Re: Biblical virtues and lights in the sky

21
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?

Re: Biblical virtues and lights in the sky

22
Sandy,
we have 4 cardinal virtues in the so-called Charles VI Tarot. All 4 have an polygonal halo, typical for especially Florentine virtues.
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The 4th card is generally taken as card "World", not as "Popess".

In the Cary-Yale Tarocchi is a card, which was taken by Stuart Kaplan as "World" ... however, one detail is a winged trumpet and this is known as detail of the allegorical figure "Fame" (Fame is the real name of a Minchiate card, No. 40, the highest trump; No. 39 is in the Minchiate the card "World", second highest trump)
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Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Biblical virtues and lights in the sky

23
In the Minchiate, as it has come to us, the seven virtues appear:

Some decks
http://a.trionfi.eu/WWPCM/decks07/d05113/d05113.htm
http://a.trionfi.eu/WWPCM/decks07/d05114/d05114.htm
http://a.trionfi.eu/WWPCM/decks07/d05115/d05115.htm

VIRTUES
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No. 6: Temperantia .... cardinal virtue
No. 7: Fortitudo .... cardinal virtue
No. 8: Justitia .... cardinal virtue
--------------------------
No. 16: Spes ... theological virtue
No. 17: Prudentia .... cardinal virtue
No. 18: Fides ... theological virtue
No. 19: Caritas ... theological virtue
---------------------------
(No. 20-23: 4 elements)
(No. 24-35: 12 zodiac signs)
(No. 36-40: 36 Star, 37 Moon, 38 Sun, 39 World, 40 Fame or Angel)

It's obvious, that Prudentia is treated in a special manner in the Minchiate. It appears between the theological virtues, it's not part of the group of the cardinal virtues.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Biblical virtues and lights in the sky

24
Sandy,
we have 4 cardinal virtues in the so-called Charles VI Tarot. All 4 have an polygonal halo, typical for especially Florentine virtues.
In the Cary-Yale Tarocchi is a card, which was taken by Stuart Kaplan as "World" ... however, one detail is a winged trumpet and this is known as detail of the allegorical figure "Fame"
Can the same card, known as World, be both Fame and Prudence?

Is that Verona? Is that Sforza (I can't quite make out the banner -- it could be, for sure). How can we tell that one of the men in the boat is German?

Virgil's account of Fama (and I know no other) would lead me to expect a trumpet with multiple mouths, each with a wagging tongue. Is a winged trumpet an attribute of Fama in the iconographic sources, or in literary works? Even for someone whose knowledge of Christian eschatology is based, as mine is, on old Bing Crosby movies, it is no surprise to find an angel with a trumpet, and since an angel has wings, wings on his one item of equipment is not especially striking either. It is not such an unaccountable thing, that we can say that two instances of it, must have a common source.

But let's suppose some early set of trionfi cards had a card with a round landscape scene, and an angel, and a trumpet, and wings on the trumpet, and suppose that card was called "Fama." Given those suppositions, it is reasonable cause and effect to think that when that tarocchi decks were printed by the hundreds of thousands in the early 1450s (I don't think this is an unreasonable guess), that all those decks had a card with a winged trumpet, called "Fama." After all, we don't have those cards, and even if we did we wouldn't know what they were called. And then when the first Minchiate deck was made, it had a card with a winged trumpet called Fama, because of the 100,000 Tarocchi decks existing at that time, which had a card with a winged trumpet called Fama. A nice story of cause and effect. But then how did we get from the 100,000 Tarocchi decks with winged trumpet and name "Fama" in c. 1453, to later c. 1505 Tarocchi decks which do not have winged trumpets, but a card with an angel that is called something else? Early 1500s is when we start to see labels, and that label is not "Fama." To go from 100,000 decks with one image and one name in 1453, to 200,000 decks with a different angel image and a different name fifty years later in 1503, is a very hard change to believe in. There is the known conservatism of card players, and the further argument, that we have to assume a co-ordinated change in cities across Italy. So of the 100,000 trionfi decks of c. 1453, I find I can't believe they had a winged trumpet (at least not all of them) or were called "Fama," (not any of them). They can't have, since the 1503 tarocchi did not.

But if the 100,000 decks of 1453 did not have winged trumpets and the name "Fama," how did the winged trumpet and the name "Fama," pass from being used in an early originating trionfi deck, to being used on the Minchiate deck? The simple answer is that there is no connection: wings on an angel's trumpet are not that surprising, and we have no independent evidence that "Fama" was used of a card in an early trionfi deck.

