In 2011, Ross tells me, he pointed Michael (Hurst) to a certain web-page, that of the "Erwin Panofsky Papers", at
https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/erwi ... nformation. In particular to "Box 8, reels 2117-2118 (a little past half-way down)." This is correspondence that Panofsky saved between him and Gertrude Moakley.
It is from this material that Michael got his quotes from Panofsky in his review of her work. Michael sent Ross jpgs of what was of interest. Ross sent the jpg's to me, and for my part I couldn't resist transcribing them, with some help from an online OCR program, so as to put them here. The jpg files are scans of Moakley's originals and Panofsky's carbons. You can tell which are which because the typing is very clear and sharp for Moakley, whereas that for Panofsky is quite blurred (causing many problems for the OCR program, I should add).
The correspondence is quite charming, and Panofsky does bring up a few substantive points worth discussing further. In this post I am just including the material leading up to and immediately following the publication of Moakley's 1956 article. The comments in brackets are mine, mostly giving the scan number given to each item being transcribed. I assume these are Michael's numbers, but since there are gaps, they might be the Smithsonian's.
In another post I will put the material concerning her book, which goes from Sept. 1956 to March of 1967--a year before Panofsky's death.
[scan 0001]
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
FIFTH AVENUE AND 42ND ST.
NEW YORK 18, N.Y.
Cataloging Office, Room 100
October 25, 1955
Professor Erwin Panofsky
The Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey
Dear Professor Panofsky,
For the last three years, as a “hobby,” I have been trying to discover what I think you call the "iconography" of the Tarot trump cards. I am not an art expert at all, and do not even work in the Art Department of our Library. At first I thought I would find the answer in some book, and that it would be good practice in simple research, as well as an amusement.
However, I have found that nobody except occultists seems to have bothered much about these cards. So I have had to satisfy my curiosity as wall as I could, and now I am pretty much convinced that the cards allude to Petrarca's poem,
I Trionfi, which was very popular about the time the cards first appeared (in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century).
I have written a little article about this for our Library's
Bulletin, and the editor is willing to print it. However, we would both be so grateful if you would read it first, and let us know where you think the argument is weak or wrong. Mr. Karl Kup, of our staff, has read it, but feels he does not know enough about it to judge. Mr. Plummer, of the Morgan Library, suggested that you would be the best person to consult, but I hesitated to approach you until I read your delightful book, "Meaning in the Visual Arts,” and felt it was the kind of thing that might interest you.
Will you be so good as to let me know whether I may send you the article? It is eight pages long, typed double-space on regular typewriter paper, and I have tried to make it as readable as possible.
Yours sincerely,
Gertrude Moakley
Assistant in Cataloging Office
[scan 0002]
October 27, 1955
Miss Gertrude Moakley
Assistant in Cataloging Office
New York Public Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
New York 18, N. Y.
Dear Miss Moakley
Many thanks for your letter of October 25. I fully understand your interest in the Tarot cards and would be the first to welcome a good analysis of their contents. But I personally regret to say that I knows so little about this particular aspect of Renaissance iconography that I could hardly take upon myself the responsibility of passing Judgment on what you have to say. I should be very glad to look at your article for my own amusement and instruction, but I should not dare to pass judgment upon its value.
So, if this is all right with you send it along by all means. But in the meantime I should like to say that there have been, after all, some rather serious studies about the problem. The great edition of the two Italian series in the Chalcographical Society, of course, is mainly interested in style and dating. But some rather interesting
obiter dicta can be found in A. Warburg’s
Gessammelte Schriften, Berlin and Leipzig, 1932 (see Index), and a rather good article (at least I thought so) by H. Brockhaus is found in the
Miscellanee di Storia d’Arte in onore di I. B. Supino, Florence, 1933, p. 397 ff. In all probability you know it, but I should like to mention it because. you say that you could find "nobody except occultists," in your quest for authors interested in the subject.
With many thanks for your kind words about my little book,
Sincerely yours,
Erwin Panofsky
[scan 0004, undated; scan 0003, of Oct. 31, seems from the content to follow this one]
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
FIFTH AVENUE AND 42ND ST.
NEW YORK 18, N.Y.
Cataloguing Office, Room 100
Professor Erwin Panofsky
The Institute for Advanced Study
School of Historical Studies
Princeton, New Jersey
Dear Professor Panofsky,
Thank you very much for consenting to read my Tarot article, and for replying so promptly. As you see, it has grown to seventeen pages. This is because, after reading more of your talks, I felt like the Queen of Sheba in the presence of Solomon, and gave up entirely the idea of writing a series of articles on each of the trumps. I realise now that an art historian could do it much better, and that I should content myself with this one article. So I have put everything I dare to say into it, including all the things I was saving for the rest of the series.
