of Outsider Art is that its defining feature is its lack of influence from the critical feedback of any beholding audience. The artist the creates the work for himself, and/or just broadcasts it blindly to the world for whomever is listening, without any care for who is receiving it or how they’re reacting to it.
On the one hand, I don’t have a problem applying this concept retroactively per se. I don’t see any reason why the VMS couldn’t have been the product of one very socially isolated person’s rich imagination. It could have just as easily been the product of a small group of such people; I think of the Brontë sisters, and the elaborate fantasy world they created together as children.
On the other hand, I can see how the VMS-as-Outsider-Art theory chafes people who demand evidence before believing anything. It’s an extremely hard theory to prove or disprove, as it’s very possible that such a person or group of people have left no other trace. It feels like a copout, in that way. I’m not of the school of thought that a new concept being applied to a specimen from long before is always dismissible off the bat as an inappropriate anachronism. But it’s a lot less likely to be a valid mapping, because you’re almost certainly working with a lot less data.
Karl, The two vols of essays are work commissioned. The editorial board contacted me, not I them.
When you say,
‘If Charles Dellschau’s work …
No it wouldn’t be valid argument. No specialist in the history of late 19th/early 20thC America would fail to recognise in Dellschau’s work that adoration of science and technology which is so characteristic of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century industrialised Europe and America. Whether it was an art historian, cultural historian, economic historian, or an historian of science, they’d all say “Definitely one of ours; Jules Verne atmosphere and all that”
But the other major flaw in your analogy is – to put it as briefly as I can here. The medieval maker of pictures was an artisan, not an ‘artist’. The notion of the ‘artist’ as someone of superior sensitivity from the ‘common herd’ and whose personal vision was expressed and then displayed in the expectation of personal admiration from the (preferably awe-struck) audience, stunned by his genius, is a very late phenomenon and one still rare in less fractured societies. Western artists began talking about themselves as Europe lost its earlier unity through a shared language of education and single religious culture. I’m not saying either situation was better or worse, but that’s the history of it.
And again, to compare an intrinsic script in one of Dellschau’s works to a bit of marginalia in medieval manuscript is to insult your own intelligence. Try telling the curator of some large collection of manuscripts that they should date them by whatever was later scribbled in a margin. Really…,
If anyone can a written report from an independent specialist in medieval paleography to say the principal ‘Voynichese’ text was written in a German-trained hand, I’ll accept it after getting a second or third opinion. From my point of view, the verticals are all wrong, and so is the early fifteenth century.
My position is that when an eminent historian of western Christian art and a specialist in the history of western Christian alchemical works (in fact, two), and various other specialists in the various other aspects of fifteenth century western European Christian art and culture *all* say ‘nope – not like anything in my field’…and ‘not like anything I’ve ever seen’ then to keep treating as rhetorical the question: ‘What else could it be?’ is not particularly intelligent.
btw I’m not an art historian. You need, but need much more than, art history to assess origin and meaning in problematic images and artefacts.
Karl,
trying to be brief, I ended up with telegraphese.
“From my point of view, the verticals are all wrong, and so is the early fifteenth century…” I mean the verticals so characteristic of German and central European hands, and which give a page its visual structure are absent from Voynichese and, further, that the early fifteenth century is too early for the humanist hands’ effort at a ‘Greek look’ to have taken off in Germany. So far as I’ve seen, anyway.
D.N. O’Donovan wrote: “If anyone can a written report from an independent specialist in medieval paleography to say the principal ‘Voynichese’ text was written in a German-trained hand, I’ll accept it after getting a second or third opinion. From my point of view, the verticals are all wrong, and so is the early fifteenth century.”
Who is suggesting (or implying) that the principal VMS text was written in a German-trained hand?
JK – the problem is that the ‘Germanic-imperial-Voynich’ theorists (Eurocentic by definition as well as by adherence to the old expectations) is that they don’t say so.
In order for a librarian to attribute a medieval manuscript to, say, northern England in the 12thC, it is necessary to consider the manuscript’s materials and the book-block’s binding (codicology),as well as the hands (palaeography); imagery (comparative iconology and cultural studies), and all supplemented by whatever information is directly offered by the written or pictorial text (e.g. if a calendar includes a day for some regional saint or depicts him or her in a way closely similar to a sculpture on a nearby cathedral).
These things are the reason for attributing a particular artefact to a given place of origin, and cultural context.
So why don’t the ‘German-imperial cultural product’ theories have as their basis for attribution those normal criteria?
Why – as you imply – is no-one arguing ‘Voynichese’ is enciphered German, or that it is written in a German hand?
