First, here is an interesting essay on Leon Battista Alberti and Fortuna, which I got to from reading the thread on Mantegna's
Minerva Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue, which Cardwell posted about, to this thread (I think). So that's why I am mentioning it here:
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~pmclean/mcl ... 0final.htm
and here is a quote from it, speaking of Alberti’s
Della Famiglia:
the word fortuna appears 204 times in that work, thirty-two times in the brief (3200 word) prologue alone.
Alongside it are numerous references to the key personal attribute that Fortuna attacks, namely honor (onore, onestà), and numerous references to the ‘remedies’ one may use against Fortuna, namely diligence (diligenza, industria, fatica) and virtue (virtù). I think it is fair to say Alberti is less cynical in the Della famiglia than in the Intercenales, but there are interesting subtexts here to his belief that we are able to manage in the face of fortuna.
Fortuna is another possibility for who is in that stone prison in the Mantegna painting. She is the mother of the virtues, in the same sense that necessity is the mother of invention. It is the roll of the virtues, more or less, to imprison Fortuna. By the way, has anyone mentioned how well behaved the vices are, and the virtues, not so much? The vices are good parents (twice), and they carry one disabled comrade and assist another. They don't fight back. When told to go by an excited woman waving a stick, they go. If the woman in blue is Diana (I don't disagree, but I'd like to know why everyone thinks so) then she is part of the virtue force, expelling the vices, and she is unarmed and unarmored (she carries a bow, but no quiver). Well armored Minerva, in the title role, leads from behind. If the tree is Daphne, then three of the four virginities row from the Marziano deck are present; the fourth is Vesta. Could she be the woman in the olive green dress? So this is the charge of the four virgins asking the vices to stop trespassing. Virginity is not one of the seven virtues, and neither is chastity.
vestastick.png
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Vesta?'s weapon
So back to what I am supposed to be talking about. I used woolcarder only pars pro toto, it was the most common of the occupations in the largest industry, I believe. I hoped to bring some concreteness to the making, buying, and playing of cards; to evoke a party of gamblers on some festival day. I am often incomprehensible, sorry. I'll try to do better.
I know that many Flemish workers were in the Italian towns in the cloth factories. I know that German woodblock printing was very advanced, and in particular the making and printing of playing cards. I can't say more advanced than the Italian in the XV century, because I have not found any Italian examples of woodblock printing. So I have a theory that many of the customers for the early cards were foreigners, and the woodblock carver, and perhaps the artist as well, of early Italian printed decks, were German.
So we have some artist, drawing images that a carver will carve into wooden blocks. This is the first printed trionfi deck. By the probabilities:
Either he meant the card to be Prudentia, or meant it to be Popess, or something else. As to what he would do, rather than what we conclude from other evidence that he did do, Prudentia is most likely, Popess unlikely. Prudentia fits with other virtues in the deck, Popess is a strange choice.
If he meant to draw Popess, drawing her with a baby is most likely, with no baby unlikely. Triple crown is most likely, single crown less likely.
If he meant to draw Pru, snake and Janus face is most likely, book and lectern less likely, but not unlikely. Either way, mirror is most likely, cross is unlikely but possible, neither mirror nor cross is somewhat unlikely.
Once the cards were printed, and were a hit, they were copied by other artists and carvers. The artist and carver of the copying enterprise likely knew more than the average customer, but if the players had started using a name for a card, the knockoff cardmakers may not have cared about the original artist's intent. They wanted their cards to sell to the buyers familiar with the first deck.
If the deck had a popess with triple crown and baby, the copier would most likely have shown the baby. Not showing the baby would be less likely.
If the first deck had a Pru strangling a snake, then getting to popess in the copy would be impossible.
If the first deck had a Pru with book and lectern, then the card may have looked like this:
popess cary sheet.png
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in every detail, except that instead of a crook it would have had a mirror (most likely), nothing (medium likely), or a cross (fairly unlikely). Note that this later, copied card has no triple crown.
If the original looked like the above picture, but with a mirror, then the copy would have been the above picture, with low likelihood, because of the mirror. If the original looked like the above picture, with a cross or nothing, then the copy would have looked the above picture, with high likelihood.
So in total, that the original artist intended popess, is quite unlikely, because the original artist wouldn't have chosen to have a popess in the first place, and if he had, he would put in a baby, and if he had put in a baby, so would the copier, and the copies don't have a baby.
In contrast, Pru was a very likely choice by the original artist. Going with book and lectern was a likely choice, although not the most likely, which would have been snake and Janus. Then either he didn't put in a mirror, or the mirror was not recognized as proof that it was Prudentia. Both are somewhat unlikely, but possible.
I grant that the presence of other virtues should have made the customers hunt for the missing virtues in the cards. But they may have been less familiar with the concept of the four classical virtues, than with the Seven Virtues. If they had seen six of seven virtues, they would have looked very hard for the seventh. Maybe not so much for the missing fourth of Plato's virtues.
All in all, I think it more likely that the original artist intended Prudentia rather than Popess. But let's say the chance that his intent for a card, ended up being misread, was as low as 10%. There are 21 trumps, so there should be 2 mistakes. I only claim one.
[It is true that I also think his Faith Hope and Charity ended up as Sun, Star, and Moon, but I think he was doing something complicated, making cards that fit two or more of his pattern schemes at the same time, and put Star, Moon, and Sun on these cards in a very prominent way, and the users just said "Sun," "Moon," or "Star," because they cared about identifying the card, not describing it. Of pure mistakes, I think Prudentia turning into Popess was the only one.]
I appreciate your kind attention to my posts, and even the pointing out of my mistakes.