Re: Fame riddle

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As to the relative dates of the Vievil, Noblet, and Tarot de Paris, Flornoy says of the Noblet,
The back of the cards exactly conforms to the design employed by Viéville. The same motif occurs on the back of the Anonyme Parisien tarot (cat. n° 33).
He then gives pictures: http://www.tarot-history.com/Jean-Noble ... age-2.html

Does that at all suggest that they had the same publisher around the same time?

And surely Love's backdrop could as well be a sunburst as a cloud. In the Milanese tarot, there were lots of sunbursts. Although drawn differently, it was a device of the Sforza ,and before them the Visconti, A cloud is only natural if you've been looking at the Charles VI. Who knows what they were looking at, or thinking of, in 17th century Paris? A sunburst is perfectly natural--Love's power, indeed Love himself, springs from the supernal sun, said the Chaldean Oracles, that wellspring of the prisca theologia, in at least some of its editions printed before 1600, And the Christian god of love, Jesus, materializes from God the Father. Both members of the Trinity were symbolized by that heavenly body.

Re: Fame riddle

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Hi MikeH,
mikeh wrote:Huck wrote
Ross had then 1543, Mike spoke of 1538
Then Ross commented
My edition was the one of 1543; I haven't seen the earlier ones. It might be wrong to assume it is there, but I suspect it would be.
My "1538" came from Huck's quote from Vitali, http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=220&lng=ENG, in the first post in this thead:
But the jurist Andrea Alciati, the famous author of the Emblemata in another of his works, the Parergon Juris appeared for the first time in 1538, in Chapter XVI named De ludis nostri temporis...
and there follows the passage about "cross," "fama," etc.

I assumed that Vitali knew what he was talking about. I have not checked the 1538 edition personally, except to verify that there was one--two or three, actually. according to WorldCat.
Okay, I'll ask Andrea Vitali, if he used the 1538 addition.
I have a question: what does "sol" mean in the Petrarch, Boiardo, and Folengo, where it occurs along with "fama." I can't see where there is a word in the English translations corresponding to it. It does not seem to mean "sun": does it mean "alone," or what?
Yes, this seems possible ... in the opinions of the translators. I'm not sure, if the translations are in each case correct.
If "sol" was used as a keyword, which intentionally referred to systems like "Trionfi poem" or "row of the Tarot cards", it might easily be, that readers are confused about it in translation attempts. How to interpret Alciato's poem, if you don't know about the row of the Tarot cards?

Also, Huck, what is your source for the dates you listed for Alciato, saying that he moved back to Italy in 1533 (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=747&start=10#p10712), not 1438 as the Catholic Encyclopedia states (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01273b.htm)? It would not be the first time the Catholic Encyclopedia was wrong, but I would like to know the contrary sources.
German Wikipedia, I referred earlier to it. For the moment I found no confirmation, but the article made a competent impression.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Fame riddle

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The 1538 edition of the Parergon Juris, printed in Lyon, is on Google Books at this link -
http://books.google.com/books?id=byAVG- ... &q&f=false

Note that it only has three books; Alciato added other books in later editions, and our chapter is in Book VIII of the 1543 edition, if I remember correctly.

I can't find the chapter we are looking for in the 1538 book.

The same book, published the same year (1538) in Basel -
http://books.google.com/books?id=Pm1FAA ... &q&f=false

Interesting he would publish the same book in two different cities in the same year.

1539 edition, Lyon (three books again)
http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de ... 00225.html

1544 edition, with seven books "posteriores" (bringing the total, with the first three, to ten books),
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=QG1 ... &q&f=false

Our passage occurs on page 90.
Note that the title page and date is missing - the date is Google's.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek digital 1544 version is not much better, adding only one page (book 4, chapter 2).
http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de ... 00001.html

However, I trust their dating to Lyon, 1544.

1554 edition -
http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/0 ... 070F3.html
Image

Re: Fame riddle

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I think the Paris is usually dated to "early 17th century", so it could be 1600 to maybe 1650, taking it back further is interesting, but challenging, especially since, as Mike has noted, it shares the same backs as the Dodal, Vieville and Noblet.

Also to note on the Paris is that the cards have Italian abbriviations on them, so there is a connection to the Italian names of the suits names, not French.

Also, I want to stress that what I have said in my comments above are the questions that I am exploring, not the answers.

As far as the Tarot de Marseille coming to France from the Besancon, I also want to express that the idea I have is that the Tarot de Marseille I and the Tarot de Marseille II are coming probably from Italy, and then to Besancon and France. Ultimately, my question is what is the connection between the Heri and the Noblet? They are the only two decks in existance that share their iconography and size. The relationship is undoubtable. The question I've been playing with is whether the Tarot de Marseille I entered France from Besancon (or Switzerland, or Germany, or wherever), most likely from Italy originally, and that the Tarot de Marseille II came without the stopping there, directly from Italy? The Sforza Castle card is key. As far as I can see, all the Tarot de Marseille iconography on the Cary Sheet relates to the Tarot de Marseille I. The Sforza Castle card relates to the Tarot de Marseille I. The Vieville relates to the Tarot de Marseille I. The Noblet and the Dodal relate to the Tarot de Marseille I. The Dodal is the closest to the Sfrorza Castle card as far as the general layout and postioning. The Noblet changes the shape dramatically, creating a shorter, fatter card. This allows us to see the entire body of the animal on the Fool card, but it is cut off on the Dodal and all other Tarot de Marseille cards. What was Noblet looking at when he created his image? One big difference between the Noblet and the Heri on the Fool card is that the fool's genitals aren't on the Heri. So the Noblet is the only Tarot de Marseille card to show this feature, and again, I'm prejudiced to thinking it is an original feature that was "lost" on all other existing Tarot de Marseille cards. So I think that whatever Noblet was using had features that he could see and incorporated into his design. He knew the fool had a penis, he knew that the animals should have their entire bodies on the World card. There are tons of similarities between the the Dodal, Noblet and Vieville, and I see all of them reaching back to something else. Another curiousity is on the Chariot card: The Tarot de Marseille II has curtains at the top, but the Tarot de Marseille I has scalloped, rounded curtains. Noblet and Dodal agree on this, but when you add in the Vieville, suddenly the curtains aren't scallops, but waves. If you chop of the top of the Vieville chariot to insert an area for a title, suddenly the waves turn to scallops. But Noblet didn't know this, why not? My puzzle is figuring out the relationships between these cards, and trying to identify the changes that occur.

