Huck wrote: John VIII Palaiologos, since 1425 the "Eastern Emperor", which in 1439 appeared during the council in Florence, travelled in 1423–24 to Venice, Milan and Hungary (? also to Florence ?) to ask for aid against the Osmans in person.

Pisanello made several sketches of John VIII Palaiologos during his visit at the council of Florence in 1438, for a medal he was commissioned to make for him (possibly by Leonello d'Este), on one of his sketches:



we see the following Arabic inscription:



which translated reads:

"Glory to our sovereign lord al-Malik al-Mu'ayyad Abu Nasr Shaykh" (translated by Mohamad Ballan, University of Chicago) ,

another translation reads:

"Concerning the Master, the Sultan, the King, El Moaid-Abu-El-Nasr, God grant [Glory] his Victory."'' The Arabic is said to be slightly incorrect,but the reference to the Mameluke Sultan El Moaid- Abu-El Nasr) is plain. He reigned from 1412 to 1421.'

Some preparatory drawings for Pisanello's Medallion of John VIII Palaeologus by Michael Vickers

Apparently the Arabic text was copied from an inscription of gold on blue on a garment that was gifted to the Emperor (beloved of the Pope of Rome) by Mamluk SultanAshraf Sayf-al-din Barsbe (also known as Abu-El Nasr,)who reigned from 1422 to 1438.

Mameluke Sultan El Moaid- Abu-El Nas (1412 to 1421) we have previously met in our discussion on the Mameluk kanjifa cards - having been recorded to have gambled playing at kanjifa, probably in Syria (Damascus or Allepo) around 1400:

Kanjifa of course was the name of the Mamluk playing cards. Here is the word Kanjifa at the top right hand corner of the Mamluk King of Swords:

SteveM wrote: ↑

20 Jun 2017, 12:48

Pisanello made several sketches of John VIII Palaiologos during his visit at the council of Florence in 1438, for a medal he was commissioned to make for him (possibly by Leonello d'Este), on one of his sketches:

Compare:

Steve,
Thanks for posting this image here again and with the Arab translated - something that quite obviously stood out to Pisanello. We should also recall the Arab in the stained glass window in the Annunziata commissioned by Piero de Medici (http://www.academia.edu/6733333/_Of_Med ... ss_Window_. What leaps out at me is all of the figures drawn by Pisanello and their similarity to the PMB's "hermit". My inference being that the contemporary "Greeks" had been conflated with the East so that these figures could be stand-ins for "Magi" (again see the Strozzi painting) . What then are the implications for the meaning of this trump, the earliest known one of the "hermit" (did not survive in the CY and I highly doubt it is "missing" - simply was not part of that deck)? The obvious answer that the "hermit" is Time in the PMB (old man leaning on cane with hourglass), still begs the question as to why his headgear and robe speak of the East, essentially in the same way Hermes Trismegistus is depicted in the Sienna duomo pavement:

I think a slightly younger contemporary, Baldini, impacted by the East-West Union in Florence, reveals the connection between garbing "Time" in Eastern clothes - where the allegory is no longer generally "Time", but Saturn: The same headgear, but on the Prophet Haggai (where Byzantine/Biblical/Magi get conflated in dress, being from the same region; to wit, same headgear on the Phrygian Sibyl):


I've discussed this elsewhere, but Baldini does provide the exact headgear as the PMB "Time" but in the context of the procession of 7 personages. I believe the intent here is to show the standard Florentine interpretation of Petrarch's TRIUMPHUS CUPIDINIS:
See lovely Venus, and with her see Mars,
His feet and arms and neck laden with chains.
Yonder are Pluto and Proserpina.
Behold the jealous Juno, and the blond
Apollo, who once scorned the youthful bow
That dealt him such a wound in Thessaly.
What shall I say? To put it briefly, then,
All Varro' s gods are here as prisoners,
And, burdened with innumerable bonds,
Before the chariot goes Jupiter."

Instead of remaining faithful to the text (and I don't believe a single Quattrocento image of this oft-represented theme is faithful to the text), Baldini chose to show the seven planetary gods, in keeping with his interest in that subject in showing all 7 planetary gods in the context of their "children" (see Saturn above, but he did all 7 planets). Baldini's triumph of love, driving all 7 planetary gods:
How I interpreted this image in the post then (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1062:

Jupiter: the figure wearing an elaborate Byzantine robe and headdress (known since the days of the East-West Union Council in Florence in 1439) is obviously chief among the group and thus Jupiter.

Mercury: the figure preceding Jupiter, wearing the hat of a merchant or artisan (germane to Mercury’s “children”) and cut in half by the edge of the left plate edge, would be Jupiter’s messenger/herald – Mercury.

