Stevegus wrote this in a thread...

The World may have originally been based on the standard image of Christ Pantocrator, and underwent a sex change without changing the mandorla or sceptre of the composition

I realise that the word MAY is used.
Can someone show me the card, before it underwent 'reassignment'.

I personally dispute that any card for game playing would show Christ in the 14th + 15th Century.
Prove me wrong.

~Lorredan

Lorredan wrote:Stevegus wrote this in a thread...

The World may have originally been based on the standard image of Christ Pantocrator, and underwent a sex change without changing the mandorla or sceptre of the composition

I realise that the word MAY is used.
Can someone show me the card, before it underwent 'reassignment'.

I personally dispute that any card for game playing would show Christ in the 14th + 15th Century.
Prove me wrong.

~Lorredan

Why? The Visconti-Sforza deck shows God in the 15th century. And we have Judgement Day depicted which alone is a rather "religious" topic, no? Why not have Christ?


Take a look at this thread where Christ on the World is discussed:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=182

Well I guess you and I will never agree on this.
Taking a guess, that is Saint Jerome on the Last Judgement card who was famous for his commentary on the Resurection - his iconography was the Trumpet of Judgement as well as been depicted as a Church Doctor in Bishop of Rome clothes.Of course there are other icons like an owl. But if you were to depict someone overseeing Ressurection of the dead- you might well use Saint Jerome. Not God.

Realize that you are naked, torn, unclean, a beggar.It is never too late to repent. Even if you are lying in your grave, the Lord will raise you though your flesh may stink.

~Lorredan

Lorredan wrote:Well I guess you and I will never agree on this.
Taking a guess, that is Saint Jerome on the Last Judgement card who was famous for his commentary on the Resurection - his iconography was the Trumpet of Judgement as well as been depicted as a Church Doctor in Bishop of Rome clothes.Of course there are other icons like an owl. But if you were to depict someone overseeing Ressurection of the dead- you might well use Saint Jerome. Not God.

Realize that you are naked, torn, unclean, a beggar.It is never too late to repent. Even if you are lying in your grave, the Lord will raise you though your flesh may stink.

~Lorredan

Yup, I don't think we will agree, not until someone provides some images that are at least as convincing as the dozens (hundreds?) of images of God or Christ judging at the resurrection. I've never seen St Jerome as the subject of the judge at the resurrection, and it would take some pretty good images of him doing so to move me in that direction, but can we start with even just one?

I just don't understand what seems to me to be an absolute reluctance to accept that the antique decks are displaying Christian content. I've been steeped in religious iconography for months now, especially the past few weeks focusing on English church wall-paintings, and I keep seeing the exact same things as on these cards.

When considering the Tarot de Marseille World card, any explanation must take the four evangelists into consideration. We have hundreds of images of Jesus surrounded by the four evangelists from the medieval period. Who else do we see depicted this way?

An experiment...

This is a typical image of Christ surrounded by the Four Evangelists from wikicommons, it already bears a pretty strong relationship to the Tarot de Marseille World card; and here also the Christ from the Bezier image that Ross found:


If we replace the Christ from the Tetramorph image with the Christ from Bezier, we would end up with something like this:


I think it is fair to do so because we are replacing one image of Christ with another image of Christ.

Compare it to the Vieville, Noblet and Dodal:


Is it perfect? Nope. Every time we discuss it we point out that the wreath is wrong, and that the girdle is wrong. We can certainly talk about the ways that the Tarot de Marseille World card is, so far, unique.

I'm honesty open to other candidates, but Christ seems by far the most likely character depicted on the card to me and I hope that if other candidates are suggested, we can find iconography at least as convincing as that for Christ. Again, I ask, with a truly open mind and heart, who else is represented surrounded by the four evangelists? Who else would be represented in the trump card sequence to follow the Last Judgement?

If we take the typical medieval representation from gothic churches, the two scenes are usually combined, as in this image from Giotto:


Or this image of the Tympanum at Notre Dame de Paris:


Another Tympanum from St Foy, Conques, France, 1050-1120


And because I really ought to relate this to my essay on medieval English churches (see, I'm working, not playing)... here's an example of Christ with Judgement from England, c.1150-1200 from an amazing site on English wall-paintings:
http://www.paintedchurch.org/clayton.htm

And a couple of photographs I took just the other day of a wonderful Judgement scene in a nearby church:

robert wrote: I just don't understand what seems to me to be an absolute reluctance to accept that the antique decks are displaying Christian content. I've been steeped in religious iconography for months now, especially the past few weeks focusing on English church wall-paintings, and I keep seeing the exact same things as on these cards.

absolute reluctance? Nah not me. I think the difference is that it is playing cards we are talking about. I do believe there is Christian content- but slanted towards what they are for- these are not illustrations in a missal or on a church wall. They are secular not sacred. PLaying cards would be blasphemous- if they showed a Christian narrative then were used to play a gambling game.
I will accept that in the mystery of the Ur Tarot and the 22 more or less images- that originally may have made up a sequence that became co- joined to 56 cards; they may have originally been sacred- but once they were a game- these 'perhaps' images became secular. Print houses would have been pillorised for their impudence (or worse), for printing card decks of sacred images. Of course there is a very strong influence of commonly accepted images- like The Papesse could have well have been Faith- but even today we do not see that in the card. They morphed
~Lorredan

oops great post Robert- but I had posted before I saw it.
The Italians were great at a particular sort of humour called Beffa. A famous one would be a painting of Lorenzo the Magnificent- who did some things considered by the people as tyrannical. He is painted as the Trickster. Everyone knew who the painting was depicting and it became a sort Renaissance joke in little cartoon like postcards. People are not very different today eh? Even the plays could be satirical on Saint John the Baptist's feastday. A little prod here and there. Not enough to be considered a heretic- or God forbid a witch. I see no difference in these cards- just pieces of Buffa.

