26-09-2022, 08:26 PM
If you could figure out which books one of those actually owned, we could get a better idea of whether the VM would fit in there.
An accompanying question would have to be what the VM looked like to these people in the 15th century. Some would argue that the images would not be seen as overly bizarre. A medicinal compendium based on something like the Dioscorides or a Latin herbal tradition, the Balneis (a poem about Italian baths), maybe some De Sfera (a common schoolbook).
So there you have another problem: if it is meant to look exotic ("Coptic", otherwise Egyptian or just exotic in general), then why the blond nymphs, European castle, European zodiac, references to familiar traditions...?
An accompanying question would have to be what the VM looked like to these people in the 15th century. Some would argue that the images would not be seen as overly bizarre. A medicinal compendium based on something like the Dioscorides or a Latin herbal tradition, the Balneis (a poem about Italian baths), maybe some De Sfera (a common schoolbook).
So there you have another problem: if it is meant to look exotic ("Coptic", otherwise Egyptian or just exotic in general), then why the blond nymphs, European castle, European zodiac, references to familiar traditions...?