And since the text has already resisted many famous cryptologists and maintains its secret even in the face of the latest computer programs that work with machine learning, the hypothesis that this text simply has no solution is becoming more and more relevant and interesting. What if the manuscript doesn’t make any sense and was introduced as early as the 15th century as a forgery or just for fun?
“Of course that’s also possible,” smiles the painter Klára Sedlo, a graduate of the Prague Academy of Arts, whose cycle of paintings inspired by the Voynich manuscript can be seen at the Prague GOMA Gallery from April 12 to May 12.
Photo: Milan Malíček, Novinky
Painter Klára Sedlo with a facsimile of a manuscript and a painting, the successful completion of which was contributed to by a recent visit to Rome.
Do you remember when you encountered the Voynich manuscript for the first time?
All kinds of mysteries and oddities have interested me since childhood, so it will be a long time. I think I first read about the Voynich manuscript when I was about sixteen. However, I started painting all the fantastic plants that are depicted in it only recently, about five or six years ago.
Filmmaker Andrea Sedláčková: Everyone was in love with Toyen
culture
Do you also follow the attempts to decipher it?
I have read about all of them and also about hypotheses in which languages it could be written. However, I am primarily interested as a painter. Over the years I have acquired several book facsimiles. I use them in the studio as inspiration, so the oldest prints have already suffered a lot from my colors. But nothing here is safe from them, not even my laptop.
Do you have an overview of how many plants you have already portrayed?
I don’t know the exact number. I returned to some of them more than once. I painted them either in different environments, or for a change I focused only on some detail… Of course, I also create other images, but I keep coming back to these plants and for the last few months I have been dealing only with them. I would like to paint them all one day. I estimate about a quarter of them left.
Voynichův rukopis
- The most mysterious manuscript in the world, as it is called, has been protecting its secret for centuries. It has not yet been possible to decipher the unknown script and language, even partially, and numerous illustrations have not become a clue to uncovering its content.
- Although the unknown author depicted plants in the book that partially resemble real and well-known ones, no one has been able to identify them. Other visual accompaniments didn’t suggest anything useful either: astronomical drawings or strange female figures. So for now, experts can only assume that the manuscript originated as a herbarium or an alchemical-astrological manual.
- However, during a successful radiocarbon test conducted in the USA in 2009, it was possible to determine the date of creation, so today we at least know that the manuscript dates from the first half of the 15th century. However, nothing is known about his fate until the 17th century, when he suddenly appeared in Prague.
- Its first documented owner was the Prague alchemist Georgius Barschius. After his death, the manuscript traveled among other scholars, and in the early twentieth century it was discovered in a Jesuit monastery in Frascati, Italy, from where it was acquired by the American collector Wilifrid M. Voynich. The book that has since borne his name is now owned by Yale University.
How do viewers react to your “voynichovka”, as you call the plants from the manuscript? Do mystery fans predominate among them?
About half of the people who come to me and want to buy a painting have been interested in the manuscript before. But the other half searched for information about him only after they were interested in my painting. At first I was surprised because as a big fan I thought that everyone must have heard about the most mysterious manuscript in the world.
If you like to dream about fantastic plants about unknown worlds, do you also have adventurous desires that would tempt you to go, for example, in search of real exotic plants in the jungle?
I’m not really an adventurer… Not really a big traveler. But just recently I was in Italy for a few days. I had an exhibition there. It was a wonderful four days, and after my return I managed to finish one long-drawn-out painting with probably the most mundane flower from the manuscript. It’s very subtle, so the vast landscape in the background had a chance to really stand out.
I painted the ruins of ancient monuments in the meadow and only with them was it finally done.
Photo: archive of Klára Sedlo
A plant observing the day from elsewhere, oil painting
Your paintings usually feature strange, sometimes fantastical human and animal beings. However, I don’t remember plants playing a big role in them before.
I’m not much of a nature connoisseur or an experienced grower, but I find carnivores, for example, extremely fascinating! However, my preoccupation with plants has not yet been reflected in my paintings, figural scenes really predominate.
But Voynich’s in particular seem strange to me. Like they have a personality. Working on them is therefore not that different from painting people and animals.
You just named my impression. They remind me of living beings.
The curator of the exhibition, Renata Mužíková, called these paintings a kind of portraits. I think she captured my relationship with these plants perfectly.
But soon I would like to focus more on figure painting again. I guess I miss her, because lately she has started to penetrate my Voynich cycle. For example, one of his largest canvases is actually a paraphrase of the image of Adam and Eve.
Photo: Milan Malíček, Novinky
Facsimile of the Voynich Manuscript book
Does this mean that as a painter you became interested in the relationship between a man and a woman?
