VMs: RE: Re: Personal Guess

["Peter Riis" <pete@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>When: between 1500 and 1600
>Where: Europe, probably in the area between Rome,
>Avignon, Munich and Prague
>Who: An unknown and unknowable author
>What:
>A personal fascination / craziness or
>A fake document meant to impress credulous clients
>(one of Nick's hypotheses)

My fairly uninformed opinion would be along the same lines. I
would lean more towards the VMs being the production of a
schizophrenic rather than it being part of a scheme to
deceive--the intricacy of the VMs seems to go far beyond what
would be necessary just to fool a buyer. That kind of mad
intricacy, though, is sometimes seen in artifacts produced by
schizophrenics. The bizarrerie of the balneological illustrations
and even a certain menacing something in the botanical drawings
leads me to think that all was not well mentally with the
artist--but obviously that's a totally subjective impression.

It does seem to me, though, that direct cryptological attack
would be one of the less promising lines of inquiry. But then
again, what do I know? Maybe tomorrow somebody will provide us
with a complete, valid solution through pure crypto!

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