If you ever want to write a book on the Tarot yourself, I would be very glad to turn over to you all my notes and bibliographical references, for what they may be worth to you.
I should not have asked you to point out the weaknesses in the argument. Of course it is a weak little thing, and must remain so. But since the Library is to print it in its Bulletin, I would be pleased if you catch any glaring errors you happen to notice.
I am most grateful to you for your kindness. Under separate cover I am sending some pictures (mostly borrowed from our Library's Picture Collection) which may help elucidate the argument. I hoped to send photographs of the sixteen trumps owned by the Morgan Library (they think they have only fifteen, but I am sure the card they all the Queen of Staves is really the Empress). But their photographer is on vacation, so I could not get them in tine.
Yours sincerely,
Gertrude Moakley
Assistant in Cataloging Office
[scan 0003]
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
FIFTH AVENUE AND 42ND ST.
NEW YORK 18, N.Y.
Cataloging Office, Room 100
October 31, 1955
Professor Erwin Panofsky
The Institute for Advanced Study
School of Historical Studies
Princeton New Jersey
Dear Professor Panofsky,
On reading over the carbon copy of the letter I have just mailed to you with my manuscript, I blush to see that I have said something that sounds like an offer to sell you my notes and bibliography. Heaven forbid. (When I said "for what they may be worth to you" I meant "if you think they would be of any use to you.") If you should ever decide you want to write on the Tarot, I will gladly send them all to you if you want them, and find ample reward in the pride of having made a small contribution to the magnificent book you could write on it. Thank you for the three books you mentioned. They reminded me that I must make some mention of the so-called "Tarot of Mantegna," though I thought I had better not discuss it at all. The Brockhaus article and the Warburg book I did not know at all.
Sincerely yours,
Gertrude Moakley
[scans 0005 and 0006: a 2 page letter]
November 2, 1955
Miss Gertrude Moakley
Cataloging Office Room 100
The New York Public Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
New York 18, N. Y.
Dear Miss Moakley,
Many thanks for your letter of October 31 and your article, which I have read with great interest and which I herewith return.
So far as I can see, you have made some excellent points, and the mighty goddess Etymology is on your side. If I may make a suggestion--which, however, if accepted, would further increase the length of your essay—it would be the following. For people entirely unfamiliar with card games, such as myself, the whole discussion is somewhat hard to follow, because such uninstructed persons do not exactly know the specific meaning of those technical expressions as suits, trumps, etc. I for one have no idea what the modern Tarot cards look like and in what way they differ from those you talk about. Furthermore, and this applies unsocially to art history, only a few of us have ever investigated the differences that exist between the hand-painted cards such as the set in the Morgan Library, the engraved Northern playing cards such as the set produced by the master known as the Master of the Playing Cards (a set which seems to consist mostly of wild men and women, flowers and animals) and the famous “Mantegna” series. If your article is meant to be understood by such naive creatures as myself, it seems to me imperative, first, to define your terms and, quite specifically, to discuss a little bit the relationship between the painted sets of the fifteenth century me the “Mantegna” series. As for the latter (which may be quite an exceptional case that, as you say, may not even have been a set of playing cards in the technical sense) the situation is certainly worth clarifying. It seems to be an established fact that this “Mantegna” series incorporates the entire encyclopaedia tradition of the Middle Ages (see especially the article by Schlosser quoted in Warburg, I, p. 412). Here you have all the classical gods as such, without any misunderstanding and in part portrayed after quite recent discoveries (for instance, Mercury), all the Muses with the special refinement that Thalia, the Muse of the Earth, is not correlated with one of the celestial spheres, so that the ninth and highest of these could be allocated to the primum mobile, yet you have also the various "estates of man” (so that if the pope were really derived from Jupiter, as you assume, a pseudo-Jupiter would co-exist with the real Jupiter, who forms part of the pagan pantheon.
In short, what I think you should do is, first, to explain how a modern Tarot pack looks; second, to give a brief survey of the hand-painted sets which, so far as I can see, form the main subject of your investigation; third, to discuss, however briefly, the relation between these hand-painted sets and the Northern [start p. 2] playing cards on the one hand and the “Mantegna” series on the other. I am convinced that these problems have already been discussed in tho technical literature on card games whioh you know so well, but the uninstructed reader who knows the material only from the art-historical point of view—or, for that matter, from no point of view at all—will feel somewhat helpless when reading your article and will be bothered by the questions mentioned above.
