VMs: Cicco Simonetta's coat of arms and cryptoheraldry...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

I've just found a website containing Cicco Simonetta's family coat of arms 
(along with a nice description of his life in Italian):-
	http://www.fondazioneterzomillennio.it/articoli/cicco.htm

Last year, Dana suggested a possible hidden heraldic eagle in f46v, and we 
found that it seemed to correspond to the coat of arms for the town of 
Novara, near Milan (where Cicco Simonetta was granted honorary citizenship 
in 1456).

I've talked informally with a few (frankly disbelieving) heraldry 
researchers about this, and they seem somewhat skeptical that the VMs could 
be the only known case of (what one might reasonably call) 
"cryptoheraldry". And yet... and yet...

Now... take a critical look at f90v1, the "lion root" page. I now think 
that this is a left-right-flipped version of the lion on the Simonetta coat 
of arms - and that the branches of plant correspond to the red cross in its 
background. BTW, does anyone know what colour the leaves are on this page - 
are they red?

In fact, I'm going to go one step even further along this whole 
crypto-heraldic line of reasoning: I also predict that the root on the left 
of f43v is the famous Visconti serpent motif - because Cicco Simonetta 
famously married Elisabetta Visconti in 1452. Does anyone know what colour 
the serpent is - might it be green? The interlinear notes say: "Colors: 
b,green,tan (Reeds)".

BTW, when I visited Sergio Toresella, I noted down "bistorta / occhio" for 
the f43v serpent, which I guess probably means snakeweed. But why draw a 
Visconti serpent to represent it?

Cryptoheraldry may mean nothing to you right now, but I think it will come 
to mean *everything* for the VMs... we shall see...

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


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