I just remembered what these designs reminded me of when I first saw them...
Designs for rings and pendants.
I'll grab an example... be right back...
Okay, here is a reliquary cross courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum. This one happens to be c. 1470s Germany (I only searched for a few seconds, don't have a lot of time right now):
You can click You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to see the full-sized image.
The top image might be a sketch for a ring, the bottom ones maybe for pendants. There was also a lot of cross-fertilization... illustrators often used jewelry in their borders and backgrounds and jewelers probably got ideas from the decorative elements in drawings.
Here's a medieval reliquary cross (Italy, late 1300s) with a tiny central window (image source The Met, public domain):
![[Image: hb_17.190.498.jpg]](https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/hb/hb_17.190.498.jpg)
Designs for rings and pendants.
I'll grab an example... be right back...
Okay, here is a reliquary cross courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum. This one happens to be c. 1470s Germany (I only searched for a few seconds, don't have a lot of time right now):
You can click You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to see the full-sized image.
The top image might be a sketch for a ring, the bottom ones maybe for pendants. There was also a lot of cross-fertilization... illustrators often used jewelry in their borders and backgrounds and jewelers probably got ideas from the decorative elements in drawings.
Here's a medieval reliquary cross (Italy, late 1300s) with a tiny central window (image source The Met, public domain):
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)