In the hope that you will take these suggestions In the spirit in which they are given, I am,
Very sincerely yours,
Erwin Panofsky
[scan 0007]
November 3, 1955
Miss Gertrude Moakley.
Cataloging Office, Room 102
New York Public Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
New York 18, N. Y.
Dear Miss Moakley,
Your letter of October 31 crossed mine of November 2, so that I have nothing to add except that I never misunderstood your intentions for a second. I do not plan, however, to do anything about the Tarot cards in the foreseeable future, which in my case is not too long.
A look at your illustrations, which I herewith return, confirms my opinion that, in order to be understandable to the uninitiated, you cannot very well evade the tedious task of informing him about the relationship between the various types or series of playing cards. It would seem that there is so much in common between the material you deal with end the “Mantegna” set that the two things cannot very well be separated even though their interpenetration may complicate matters in a most disagreeable manner. On looking at your “hanged man" it seems to me that the dancing posture which he (as you rightly observe) assumes when the picture is turned upside down is a very good classical motif very frequent in Bacchic relief and vase painting, and assimilated by the Italian Renaissance at an early date and with great enthusiasm (see, for example Pollaiuolo's frescoes at Arcetri, first connected, so far as I know, with those classical prototypes by F. Saxl, “Rinascimento del Antichita,"
Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft, p. 42, There would seem to be a strong possibility that some kind of mix-up is involved, especially since those dancing bacchantes often carry cymbals or timbrels in their hand, that might easily be reinterpreted into bags.
With all good wishes for the progress of your studies,
Sincerely yours,
Erwin Panofsky
[0008, note, perhaps accompanying a letter. Someone wrote “1955?”, I would think not Moakley]
TAROT: 1955? This is for you to keep if you like. I have a carbon copy.
Bernoulli, Rudolf. Zahlensymbolik des Tarotsystems. (
Eranos-Jahrbuch, 1934 (Zurich, 1935), pp 397-415 (cited in
The Great Mother, by Erich Neumann (New York 1957, p 210)
Accepts all the occultist theories: .. Die Verdoppelung der 21 führt auf 42 und damit ist die Perspektive eroffnet auf die ... 42 Bücher der Thot. Jede Zahl und ihr Bild würde dann je 2 Bücher des Thot symbolisieren. Auf die Zahl 0, die das Bild des Narren trägt, entfallt dann keine der Bücher ... (p. 399)
"Nun wird aber das Bilder- und Zahlen-system. des Terot auch in Beziehung gesetzt zur Kabbalah. Die 22 Buchstaben des hebreischen Alphabets finden sich gelegentlich auf den 22 Bilderkarten ... P. 400)
Die beigegenbenen Abbildungen [plates facing pp. 404, 400, 410, showing all the trumps) reproduzieren das früheste mir bekannte Tarotspiel, das die stereotypen Bilder, wie sie heute noch gegeben werden, aufweist. Es wurde herausgegeben von Pierre Nademié in Dijon im Jahre 1709. Es ist Eigentum des Schweizerischen Landesmuseum in Zürich. Die zum Teil irreführenden Aufschriften, sowie die Einkleidungen der Symbole, dürften nicht weiter als in 17. Jahrhundert zurück-zuführen sein. Von früheren Spielen, die z. T. ins 14. Jahrhundert zurückreichen, sind nur Fragmente erhalten." (p. 403, footnote 4)
[My, mikeh's, rough translation: The doubling of the 21 leads to 42 and thus the perspective is opened to the ... 42 Books of Thoth. Each figure and its image would then each symbolize 2 books of Thoth. On the number 0, which bears the image of the fool, then none of the books is omitted ... (p.339)
"Now, however, the image and number system of the Tarot is also related to the Kabbalah, and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet are occasionally found on the 22 picture cards ... P. 400)
The attached figures [plates facing pp. 404, 400, 410, showing all the trumps), the earliest tarot pack known to me, which has the stereotypical images as they are still given today. It was published by Pierre Nademié in Dijon in 1709. It is the property of the Swiss National Museum in Zurich. The partly misleading inscriptions, as well as the clothing of the Symbols, should not be back more than in the 17th century. Some fragments have been preserved from earlier packs, some of which date back to the 14th century."]
