Re: Biblical virtues and lights in the sky
Posted: 24 Jun 2018, 00:33
I've just finished reading through Adolf Katzenellenbogen's Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Mediaeval Art.
A virtue and a vice from Notre Dame
The images of virtues on churches (mostly relief sculpture) almost never show just seven virtues. Usually more; there is a set of about 20, from which a selection is made: Notre Dame has 12. Of these virtues, other than the famous seven, the most common by far is humility. Chastity is not one of them, by that name; there is Abstentia.
Scrolls giving written names are very common in the works mentioned.
I had thought the four cardinal virtues was a less common notion than the seven virtues, but the four is quite common, in manuscript illustrations and in things like candle bases and reliquary boxes. Not so common on church walls. In illustrations, a set of four can be placed in the corners, and a candle base has four sides.
For Prudentia, although the cross is indeed rare, there are indications that the wisdom intended is knowledge of scripture. The mirror, which I had thought was a common attribute, I did not see mentioned once, and neither was there a Janus-face. This book goes up only to 1300. Book and snake were about equal, but I suppose snake became more common later.
Fortitudo was mostly armed and threatening, as in Giotto; there was sometimes a lion, as a symbol of strength and power, but she never fights it. There was no case of the column attribute.
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I think it is a good argument, that when the customers found that the deck had three classical virtues, that they would have looked very hard for the fourth. They would have said, "if he put in three, he must have put in all four, let's find it!" But if that was true for them, it is also true for me: it is simply much more likely that the original artist intended to have all four virtues, than that he only wanted three of them. And if you say, that if he had put in a Prudentia, the customers would have recognized her as a matter of certainty, and she would be called Prudentia today, and since there is no Prudentia today, there was never an intent to have one -- well, I don't think recognition is 100% certain. Goofs happen.
And if he put in three virtues, and then decided to put in something, instead of the fourth virtue, he wouldn't have put in Pope Joan. But even Pope Joan is not nearly so absurd as supposing he intentionally put in a Popess! That's a burlesque. Yes, a peasant, who knows that a Pope is the highest thing to be, can say: "I'll be pope! And when I am, then you, my Mariocte, will be my popess." This is not a reason to think that the card artist burlesqued himself.
I don't think he put in Pope Joan, and I don't think he put in a generic Popess. As for a personification of the church, or perhaps it was the Virgin Mary, in the hymn by the Catalan Abbess in 1497, I don't see how the card artist could have had that meaning in mind, and expected to pull it off. In general I think conveying abstract ideas by images is hard, and this is not a case of transmitting an established abstraction, like Justice, by well established attributes, like scales, but just drawing a picture of a female pope and expecting than anyone would understand that you meant an embodiment of the church. How could they possibly understand what you meant?
A virtue and a vice from Notre Dame
The images of virtues on churches (mostly relief sculpture) almost never show just seven virtues. Usually more; there is a set of about 20, from which a selection is made: Notre Dame has 12. Of these virtues, other than the famous seven, the most common by far is humility. Chastity is not one of them, by that name; there is Abstentia.
Scrolls giving written names are very common in the works mentioned.
I had thought the four cardinal virtues was a less common notion than the seven virtues, but the four is quite common, in manuscript illustrations and in things like candle bases and reliquary boxes. Not so common on church walls. In illustrations, a set of four can be placed in the corners, and a candle base has four sides.
For Prudentia, although the cross is indeed rare, there are indications that the wisdom intended is knowledge of scripture. The mirror, which I had thought was a common attribute, I did not see mentioned once, and neither was there a Janus-face. This book goes up only to 1300. Book and snake were about equal, but I suppose snake became more common later.
Fortitudo was mostly armed and threatening, as in Giotto; there was sometimes a lion, as a symbol of strength and power, but she never fights it. There was no case of the column attribute.
-------
I think it is a good argument, that when the customers found that the deck had three classical virtues, that they would have looked very hard for the fourth. They would have said, "if he put in three, he must have put in all four, let's find it!" But if that was true for them, it is also true for me: it is simply much more likely that the original artist intended to have all four virtues, than that he only wanted three of them. And if you say, that if he had put in a Prudentia, the customers would have recognized her as a matter of certainty, and she would be called Prudentia today, and since there is no Prudentia today, there was never an intent to have one -- well, I don't think recognition is 100% certain. Goofs happen.
And if he put in three virtues, and then decided to put in something, instead of the fourth virtue, he wouldn't have put in Pope Joan. But even Pope Joan is not nearly so absurd as supposing he intentionally put in a Popess! That's a burlesque. Yes, a peasant, who knows that a Pope is the highest thing to be, can say: "I'll be pope! And when I am, then you, my Mariocte, will be my popess." This is not a reason to think that the card artist burlesqued himself.
I don't think he put in Pope Joan, and I don't think he put in a generic Popess. As for a personification of the church, or perhaps it was the Virgin Mary, in the hymn by the Catalan Abbess in 1497, I don't see how the card artist could have had that meaning in mind, and expected to pull it off. In general I think conveying abstract ideas by images is hard, and this is not a case of transmitting an established abstraction, like Justice, by well established attributes, like scales, but just drawing a picture of a female pope and expecting than anyone would understand that you meant an embodiment of the church. How could they possibly understand what you meant?