Facing the Problem of Voynich Nymph Faces
The next part of my sculpture (inspired by the illustrations on folio 73r of the mysterious Voynich Manuscript) involves the small female figures known as the “Voynich nymphs.” I am making the various parts of this porcelain and glass sculpture separately, and they will all be assembled together later.
Similarly to my sculpting of the “critter” (documented here) I photocopied and enlarged the manuscript drawings to the size I will be sculpting them, so that I can reference these as I work.
The “nymphs” are a challenging aspect of my Voynich Manuscript sculpture series, and they present some interesting design issues that I have really only begun to explore. Beyond that, they also highlight some of what is so unique about the Voynich Manuscript itself.
I have very little training in figure sculpting, but when approaching my sculpting of the Voynich nymphs, traditional figure sculpting experience would probably be of little help for what I am trying to do. Why? The manuscript is very unusual in the way that it depicts the female form. It is a strange problem, because I am actually trying to three-dimensionally replicate the features of what some might consider to be “unskilled drawings” in the original manuscript. But I can’t just make a “badly sculpted figure” and call it a day, because the so-called imperfections I want to replicate are actually very specific features that require my careful attention to detail.
In my current approach, I am paying close attention to the face and head, in addition to the body proportions and pose, because there are subtle details there that, if not handled correctly, will throw off the entire sculpture. Without a deliberate style, it might end up looking like a normal female figure… but this is not my goal.
While I refer to the Voynich nymphs as “badly drawn” in my video, I should probably clarify that it is not my intent to “critique” them in terms of the manuscript illustrator’s artistic skill. It would be equally absurd to criticize the illustrator of a comic strip character, for drawing “unrealistic proportions”—because the art form isn’t meant to be realistic in the first place. (Still, when faced with the difficult task of three-dimensionally sculpting the Voynich nymphs, and replicating the unique features of their anatomy, it is sometimes necessary to poke a bit of fun at their big weird heads.) As I will go on to explain, I consider these characteristics to be an important feature of the imagery, and therefore it is not something that I want to “correct” in my interpretations.
Many styles of art do not adhere to realism, for various reasons, whether by deliberate style or a consequence of the artist’s skill level, or by accident. There are innumerable reasons why an artist might draw figures in a certain way, but usually the intent or purpose, whatever it is, is clear from the context. Not so for the Voynich Manuscript. In the case of the Voynich imagery, the illustrator’s identity, intent, and background is currently unknown, so we don’t know why they drew in this particular style, or why they followed it so consistently. The question of the illustrator’s intent remains unanswered: what is the meaning of the nymph drawings? Do they relate to the other drawings in the manuscript, and how do they relate to its unreadable text? Is there a reason for the fixed patterns of the drawing style? These are not questions I will attempt to answer here, but I want to acknowledge that the study of some of these questions, and the very essence of what makes the Voynich such a confounding mystery, centers on trying to make sense of the unique features of both its imagery and text.
While I could choose to impose more realism when sculpting the imagery, I instead want to try to highlight and preserve some of these unique features that make the subject matter so remarkable. But it presents a difficult problem when these distinctive features only exist in two dimensions on the page, and I want to sculpt them three-dimensionally. In the case of the Voynich nymphs, I don’t want to give them the real-life body proportions of normal humans, because I think they would lose their connection to the manuscript.
This means I can’t follow any conventional rules of proportions in figure sculpting—instead, I want to look closely at the manuscript and take inspiration from the different set of rules that applies in the world of the Voynich nymphs. On close inspection, it’s apparent that they are not just unusually drawn in haphazard and random ways, but the style largely follows some consistent patterns. Keeping in mind that there are several hundred figures drawn in the manuscript, this is remarkably curious.
The examples are too numerous to list here, but one specific observation has been pointed out by Voynich Manuscript researcher Koen Gheuens, namely that the nymphs throughout the manuscript have an average body proportion of about 4 heads tall. (Meaning that the entire length of the body can be divided this many times by the height of just the head.) This is a significant difference from the proportions of a real human, who has on average, about a 7.5 heads tall proportion. This is a key feature I am taking into account when sculpting my nymphs, and I think it’s absolutely essential for preserving their character in three dimensions.
There are some other features of the nymph drawings, such as their eyes, that I choose to alter, but still with the goal of capturing the character of the original. The original drawings are very small, but they often seem quite expressive. Small dots of ink for the eyes manage to be expressive on the page, but in translating to three dimensions, I think they need some more detail to enhance this expressiveness. The eyes, face and head are the first thing I work on when starting the sculpture, and then from there, I can gauge the size and proportions of everything else.
Also, the choice of which features to etch into the clay as though drawing with a pen, and which features to sculpt three-dimensionally will also make a big difference in whether the sculpture seems to capture the essence of the original drawings. It will take some time and practice to get a feel for the best nymph-sculpting technique, and the best balance between realism and Voynich Manuscript weirdness, ideally leaning towards the latter. I’ll document the process in multiple parts, beginning with the videos below.