The colored Tarocchi de Mantegna pictures I see in the next post are better than any I've ever seen, and I look forward to reading your next post.

Re: Biblical virtues and lights in the sky

26
These pictures of Minchiate cards are very pretty. The World Web Playing Card Museum seems to be mostly a listing of reproduction decks, and in some cases (this was mostly when I was looking for German and French non-tarot decks) I found that good images of the originals were available instead, often from national museums. Am I right that "l Meneghello" is a publisher who in 1850 brought out an edition of the Florentine Minchiate with checkered borders? Would 1850 be an early date? For what it matters, there do seem to be scattered images of the "l Meneghello" originals available online, although I don't know if there is a complete set.

There is an image of 16 cards here
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... t_019a.jpg
crediting the Bibat Museo Fournier de Naipes de Álava (which does not have even a website). The image is linked to by the Minchiate page on Wikipedia but I don't see any of the specific Minchiate trumps. It is an interesting deck; it has checkered borders. I like the naked baby driving the triumphal chariot and the elephant on the four of coins. Is the third card on the third row the Sun? I don't know of any Sun with three men. Tarocco Bolognese has a Star with the Three Kings on it.
Three dudes in the sun.png Three dudes in the sun.png Viewed 12652 times 232.12 KiB
Anyway, it seems we ought to have earlier pictures of Minchiate cards than 1850. I will look some more.

Since we're on the Minchiate, I'll throw in here a silly notion, which I expect to be shot down at once by a better linguist than me. Could it ever be possible that the Greek god Hermes could appear in Italian spelled with an initial G? I'm pretty sure the answer is no, but not 100% sure, just because the name Hieronymus, Jerome in English, is Geronimo in Spanish. If so, then the first Minchiate trump, called Mercury in French Minchiate, and therefore equal to Hermes, could explain the name Germini for the Minchiate. Pratesi seemed to think that "Germini" did not come from Gemini, which is a widespread theory. If it was from Hermes as the first trump, rather than from Gemini the last one, that would fit the pattern of other names, including "Minchiate" itself, which come from the fool or from the first trump, not the highest ranking one.

And since this is the post where I play the fool, about language, I understand a cardinal's hat can be called a Galera. The Bagato wears a similar hat. Could that be the origin of the name Gallerini?

Re: Biblical virtues and lights in the sky

27
Cooper Hewitt design museum in New York has 35 cards of a Minchate deck that sure looks old, although they know nothing about it.
166934_96fc42b7d69fe19e_x_RS10.jpg 166934_96fc42b7d69fe19e_x_RS10.jpg Viewed 12652 times 52.94 KiB
The image I uploaded has only 10% of the resolution of the image I downloaded, as this forum will not support any higher.
at: https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/obj ... ge-166934/
credit to that url, plus title=Playing Cards |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum | accessdate=29 June 2018 | publisher=Smithsonian Institution

Re: Biblical virtues and lights in the sky

28
sandyh wrote: 29 Jun 2018, 18:20
Since we're on the Minchiate, I'll throw in here a silly notion, which I expect to be shot down at once by a better linguist than me. Could it ever be possible that the Greek god Hermes could appear in Italian spelled with an initial G? I'm pretty sure the answer is no, but not 100% sure, just because the name Hieronymus, Jerome in English, is Geronimo in Spanish. If so, then the first Minchiate trump, called Mercury in French Minchiate, and therefore equal to Hermes, could explain the name Germini for the Minchiate. Pratesi seemed to think that "Germini" did not come from Gemini, which is a widespread theory. If it was from Hermes as the first trump, rather than from Gemini the last one, that would fit the pattern of other names, including "Minchiate" itself, which come from the fool or from the first trump, not the highest ranking one.