Judgement card: Even though you gamble all your money, and have nothing for the Church, Saint Jerome says you can still be resurrected- and Victory will be yours. Even if you lost the game. That appears to be an Italian way of sly commentary the Beffa way.

~Lorredan

Lorredan wrote:absolute reluctance? Nah not me. I think the difference is that it is playing cards we are talking about. I do believe there is Christian content- but slanted towards what they are for- these are not illustrations in a missal or on a church wall. They are secular not sacred. PLaying cards would be blasphemous- if they showed a Christian narrative then were used to play a gambling game.
I will accept that in the mystery of the Ur Tarot and the 22 more or less images- that originally may have made up a sequence that became co- joined to 56 cards; they may have originally been sacred- but once they were a game- these 'perhaps' images became secular. Print houses would have been pillorised for their impudence (or worse), for printing card decks of sacred images. Of course there is a very strong influence of commonly accepted images- like The Papesse could have well have been Faith- but even today we do not see that in the card. They morphed

...oops great post Robert- but I had posted before I saw it.
The Italians were great at a particular sort of humour called Beffa. A famous one would be a painting of Lorenzo the Magnificent- who did some things considered by the people as tyrannical. He is painted as the Trickster. Everyone knew who the painting was depicting and it became a sort Renaissance joke in little cartoon like postcards. People are not very different today eh? Even the plays could be satirical on Saint John the Baptist's feastday. A little prod here and there. Not enough to be considered a heretic- or God forbid a witch. I see no difference in these cards- just pieces of Buffa.

Judgement card: Even though you gamble all your money, and have nothing for the Church, Saint Jerome says you can still be resurrected- and Victory will be yours. Even if you lost the game. That appears to be an Italian way of sly commentary the Beffa way.

~Lorredan

I don't know. They are what they are. They were used for playing a game, and they had Christian images on them. I don't see any way around that. I don't see any reason to assume that a "moral" and "religious" narrative would have been out of place in a 15th century game because that is what we have in front of us. What's the buffa of the Judgement card? Or Death? Or Temperance? Or the Traitor? I could find ways to view them that way, but I think the obvious allegories are the more appealing, without the need to have a secondary layer to them.

On the other hand, it might very well have been some discomfort with Christ depicted in the game that lead to the morphing into the Fortune figure on the later versions of the Tarot de Marseille World. In other words, exactly what Stevegus wrote that started this thread in the first place:

The World may have originally been based on the standard image of Christ Pantocrator, and underwent a sex change without changing the mandorla or sceptre of the composition

The most obvious "buffa" card would be the Popess, but a "Faith" or "2nd Pope" explanation works just as well for me to explain its presence in the deck. I might remain skeptical with some of the interpretations of the sequences suggested by some, and I don't think things are as obvious about tarot as some others do. I continue to be bothered by the choices of some of the cards because they don't fit so comfortably into my understanding of the Christian narrative. The Virtues? Check. Love, Death, Time, Judgement, Christ in Glory? Check. But some of the cards less so... the Hanged Man, The Hermit, especially the Magician. I can create a narrative that works with them if I want to, Christian or not, but I can't help but wonder if better choices couldn't have been chosen? Why not an "everyman", instead of a magician? Why not a structure closer to the Mantegna?

In this doubt, I think we are in closer agreement. That said, I do think that the Tarot de Marseille World portrays Christ resurrected, and I think that combined with the Judgement card they tell the Christian story as seen in hundreds of pieces of art from the period.

Yes we are closer than my posts indicate Robert.
The thing is, none of the cards are exactly this or that.
There is not a Papesse- even taking the Pregnant Pope Joan into consideration- the majority of the people did not read- no did they have access to those great handpainted cards.
Every card is a little off balance. Something not quite Christian about them. It is easy to see looking backwards- that is not quite a Chariot- but it looks like a triumph seri, the Wheel is not astrological or Christian in an obvious way, and could almost be a pun on a liturical wheel. Even the Pope is not quite a Pope. Everything is almost. It is this oblique view that causes the never ending study. Maybe it is a more obvious answer than the one we seek.
So why? Could the moral lesson inherent- be that of gambling? Not the study of death or a Resurrection narrative?
~Lorredan

Lorredan wrote: Every card is a little off balance. Something not quite Christian about them. It is easy to see looking backwards- that is not quite a Chariot- but it looks like a triumph seri, the Wheel is not astrological or Christian in an obvious way, and could almost be a pun on a liturical wheel. Even the Pope is not quite a Pope. Everything is almost. It is this oblique view that causes the never ending study. Maybe it is a more obvious answer than the one we seek.
So why?

This says exactly what keeps me interested in Tarot (and not in oracles)--the quality of being just off-balance, close but not there.

I am reading the history of the French multi-generational family of executioners, the Sansons. In the mid-1600's, it seems, execution was often the penalty for cheating at cards.