If by this last he means the so-called “Charles VI" card., he must be wrong, as they seem to be 15th century really, and the cards in the Morgan Library are part of a complete set, the rest of which are somewhere in Italy. They are probably as old as the “Charles VI” cards.
[Note by mikeh: in a post-1956 letter she corrects herself to say that the deck at the Morgan is not, even when the cards in Italy are taken into account, a complete set.]
[scan 0009]
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
FIFTH AVENUE AND 42ND ST.
NEW YORK 18, N.Y.
Cataloging Office, Room 100
November 4, 1955
Professor Erwin Panofsky
School of Historical Studies.
The Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, New Jersey
Dear Professor Panofsky,
Thank you so much for returning my manuscript so promptly, and for your kind words about it. Like most people who ask for advice, I shall probably not follow most of yours. This is because our
Bulletin is used only as a last resort by people who have already found all the books an a subject they are interested in, and have come to the Bulletin while they are going. through the periodical indexes. It is a way ot putting on permanent record the bits of special knowledge our librarians happen to have. So I don't think I'll enlarge the article. Besides, it would take more training than I have to do it properly.
But I am using your letter to persuade the editor that he ought to illustrate the article profusely. I'm afraid he won't, though.
May I quote what you have said in your letter about the “Mantegna” Series, from “it seems an established fact" through “primum mobile.” (and so suppressing your objections about Jupiter and the Pope, as I am inclined to be stubborn about that)? I would add this passage to the footnote containing the bibliographical reference about the “Mantegna Tarot."
I am most grateful to you for taking the time to read and criticize my article, and if I can ever reciprocate by doing any errand for you here, I hope you will not hesitate to call on me. In a few weeks our department will move out of this building into the new Donnell Library on Fifty-third Street, so that would be the address to note down.
Yours sincerely,
Gertrude Moakley
[scan 012, number out of place]
November 7, 1955
Miss Gertrude Moakley
Cataloging Office, Room 100
New York Public Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
New York 18, N. Y.
Dear Miss Moakley,
Many thanks for your letter of November 4. I feel that, if you want to quote from my letter at all, you should not omit the parenthesis, which does, I feel, pose a problem. You are quite free to be as “stubborn” as you like, but then you should say so.
With all good wishes,
Very sincerely yours,
Erwin Panofsky
[scan 0010]
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
FIFTH AVENUE AND 42ND ST.
NEW YORK 18, N.Y.
Cataloging Office, Room 100
November 10, 1955
Professor Irwin Panofsky
School of Historical Studies
The Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, New Jersey
Dear Professor Panofsky,
Of course it was outrageous of me to ask if I might quote you and omit the real point of the quotation. My only excuse is the haste in which I have had to work on this. Afterward I realised the real point of what you had said: that by 1400 artists knew better than to show the pagan gods in the old late-medieval way. Yet the Tarot Popess and Pope must have been somehow connected with Juno and Jupiter, since some packs have those figures in their place (Antonius van der Linde mentions this too, in his
Geschichte des Schachspiele (Berlin, 1974), vol. 2 p. 390). I’m going to say I wonder if it wasn't an anti-clerical witticism to show the Pope. and Pope as Cupid's captives, with the excuse that they were really Juno and Jupiter.
I'm going to take your other advice, too, and put in a paragraph near the beginning of the article about the “Mantegna Tarot" and other cards like the Tarot (the German Tarock, which also has 56 suit cards, 21 trumps, and a joker). What you say about the Hanged Man and the Bacchic reliefs is most interesting, and I assume I may quote that whole paragraph unless I hear from you to the contrary. Thank you so much for returning the pictures so quickly, before I could begin to worry about them. I enclose some stamps to make up for the extra postage on them. I am deeply grateful for your generous help.
Yours sincerely,
Gertrude Moakley
[scan 0011]
November 14, 1955
Miss Gertrude Moakley
Cataloging Office, Room 100
New York Public Library
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
New York 18, N. Y.
Dear Miss Moakley,
Many thanks for your letter of November 10, the stamps (which really would not have been necessary), and the copy of the Staff News, normally inaccessible to the hoi polloi.
Concerning the problem of the pagan gods and goddesses in the “Mantegna” series, the problem is not quite so simple as you stated in your letter—though it is, of course, impossible for you to go into the matter right now. While the image of Mercury was devised on the basis of new archeological discoveries (and perhaps for this very reason had tremendous influence all over the place, being copied not only in woodcuts but also in the wood carvings decorating, for example, German houses), the representation of Jupiter enthroned on a rainbow is still pretty mediaeval; and this again appealed to a Magdeburg printer of as early as about 1497 who included in one of his publications a copy in woodcut of this particular print. Be that as it may, the fact remains that, when the “Mantegna” series was devised, the artist made a very strict distinction between the suits of the pagan gods and the series of human estates to which the pope ad the popess belong.