And since this is the post where I play the fool, about language, I understand a cardinal's hat can be called a Galera. The Bagato wears a similar hat. Could that be the origin of the name Gallerini?
Germini means to germinate, germination, to sprout - in which case one may wonder if Ganellino, a name used for a game played with Minchiate cards and also of the first trump, etymology unknown, is a corruption of Granellino, grain, corn - (referring perhaps to it being the smallest/lowest trump, similar to bagato as small coin? Or to the suits as 'seeds' (as we have pips in English), the trumps of the Minchiate being the tarot seeds, if I recall correctly) - in French there is also Ganelonnerie, Ganelry, to betray, treason, traitor - after the Baron Ganelon* whose name become synonymous with traitor, treachery - and the Occitan, Provencal Ganelajodo, Ganelous = mocking, joking, taunting

Gallerini maybe rooted in the Latin Gallus 'rooster' [an emblem of Mercury, Mitelli has Mercury as the first trump] ? Or there is the Italian Galera meaning prison, jail, jug, galley - there is also the Greek 'Gale' meaning 'ermine', as an example of wordplay with the greek gale as ermine Leonaro da Vinci painted Lodovic Sforza's mistress Cecilia Gallerani holding an ermine, a play on the 'Galle' of her surname and as an emblem of chastity and purity, and also a reference to her lover, the ermine being one of his personal devices --
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Is the third card on the third row the Sun? I don't know of any Sun with three men
I don't see three men, I see a couple, a man wooing a woman sitting? As in the standard Minchiate Sun trump -
Am I right that "l Meneghello" is a publisher who in 1850 brought out an edition of the Florentine Minchiate with checkered borders?
Il Meneghello is a modern card-maker who has reproduced several antique decks -
https://www.google.com.tr/search?tbm=is ... F276kk_KwM:

SteveM
* From the "chanson de geste" cycle, also very popular among the Italian nobility - he appears as Ganellone in Dante's inferno, he also appears in Matteo Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato and Luigi Pulci's Morgante.

In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (many of which are based on Italian sources) he is also mentioned "O new Iscariot, new Ganelon!"

He was also referred to as the trickster (le filou) :

Le murtrèi, le filou,
Le traître ganelou,
Dèvon tous fort crendre la croco
D'un cop de talon.

We also have:
ganelejado, s. f. Taunt, joke, mockery,
ganelous, ouso, adj. Mocking,

quote:
ganeleja, v. n. Railler, goguenarder, v. goleja. R. ganèl.

ganelejado, s. f. Raillerie, plaisanterie, moquerie, v. galejado, trufo. R. ganeleja. ganello, ganolo, s. f. Petit fossé cou¬ vert; aqueduc souterrain, en Rouergue, v. ou- vede. R. canolo.

ganeloun, ganeloc (auv. b.), ganelet (1.), ganello (querc.), (rom. Ganelon, Ga- nelo), n. p. et s. m. Ganelon, fameux traître qui causa la défaite des Français à Roncevaux ;

traître, perfide, parjure, v. traite.
Te mourdras li poung, Sies un ganeloun.
a. peyrol.

Le murtrèi, le filou,
Le traître ganelou, Dèvon tous fort crendre la croco
D'un cop de talon.

CHA.ns. A.UV. 1665. R. ganèl 3.

ganelous, ouso, adj. Moqueur, railleur,
euse, v. trufandiè. R. ganèl 3.

From Lou tresor dou Felibrige ou Dictionnaire Provencal-Francais
Last edited by SteveM on 01 Jul 2018, 10:21, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Biblical virtues and lights in the sky

29
sandyh wrote: 24 Jun 2018, 00:33 [1]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.

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[2]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.

1. Giotto invented the mirror motif right after 1300, in the Scrovegni chapel (the 12th century dove becomes in the 13th century a disc with a picture of a dove and then the disc simply a mirror). See Douglas P. Lackey, 'Giotto's Mirror', Studi danteschi, 66 (2001), pp. 243-253.

2. Prudence = "the World" trump, or more narrowly, the portion of the world lorded over as the dominion for whom a particular deck was made - a well-ordered dominion, reflecting the prudenza of its ruler; similarly, a ruler is famous for his prudence (hence a conflation of fama/prudence). The fama winged trumpet attribute of this allegory of Bianca over her dowry dominion, is characteristic of her humanist that I posit is behind both the CY and the PMB, Francesco Filelfo, as fame is virtually the only gift a humanist can give, of which Filelfo was never shy in peddling: “What better gift can be given to you princes than the glory that publicly proclaims your virtue? But he never dies whom sweet Fame [fama] memorializes for all time and all the world.” (Filelfo, Odes, V.9.70-76; Robins, tr., p. 335)

There are those who will dispute the Prudence=World (even nuanced as a ruler's prudence reflected in the mirror of his dominion) this but I think its crystal clear, as in this earlier riff on Giotto at the Palazzo Minerbi in Ferrara (the tell-tale attributes of the double face and compass clearly indicate this is Prudence, holding "the World"):

Image

Compare the similarly town-populated CVI "world", which unlike flat Ferrara, is hilly...like Tuscany, and I take the CVI to be a Medici/Florentine product, showing its Tuscan dominion.