Apollo: on first glance there is little to choose between the two armored figures, but Petrarch provides the key here: 'l biondo Apollo / che solea disprezzar l'etate e l'arco / che gli diede in Tessaglia poi tal crollo.(“…the blond Apollo, / who once scorned the youthful bow / That dealt him such a wound in Thessaly”). Apollo is cupping a hand to his mouth and yelling up to taunt Cupid per the Ovid story of Daphne, where Cupid repays his taunt by inflicting an insane lust in Apollo for Daphne. In medieval depictions Apollo as often shown robed as a magistrate (such in the planetary series on Florence’s campanile), and we find an abbreviated version of that here in the form
of the mantle about him.

Mars: Mars is always shown armored with a helmet that is usually winged, such as in the illuminated Crivelli Sphaera, just as he is here.

Venus: of the two women it’s not difficult to guess why one of them was granted the favor of riding upon Cupid’s chariot – his mother, Venus.

Moon: Bespeaking to the bovine horns the lunar goddess sometimes wears, the woman who wears the two-horned hennin headdress is Luna.

Saturn: this planet was associated with old age, such as in the Guariento series in the Eremitani in Padua, and sure enough we have an extremely full beard on the male at the top of the frame. But also note the curious, elaborate hat he wears, perhaps also Byzantine; I have looked everywhere for a match of the PMB’s “Hermit”/Saturn’s hat (see the upper right hand corner of this webpage’s screen for that ever-present detail) and have only found it here…in a grouping of the seven planetary gods. Baldini and the Bembo studio must have been referring to commonly-derived pattern books with similar planetary god images, presumably lost (few working source books have come down to us).

After the Union in Florence and the increased exposure to "Eastern" dress, Saturn is also shown as richly dressed, not just an an aged man, often naked, on a crutch, in keeping with notions of the wealthy East, Magi, etc.

Phaeded

Thanks for resurrecting your old post in this new context, Phaeded. I am interested, primarily because Hermes Trismegistus as the PMB Old Man fits my hypothesis of an Egyptianizing intent for a few of the PMB cards, perhaps influenced by Ciriaco, in Cremona at the time of the cards. I hadn't connected the headgear with Hermes Trismegistus until reading your post. He of course was identified with Egypt, part of the original territory of the Byzantine Empire.

In this regard I have a few questions about your analysis of the very relevant Baldini.

First, I have trouble locating Venus. You wrote:

Venus: of the two women it’s not difficult to guess why one of them was granted the favor of riding upon Cupid’s chariot – his mother, Venus.

Did you mean the figure with his hands tied behind his back? I have no idea who he is (it seems male), but Venus is unlikely. I would have thought Venus was the very richly attired lady next to her lover Mars. If not Venus, who is that lady? And who is the person with his hands tied behind his back?

Then I have trouble distinguishing Jupiter from Saturn. You wrote

Jupiter: the figure wearing an elaborate Byzantine robe and headdress (known since the days of the East-West Union Council in Florence in 1439) is obviously chief among the group and thus Jupiter.
...
Saturn: this planet was associated with old age, such as in the Guariento series in the Eremitani in Padua, and sure enough we have an extremely full beard on the male at the top of the frame. But also note the curious, elaborate hat he wears, perhaps also Byzantine; I have looked everywhere for a match of the PMB’s “Hermit”/Saturn’s hat (see the upper right hand corner of this webpage’s screen for that ever-present detail) and have only found it here…in a grouping of the seven planetary gods. Baldini and the Bembo studio must have been referring to commonly-derived pattern books with similar planetary god images, presumably lost (few working source books have come down to us).

Aren't these the same person? If not, which two figures are you referring to?

I would have thought that the man with the full beard and the elaborate hat was indeed Saturn. If so, I do not know who you mean by Jupiter. The only figure unaccounted for is the youth with his hands behind his back. He wears an odd headdress that I can't identify. But he seems an unlikely Jupiter, because of his plain attire.

Another association between Saturn and the PMB Old Man is the "Mantegna" Saturn, a similar figure and position of the stick:
Chronos/Cronos.

Baldini's headdresses on the prophet and sibyl seem to me to relate to the ChVI Pope card. The Hermes Trismegistus in Siena does so as well, even more. That doesn't Egyptianize the Pope, assuming that the pavement and the card are independent of each other. But it at least, for Baldini, associates papal headgear with that of famous prophets of the Eastern Mediterranean and, for the pavement artist, Hermes Trismegistus with papal headgear.

mikeh

Added later. Here are the relevant details from a drawing by the artist of the Florentine Picture-Chronicle reputedly of Hermes Trismegistus, very much in Baldini's style. He is said to have made an engraving of it. Reproduction and description at http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/c ... 3&partId=1. In this case it is a three-level crown, like the popes' at that time. It seems to me that the PMB Old Man's hat also has three levels, but vaguely as they are not well defined.

mikeh wrote: ↑

19 Sep 2017, 04:27

First, I have trouble locating Venus. You wrote:

Venus: of the two women it’s not difficult to guess why one of them was granted the favor of riding upon Cupid’s chariot – his mother, Venus.