That the Lions were pleased by my complimentary remarks fills me with gratification. I can imagine that their expression of supercilious boredom, aggravated by the sight of so many parades, is now mitigated by a slight but benevolent grin.
With all good wishes,
Sincerely yours,
Erwin Panofsky
[0013-0017 are notes about a certain Guillaume de Vienne, about whom Panofsky apparently had asked for some information, not connected with the tarot. Scans 0018 and 0019 are two typewritten pages of her article, with 0019 the part with her quotation from Panofsky. They are almost identical to what appears in the published article. (All I found different in the published version was the substitution of "the Library's Picture Collection" for "our Picture Collection" and the omission of the word "even" before the phrase "shown sometimes as wearing the tiara of the Pope.") On the top of that page Moakley writes, in handwriting: "This is a copy of the two pages on the Pope, Jupiter and Juno, and the Popess. (need not be returned) I will let the Editor have your letters so as not to hide your judgments from him." Then toward the bottom, after six or seven lines of white space: "I have left open about this much space here, in case you want to add more." ]
[19]
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
FIFTH AVENUE AND 42ND ST.
NEW YORK 18, N.Y.
Cataloging Office, Room 100
November 19, 1955
Professor Erwin Panofsky
School of Historical Studies
The Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, New Jersey
Dear Professor Panofsky,
I have done some more searching for Guillaume de Vienne, and enclose my findings on slips. If I have time before they move us up to Fifty-third Street I will look him up in the book, about Burgundy in the stacks. After the move I am not sure when they will let me get into the stacks again.
I suppose you know about the National Union Catalog and the services it provides, but if not, this is its address:
Union Catalog Division
The Library of Congress
Washington 25, D. C.
The major libraries of the United States report their acquisitions to this catalog, so that it can tell you which libraries own a book you want. In addition to this, it conducts a (weekly?) poll of these libraries for books requested which are not recorded in the Union Catalog. And of course once you know what library has the book, you can often arrange for your own Library to borrow it for you (free) there (not from ours, unfortunately, as the Reference Department can lend only to the Supreme Court end the United Nations).
It has been a pleasure to conduct this little search for you. If you ever have another question I can help with and are in no great hurry for the answer (for this move uptown will'slow me down dreadfully) I shall be delighted to do so.
I have been thinking over what you have said about Jupiter and the Pope, and have given in almost entirely. I have called the chief of Cupid's captives "a personage in ecclesiastical dress who is even shown sometimes as wearing the tiara of the Pope.” Then in a footnote, I hazarded my guess, backed up by the reference to Sesnec (p. 94-95, 162-165 and 157) and then said: “But I must not conceal the fact that Professor Panofsky has serious objections to this. He points out that in the ‘Mantegna’ Tarot we have both the Pope and Jupiter, without any confusion of the two." That should be enough to suggest that a serious writer on the subject had better consult you on this point. The only reason I remain as pig-headed about it as I am is this: (1) That business of the Pope and Popess suddenly becoming Jupiter and Juno in the Tarots of Southern France, (2) it would make a carnival procession so such more fun if the Pope were not simply the Pope, but hinted at being someone else. Where the "Mantegna" trionfi are dignified end educational, the playing-card trionfi are full of fun, sentimentality, and ribaldry. [The next sentence handwritten.] And they tell Petrarch’s story, while the “Mantegna” don’t. Many, many thanks to you.
Gertrude Moakley
[scan 0021]
November 21, 19%
Miss Gertrude Moakley
Room 100, Cataloging Office
New York Public Library
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street
New York 18, N. Y.
Dear Miss Moakley,
Many thanks for a number of communications too numerous to be referred to by date. I am very touched by the great efforts you and your associates have spent on the birth date of Guillaume de Vienne and hope that ultimately something will turn up, although the question is by no means vital. The “Guillaume, seigneur de Chateauvillain,” who was supplied by your division of genealogy, however, is certainly the wrong guy.
The reference to me which you plan to insert in your forthcoming article is quite all right with me as it stands now.
