Voynich manuscript created by Giovanni di Cosimo de' Medici's sons

[eggyk]

It's been pretty well accepted that the VM originated in Italy in the 15th century, there is little doubt about that.

Carbon-14 dating indicates that [most of] the vellum was manufactured around 1420, although one of the tested sheets may have been a couple of decades older.  The styles of dresses in the Zodiac are consistent with a date shortly after that.  (Except for the dresses of most nymphs and the absence of fig leaves, that suggest instead a date around Saturday October 30, 4004 BCE.) 

If we have correctly identified the source of some illustrations, the date may be a couple decades later, say 1430-1450.

However, I am not aware of any evidence that puts the creation of the book in Italy.  IIUC, people who have put a lot of work into that question say that the dress styles and the presumed sources of some drawings rather point to an area just north of the Alps, in Switzerland or Germany.

Afaik the only strong evidence for Italy is the use of swallowtail merlons in the buildings, and perhaps the prevalence of italian herbals, or perhaps because it was found in Italy? This isn't the first time i've seen this claim from people though, have I missed something? 

The clothing styles absolutely match more often with manuscripts sourced from the alps: switzerland, austria and southern germany. There are some matches elsewhere, but I don't believe they are from Italy. 

At the time of writing this post, italy is among one of the worst scoring countries for zodiac depictions on average. It's entirely possible that i'm missing a trove of 15th century sources, but so far they are almost never obviously relevant. I haven't seen a single non-scorpion-like scorpio from Italy, nor a single crossbow sagittarius (other than printed by a southern german in venice). The virgos are often winged or front facing, their geminis are almost never depicted as a man and woman, and their leos tend to have strong, large manes. 

On the other hand, places like southern germany and austria have copious amounts of crossbow sagittariuses, many similar virgos, many close leos, many man/woman geminis in reasonably the same position, some of the best fish designs we've seen, many similar lobsters, similar aries, similar bulls. The only thing those areas don't really have are good VMS-like scorpios, which are only really found even further away from Italy. Scorpios that are "a lizard creature" or "not some kind of attempt at a scorpion" are overwhelmingly from (northern) france, or southern germany much earlier in the 12-1300s.

Put on top of this that at least some of the marginalia is some kind of german, and some of it some kind of french, further point north of the alps (or in the alps) somewhere. I would consider places like south tyrol as being possible too, which is in Italy but predominantly German speaking, having been previously part of Austria.

This is assuming that the different sections are based on works that originate from the same place, which is also completely unfounded in my view. There's no reason that the different sections couldn't be copies from various works from various places.

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As for the theory itself, i'm not sure of the evidence supporting it. I am open to the premise of musical text, but it needs to be backed up by something substantial. You claim that five scribes represent:

1. The orator
2. Bells/chimes
3. Lute
4. Whistle/flute
5. Percussion

I don't understand if this is meant to be a statement of fact, or if 5 instruments were chosen at random? The only way to know this is by having decyphered the text; if you have done so, please let us know.