But it's all theories, and very much a work in progress.

Re: Fame riddle

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Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: 1539 edition, Lyon (three books again)
http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de ... 00225.html
If I see it correctly, also the 1539 edition didn't note the passage? So your 1543 edition is the earliest known ?

From ...
http://www.worldcat.org/title/andreae-a ... referer=br
... I assume, there were no editions in 1440-1442.

So good, that we cleared this problem: 1543 is the first Alciato date with Fama Sol.

From the Alciato version (google's date 1544):

Image

Image


Well, this is possibly the oldest document of the birth of a stronger Tarot side path. What about a translation of the total passage? It seems all relevant for games.
[/quote]
Last edited by Huck on 21 Nov 2011, 12:57, edited 1 time in total.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Fame riddle

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I think the Boiardo quote "dopo la morte sol fama n'avanza", reflecting the Petrarchan, and, more distantly, the classical theme of fame transcending death, might help explain why Temperance is elevated above Death in the C orders.

That is, if you are arguing for C being a secondary order, in the same way that most people accept B as a secondary order. In both orders, a Virtue is made to do second duty to some other scheme. In B, the virtue Justice is made to represent the Last Judgment. In C, Temperance is made to stand for post-mortem Fame.

But the question remains, why Temperance? Sometimes Fame is personified holding a sword and scales like Justice, and would have been a perfect double-duty image in this case. I have never seen Fame personified with the attributes of Temperance - except in some Tarots and the Alciato trump list.

So what came first - Temperance above Death for some reason, and then the added gloss "Sol Fama" on some decks? Or was this part of the moral conception when the C order began to use Temperance above Death?

It seems easier to believe that Temperance occupied that spot before becoming identified with Fame. The question of "why" remains in either case, however.
Image

Re: Fame riddle

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SteveM wrote: Fama Sol?
Alciato says there Fama, not Fama Sol . . .
Yes, you're right, not "Fama Sol", but "Fama with connection to Tarot card position 14", which later reappears as "Fama Sol" also in connection to Tarot card position 14 in the Vievil and the Belgian development. But Alciato somehow seems to refer to earlier "Fama-Morte-Sol" developments, possibly to Folengo, to Boiardo and to Petrarca's Trionfi model.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Fame riddle

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Hello,
mikeh wrote:As to the relative dates of the Vievil, Noblet, and Tarot de Paris, Flornoy says of the Noblet,
The back of the cards exactly conforms to the design employed by Viéville. The same motif occurs on the back of the Anonyme Parisien tarot (cat. n° 33).
He then gives pictures: http://www.tarot-history.com/Jean-Noble ... age-2.html

Does that at all suggest that they had the same publisher around the same time?
From my guesses and understanding, the backs were possibly not produced by the cardmakers but bought from the dominotiers (I don't know the english term).
A late but possibly signifying clue about that is that when dominotiers changed their jobs from creating repeating patterns by blockprinting to painting marbled papers, the backs of the cards chanded in a similar fashion.
As the three known tarot deck from different cardmakers in Paris in the 17th century share the same back, it is highly possible that the backs were made by someone else, a dominotier or several dominotiers creating the same local pattern.
There are no documents I know about that, but it may be an usage adopted locally to use a similar pattern for that type of deck, as we know the cardmakers were organised together and used to discuss together regarding the legslations and taxes - so we can suppose that they agreed on the usage of the backs, for the Tarots.

(I have a very ridiculously small doubt here because of a bad fac simile of Vincent Goyrand's (attributed to) standard deck which uses the same back, but he was from Lyon and as far as I know the back of his cards should have been white, as is alas not visible here http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?D ... &O=7919598 I guess the back is simply chosen randomly within the patterns from the approximate same period - thanks in advance if anyone can confirm this deck originally had a standard white back)

The decks using the "sol fama" word are particularly puzzling regarding the temperance allegory - Vieville, Hautot and the Belgians. The Paris deck is close but different with the Atrempance representing a woman pouring water - to temper a fire ? or maybe is she pouring oil ... or maybe is she making a quenching ("trempe" in french).
The "temperance" thread doesn't propose anything close.

As a side note, regarding the "sol fama" in Vieville, an hypothesis that might interest in particular Mike H. (and might irritate some other fellows here) is that it is a reference to the FAMA from the Rose-Croix - this is developped in Charly Alverda's book "trois figures hiéroglyphiques" which proposes an alchemical lecture of the Vieville's deck.


Bertrand