To be frank about it, the whole matter of codicology and palaeography was not only determinedly ignored (except by Nick) from c.2004- c.2012 or so but I was among those who were kindly informed/instructed that in lending my support to Nick’s recommending such studies, I was wasting my time: that I should ‘pay no attention’ to such matter; that it was ‘unnecessary’ and ‘too complicated’ and I was also told, by one individual in a forum that ‘you don’t need to be an expert in codicology to see that manuscript’s obviously German’… and he quoted one possible translation for one line of marginalia as his ‘proof’ (!!).
Things have improved in that regard in more recent years – but one still sees it asserted that the ‘costumes are fifteenth century German’ and I’ve recently been told as if it were fact – and rather to my amusement, that ‘the drawing style is obviously German’.
You are perfectly right that no-one has yet tried to get away with asserting that ‘Voynichese’ is enciphered German.. nor that the materials, folio dimensions and specifications, nor the binding of the book-block is in any sense uniquely ‘German’ in character.
Why not?
Apart from the German text, there is another interesting hint. But this does not mean that the VM text should now be encrypted in German.
But to this headgear, I have only seen it in 4 books. All come from the same region. One of them is the VM.
I would be interested to know if anyone has seen this in others.
Example:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1977529169136394&set=gm.1436364283140035&type=3&theater&ifg=1
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1997124063843571&set=gm.1486847768091686&type=3&theater&ifg=1
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2229143957308246&set=pcb.1970377369738721&type=3&theater&ifg=1
Diane, your very long non-answer to my simple question gives the impression that you are inventing straw-man arguments.
98,969 lost and disappointed souls looking for the naughty nude nymphs in de Balneis @ Ninja to date, where in essence there is absolutely nothing of the kind to be found; nor for that matter is there any appearance of modern aboveground, free standing, lumbed bathing pools (ala our Voynich Manuscript), which of course is only to be expected.
My new find. Use a translator.
http://vladimirdulov.blogspot.com/2022/01/a-finding-that-needs-to-be-taken-into.html
Vladimir, On your blog, in the entry of January 30, 2022, you write and logically argue the thesis about the nonsensical meaning of the text of the Voynich Manuscript. Interesting conclusions. I wonder if there are other “evidence” in the manuscript that potential manuscript decryptors are deliberately sidetracked. I think this is where most of the Manuscript research should be conducted – but it is in the margins. I am writing these words because the main leitmotif of my understanding of the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript is the thesis about the meaninglessness of the text.
Currently, I believe that language B is a fake. The argument can be the writing in “text blocks” or, for example, the location of the gallows on the diagonal of the f103v page.
http://vk.com/id304788998?z=photo304788998_431401049%2Fwall304788998_76
Vladimir D: a very interesting post, well done! If it’s ok with you, I plan to discuss and respond to it on Cipher Mysteries.
Vladimir: in re your misplaced gallows location hence multi scribe Currier ‘B’ fake contention, don’t expect too much interest from dyed in the wool VM theorists. I’d nonetheless push ahead boldly and do something similar with lone scribe ‘A’ texts. Perhaps those accompanying poorly misrepresented Balneis era baths with ones depicted in our imposter manuscript…Better to be hung for a sheep as a lamb as they say..
Vladimir,
There are other possible explanations for that diagonal. One, relating to forms of cipher, is that the cipher-grid was formed as diagonal ‘crossword’ grid. I know one late example in Vignere, and suspect that another diagonal grid, in a Latin ms earlier than the Vms’ date, had a similar purpose.
A very different possibility is that the ‘diagonal’ is a function of a very different sort of text. After seeing some of the images produced by Julian Bunn, that the glyphs might be colour-keys, and the apparently ‘woven’ patterns be in fact recipes for woven patterned cloths. It was certainly big business in late medieval Europe. But then again, I tested passages of the Voynich text against a number of other technical ‘recipes’ and it was surprising how naturally the text fitted.
If you’re interested in cipher-grids, I expect Nick’s library will be helpful.
Regards
Nick. I’m ready for discussion.
I draw your attention to the fact that the problem of “wrinkles” is also on sheets 112, 114.
John. As you explain to yourself (and to everyone), the end of lines 4, 5, 6 f107r.
End block of 6 lines f114v (lower right corner).
Block of endings on page f115v lines 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10.
Diane: in re your bit on diagonal grid patterns; unless I’m mistaken, you may be opening doors leading to algebraic logarithms of mathematition Goerge Boole, then by extension to his widow Mary’s self taught modified pattern weaving, curve stitching & varied forms of string art to develop the minds of younger students before they be corrupted by outdated traditional methods demanded by so called educators in mid to late Victorian era prep schools. It’s no wonder the old dear set her family to work plotting a suitable pay back on the system, one that would hold it’s secrets for a century at least…..Must see if we can get hold of Mary Boole’s books on subjects ie., preparing the child for…this and that (series) and of course the 2001 biographical publication ‘The Booles & the Hintons’ by Gerry Kennedy.