No, this was never important to me and it is not now. I was paraphrasing only the visual aspect, namely the traditional Renaissance depiction of Adam and Eve in Paradise.
The woman in my painting stands in Voynich’s garden and partially merges with her, her face turns into a flower… Next to her stands a naked man who is just entering the garden.
For me, the most important person on that stage is the person crossing the border between the real and the unreal world, whether that world is the imagination or the spiritual realm.
So I see it at the same time as a symbolic representation of the spiritual journey, when a person entering the garden opens up to some kind of knowledge.
The landscape in one painting reminds me of the background of Renaissance Madonnas. However, it seems that you also get much younger influences into your paintings, including very contemporary ones.
I was intrigued by some hypotheses that the Voynich manuscript probably originated in Italy, because it is very similar to manuscripts there. It seems probable to me, and so the typical Renaissance atmosphere of northern Italy with mountains and lakes really sometimes gets into my painting. On one of these canvases is a Voynich plant, which from the first moment reminds me of a flower from the cartoon series about a mole by Zdeňko Miler.
Artist Zdeněk Miler: The mole has my personality
culture
In addition, more experimental paintings were created. Their compositions are more abstract, they are essentially mind maps that also evoke a scene from a playstation game.
Among the older figurative paintings in your studio, I was drawn to a woman with long hair spread around her head. They look electrified. Does your long hair often get angry like that?
No way, that scene has no real inspiration. I named the painting Hide and Seek with the Sun. The woman covers her eyes from the blinding light, but she has no idea that the shining sun is herself and her hair resembling rays.
Such ideas come to me from the subconscious, and often it is something so strange, even bizarre, that I could not even create it with a rational mind. I just say to myself, “Wow, what does this mean again?” I start painting while thinking about it.
I have already learned that it is best not to interfere with the subconscious, not to try too hard to invent something on my own. I let it run its course and concentrate more on additional reflection.
Have you found a ritual that allows you to access the subconscious when you want to paint?
There is no need for such a thing. In recent years, I have been connected to my imagination practically non-stop. I imagine it as a huge meadow, from which I only occasionally return to the real world. For example, when I need to drive a car and therefore have to concentrate well.
That’s probably why I’m so fascinated by the idea of a person crossing the boundaries of the real and unreal world. I experience this situation regularly. I think that not only for me, but for most painters, artistic work is something spiritual and also a bit mystical. You can never have complete control over your imagination.
Photo: Milan Malíček, Novinky
Does your imagination start more in your dreams, or during the day when you sit down in the studio in front of the canvas?
Something comes here and there even in a dream, but most often during the day, absolutely anywhere. In recent years, it’s actually been flowing all the time, so I still carry a small sketchbook with me. I’m riding a tram and suddenly I see a picture in my mind.
I pull out my pencil and jot it down quickly, because I know there will probably be more in a moment, and without a sketchbook, I could only remember five at the most. However, most of them never make it to the screen. By the time I get to them, dozens and hundreds of others will come.
Do you choose arbitrarily from the sketchbook, or does one of the sketches always demand your attention more intensively?
Most of the time, the painting tells itself that… It has to excite me. But sometimes I return to the sketch even after a quarter of a year, because other ideas have overtaken it, but I still have to think about it all the time.
How many such stuck images do you have in your head right now?
Three. Only a few new ones appeared today, because I have been handling emails since morning. Ideas emerge at any time, even while cleaning, but they start to flow most intensively when I take time off and can allow myself to have a completely clear head. For example, I brought stacks of sketches from Rome.
I was there for the first time, and apart from the opening, I had no plan at all, I just walked the streets. I really like the Greco-Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico and was fascinated by how much the Roman light, colors and buildings reminded me of his paintings.
How much does the environment you live in influence your own paintings?
I would say that really a lot. In the summer, my paintings are always more colorful and the light and shadows in them are sharper. In autumn and winter I tend to paint in darker and more muted tones. I think that if I were in Rome for even half a year, my palette would fundamentally change there.
So aren’t you tempted to go back there and see what it does to you as a painter?
Not for a long time yet, but it would be nice to repeat for a few days.
From the posters on the walls, I’m guessing you like Japanese art a lot. Is this country and its culture a big attraction for you?
That’s true, but Japan is a little further away… I’m not making any travel plans, but what I’d really like one day is to see the Voynich manuscript with my own eyes. It is currently owned by Yale University and I believe it is locked away in a vault. If I ever get a chance to see it, I’ll definitely go.
Mysterious handwriting resists even artificial intelligence. Does he come from the Czech Republic?
History
A British scientist has reportedly deciphered the mysterious Voynich manuscript
Science and schools
