Robert, the Vieville figure is quite ambiguous - it could be either male or female, unless of course the clothes offer a more definite identification. And I wonder if a similar hat could be found in a painting - I may go and look later. Marco - that other thread is fascinating - wonderful to find pa...

Mind you, they do seem to have been fond of this particular form of animal cruelty in the 1400's/1500s...

https://imgur.com/R68aqwP



Pen

From the Zwingli bible: https://imgur.com/HDM4MrC Then went Samson down, and his father and his mother, to Timnath, and came to the vineyards of Timnath; and, behold, a young lion roared against him. And the Spirit of the Lord came mightily upon him, and he rent him as he would have rent a kid, and ...

Fascinating discussion - so much to discover. Just to return to the missale for a moment though, did anyone else notice the long headings under the months? To the left of each is an appropriate biblical illustration, to the right a rural scene with the astrological sign appearing in a gap in the clo...

The images Ross posted seem to indicate that it's risky to trust our eyes when it comes to evalulation of the content in the work of early craftsmen/artisans. The whole business of looking is pretty subjective anyway, and there's always that tendency to make the image reinforce the theory. I think t...

A compelling argument, yet it seems that answering those questions raises others. Some years ago I found in the Dutch city of Delft a series of eighteenth-century Biblical tiles showing Jesus as a beardless androgyne. When seminude, as when beaten by Pilate's soldiers or crucified, he was shown with...

Hi Michael, The idea of A hierarchy of light, culminating in the Light of the World is incredibly appealing, especially illustrated like that. And Marco's concern's re.the figure on the Vieville World card (beardless and naked) would surely not apply if the intention of the engraver had been to depi...

That image though (and others that seem to echo the tarot archetypes yet are not exact enough to be certain references to the same subject), makes me wonder how similar an image has to be before serious historians feel able to say: 'This is it!', 'Eureka!', or whatever. Hello Pen, I think a card li...

I'm somewhat hesitant to post because my bank of historical knowledge is vastly inferior to that of many other members here,also I don't want to repeat old discussions that you may have had on other forums that I haven't seen. So forgive me if this idea is an old one. Could 'The World' possibly be a...

I thought I'd seen that image of Beauty on the Glasgow Emblems site, but couldn't find it again. I did find this one though - so many fascinating images there...

http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/frenc ... sm771_p023