VMs: Re: Ad-hoc castles research

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Petr,

> 1) None of the background-cities had those V-shaped incisions in the
> crennelations (is that the right word?) of their walls - not one! All had
> the simple rectagular waveform. Can we conclude that the VMS author had
> nothing to do with Flanders or the Netherlands?

These are "swallow-tail merlons", and were characteristic of Ghibelline 
castles - this were largely localised to Romagna, IIRC (though not 
necessarily coincident with modern Northern Italy).

> Our VMS author was definitely a part of his pictorial environment and age.
> He was not a great draughtsman, but he was true to his prevailing
> iconographic culture. (I will regret this definitive statement later :-)

On the contrary, although he (or she etc) did not have great draughting 
skills, he had an unusually imaginative dimension that enabled him to 
create new visual metaphors for his thought - specifically, to find ways of 
expressing data in visual code.

However, he was frequently trapped by the limitations of his referential 
universe - he only ever drew things that he'd seen, though with his own twist.

I believe that the unique twist is all about finding ways of using the 
visual conventions of an overwhelmingly literal world in a non-cliched 
non-literal way, rather than using the iconographic conventions for the 
same end, if you understand what I mean?

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....