Did you mean the figure with his hands tied behind his back? I have no idea who he is (it seems male), but Venus is unlikely. I would have thought Venus was the very richly attired lady next to her lover Mars. If not Venus, who is that lady? And who is the person with his hands tied behind his back?

I admit the seated figure appears to have male hair, but that headdress is never something a male Florentine would have worn (almost like a halo-shape with a trailing veil attached - a matrimonial piece?). As for the "tied hands", consider instead that in Baldini's "Children of Venus" engraving Venus has her hand on her hip:

So "bound hands" is possibly a botched version of that hand-on-hip, and a reversal of mother and son's positions, where Eros is back atop to his his normal position on a float and the mom Venus sits on the float. If the seated figure on the float is indeed a bound male (with inexplicable headpiece), then it would simply be an everyman prisoner of Love, as depicted in the contemporary Triumph of Love birth tray by Apollonio di Giovanni (but again, this one has a standard Florentine male hat):

Nonetheless I'm now tending toward the seated figure as a generic captive (perhaps the gender was left ambiguous to underscore "everyman" as the allegorical significance) with Venus simply denoted by her son, cut off from this detail, but on his usual pedestal atop the float.

mikeh wrote: ↑

19 Sep 2017, 04:27

Then I have trouble distinguishing Jupiter from Saturn. You wrote

Jupiter: the figure wearing an elaborate Byzantine robe and headdress (known since the days of the East-West Union Council in Florence in 1439) is obviously chief among the group and thus Jupiter.

The most elaborately dressed figure looking straight ahead with a long train of cloth trailing after him is who I identify as Jupiter, who should be the most extravagantly dressed in the minds of a Florentine. And the only other figure also looking straight ahead would be his herald walking ahead of him, Mercury (donning his "children's" garb of a generic guildsman or merchant), whose face is cut off to the left. The figure immediately behind and to the left of Jupiter is Mars, wearing a chain mail skirt, breastplate and winged helmet (like one finds repeated on "Roma" on Roman coins). Saturn is the upper left figure with the virtually identical headgear as that of the PMB "Time"/Hermit trump, and similarly has a long shaggy "Byzantine" beard.

The figure cupping his hand to his mouth to yell up at Eros is inspired by the textual source of Petrarch: "Apollo, who once scorned the youthful bow, That dealt him such a wound in Thessaly."

Luna stands near the seated Venus, with bicorn hat, a fashion meant to mimic the "horns of the moon" of planetary Luna:

Here is the Baldini Triumph of Love detail again, but labeled with my identifications.
Note that Eros' pedestal and the vertical spoke of the wheel neatly divide the engraving into two halves, the planetary gods on the left, perhaps with a representative of bound humanity (whom were of course subject to all of the planetary influences), while the human populace proper follows in their wake in the right half of the engraving (not shown). Baldini's concurrent interest in the "Children of the Planets" is undeniable and it is not unfathomable that he attempted to merge that fairly novel theme (likely imported from Germany after being first conceived of by Christine de Pizan) with the well-worn Triumph of Love, which already implicitly involves Venus and her son, with Petrarch himself naming some of the planetary gods in his Triumph of Love text (e.g., Jupiter, albeit not in a planetary context).

Phaeded

Thanks for the claraification, Phaeded. It still seems to me that your "Jupiter" is a woman, surely Venus since she is next to Mars. In that case the bound captive may be Jupiter, since that is the only one of the seven left unaccounted for. He was well known as a captive of love. His lack of regal attire attests to his status as Love's captive.

mikeh wrote: ↑

03 Oct 2017, 22:04

Thanks for the claraification, Phaeded. It still seems to me that your "Jupiter" is a woman, surely Venus since she is next to Mars. In that case the bound captive may be Jupiter, since that is the only one of the seven left unaccounted for. He was well known as a captive of love. His lack of regal attire attests to his status as Love's captive.

A woman would not wear a dress that did not come down to the feet and that appears to be a mustache-less beard on Jupiter. At all events there is an extremely close male comparable with the similar robe's tail in this engraving of Talythybius (a Homeric character, hence the Greek/Byzantine dress), on the right below, from the 'The Florentine Picture-Chronicle' (even the hands are conjoined within the long sleeves of the robe):

The robe's tail also evokes Giotto's Foolishness in the Scrovegni chapel, the Fool with a false crown of feathers and club-sceptre is the perfect anti-type to Jupiter, or even a cognate when the latter falls victim as one of Love's fools, just like everyone else:

I think the identification of Mars is even more secure (not that you doubted it), as here are Baldini comparables of "warriors":

Phaeded

PS someone scanned in all of the pages of the 1970 publication of The Florentine Chronicle, here: http://chronologia.org/en/old_books/flo ... nicle.html

I hadn't noticed the beard. Thanks, Phaeded. And that page from the picture-chronicle is very nice.