Image

Regarding the oldest known depiction of Prudence/"World", the CY (imaged by Huck above), is simply the Cremonese - the city and its surrounding land (contado) gifted to Sforza by F. Visconti as a dowry in 1441 (again, the river is the Po, that flows from near Pavia to Cremona and then out to the Adriatic, home of the hated Venetians whom Sforza was supposed to defeat for Visconti). Any other overly-complicated interpretation of this card is just that (e.g., "Piccicino and a German"? Good lord. Sforza and Bianca were married in a monastic church in Cremona, St. Sigismund, and those are simply monks receiving the suitor on behalf of Bianca, keeping her chastity in check until the wedding day).

Below is the CY "world": Sforza arriving from his then-current dominion of the Marche, further south along the Adriatic (into which the Po flows into in the background), with Bianca kneeling at the Po's banks holding what looks like a a simple fishing rob, but evocative of the Visconti imprese she favored ( a burning torch with buckets attached to it, usually held by a sitting lion, apparently replaced by Bianca here), with monks from Saint Sigismund greeting Sforza as proper intermediaries (and note the crown on the arch over the scene - this is clearly a dominion); the impresa of the "firebrand with buckets" to right:

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Re: Biblical virtues and lights in the sky

30
I was interrupted, sorry ... here my complete article
Image
http://emblems.let.uu.nl/av1615033.html
Ne tumeas fastu, si non ingloria nomen
Fama tibi & laudes addidit egregias.
Sic te larga Dei excepit clementia: cuius
Iste tibi solo munere cessit honor.
Trumpet with wings in Emblem book (16th century)

The Cary-Yale is dated by some to the wedding of Sforza with Bianca Maria, October 1441. Before there was a rather active fighting between Venetian troops under Sforza and Piccinino for Visconti 1439-1441. Piccinino (a small man) was nearly personally captured in a castle, he escaped in a sack of a big German, who wandered over the battle field pretending to look for useful things. He wasn't bothered by foreign soldiers, who likely believed, that he belonged to their own party. They reached a boat and escaped. Piccinino was able to reorganize his troops and a few days later he as able to take Verona by surprise. This was a prominent anecdote of the war.
This sort of "Fame" was a "personal fame" for a soldier like Sforza or Piccinino.

Another "personal" case is the preference of Borso for the virtue "Justice". Borso did like to be connected to it. Possibly this took influence on the Ferrarese choice to have the card Justice a high trump (No. 20) in the Ferrarese order, above the angel and below the world.

In Sforza's special evaluation of the virtue "Justice" we see a knight in the background.
Image
A knight on horse in combination to the virtue Justice should have been a rare motif. In the case of Sforza, the most famous Condottiero of his time, the combination has a natural logic. It's Sforza's personal Justice.

Now to the 5x14-theory. Around 1440 a sort of Trionfi sequence by Petrarca became possibly influential on the card game called "Trionfi". In the 14 trumps of the
1st artist of the PMB we have the following cards

Magician (1 in the game with the Milanese order)
Popess (2)
Empress (3)
Emperor (4)
Pope (5)
Love (6)
Chariot (woman on chariot) (7)
Justice (with knight) (8)
Father Time (with hourglass) (9)
Wheel (10)
(0 or 11 ?) = Fool
Hanging Man (Traitor) (12)
Death (13)
(14 ? or 20) Jugement

Petrarca's work had a row with 6 allegorical figures:
1. Love
2. Chastity
3. Death
4. Fame
5. Time
6. Eternity

3 of these names are easily recognized as playing cards in the Sforza deck:
1 Love = (6) Love
3 Death = (13) Death
5 Time = (9) Father Time

More hidden are Chastity, Fame and Eternity

7, the chariot, has a female rider, and naturally she presents Chastity, cause she presents the bride on the journey to her new place, celebrated by a Trionfi. Wedding celebrations were often connected to such a journey.

14=20 Jugement (the dead people come to life again) presents Eternity
and 8 Justice isn't just Justice, but Fame:
Image
Image
with Father Time and Eternity
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Petr ... 1465-2.jpg

This Justice with a sword is in its context the Fame figure of Petrarca.

See the original discussion.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=345&p=17682#p17682
Huck
http://trionfi.com