With all good wishes and many thanks,
Very sincerely yours,
Erwin Panofsky
[0022-0027 are on Guillaume, on note cards or typing paper without letterhead. The note below, scan 0028, is in handwriting. The date “Jan 1956” is in her hand, in between the lines where I have put the underlining, which is not in the original. I had to put them in because otherwise there would be no indenting. For the convenience, of the reader, here are the personages being referred to:
http://www.newyorkhistoryblog.com/wp-co ... y-NYPL.jpg,
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/17976579.jpg]
The lions want you to know that they are lions of leisure, with no duties whatever, and that they are highly cultured lions. (They know the Latin verses came from you, because they recognized your handwriting and the Princeton postmark.) At first they thought the verses meant:
We, the lion and the lioness!
How they mitigate the suave
________offices in the nearby
________skyscrapers!
So of course they were badly disillusioned when they got out their Latin dictionaries.
Seriously, what is the source? One of our staff collects verse about the Library and would like to know. If they are original, congratulations! They are lovely.
Gertrude Moakley
[scan 0029]
January 4, 1956
Miss Gertrude Moakley
Donnell Building
20 West 53rd Street
New York 19, N. Y.
Deer Miss Moakley,
This is only to thank you for your final information about the Sieur Guillaume de Vienne et de Sainte-Croix, which is exactly what I wanted (since the gentleman's father died as early as 1360, he must have been at least seventy in 1430, which precludes his identification with the sitter of a portrait that in my opinion represents somebody else) and to offer you my best wishes for your future in what appears to be the new home of the Cataloging Department. I am happy to hear that my little distich met with your approval. I must admit that it is original and that the use of the short “a” in “lea” at the end of the pentameter is a little hard; it can, however, be justified by a small number of parallels even in Ovid (“Ita” or “Iove” is in an analogous position).
In the hope that your article on the Tarochi will survive the surgery of the editors, as well as the ministrations of the printers, I am, with all good wishes,
Very sincerely yours,
Erwin Panofsky
[scan 0031]
Miss Gertrude Moakley
Donnell Building
20 West 53rd Street
New York 19, N. Y.
March 9, 1956
Dear Miss Moakley,
Many thanks for your letter as well as for the two pamphlets, with both of which I am well pleased.
Concerning the little collection of references to the New York Public Library in recent literature, I am, needless to say, extremely flattered to be included as a poet (and not as an author active in children’s literature), an honor of which I would never have dreamt. I notice with amusement that ten of the thirty-seven poets included make reference to the lions, which seem to exert a peculiar attraction on the public mind not only because of their inherent beauty (which is considerable) but also on account of the legend attached to them. This legend, incidentally, deserves some folkloristic research. I remember that an analogous story was told in my student days of the big obelisk in Munich, which were supposed to shake under the same conditions as the lions are supposed to roar, and I believe that both these stories (and there may be more in other localities) can be traced back to the legend surrounding the Bocca della Verità in Santa Maria di Cosmedin at Rome, which is of very respectable age and attributes the invention of such miraculous tests of chastity to none other than Virgil.
Your article on the tarot cards, as it now stands, meets all reasonable requirements, the strongest point (in an art historian’s mind) being the identity of the Hermit with Petrarch’s Father Time. The only very small objection is that in your caption you identify the central motif of the Triumph of Eternity as “God the Father.” This is a heresy which I hope will not count against you at the Last Judgment. You should have said “the Trinity” (which in this particular case is represented by God the Father holding the crucified Christ, the dove hovering above the latter’s head). Since the three persons of the Trinity are consubstantial and coeternal, even single figures representing the deity in Christian art must be interpreted as the triune God; God the Father, the First Person, occurs only in such “explicit” Trinities as that in your miniature or else in scenes involving a dialogue between the First Person and the Second.
Since this is the only flaw I can discover, I think you will be absolved even before a tribunal of art historians.
With my renewed thanks and all good wishes,
Sincerely yours,
Erwin Panofsky
[scan 0000, not dated but obviously after the move to 53rd St]
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT .
Cataloging Office
20 West 53rd Street
New York 19, New York
Professor Erwin Panofsky
School of Historical Studies
The Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, New Jersey
Dear Professor Panofsky,
Your delightful letter must not go unanswered--it gave our whole staff so much pleasure and amusement. It even developed that some of them had never heard of the special talents of our Lions, much less about their rivals in other cities. I am so pleased to have your blessing on the article as it stands in print, with the one heretical exception, which I humbly recant. With best wishes, and hopes for many more good books from your pen.
Yours sincerely,
Gertrude Moakley