Re: Where *Is* This card?
Posted: 08 Feb 2010, 21:24
Ross wrote
In the "Steele Sermon," the Tower is called the Arrow, which fits your suggested cognate imagery. But perhaps the card interprets non-consecutive verses of Revelation: in the BAR, the two gentlemen losing their balance do not look like devils; nor have I seen a lake of fire and brimstone in any version of the card. In some versions, the devil stays in the burning tower while the person or persons flee.
I notice that people are not using the option of discussing the iconography of specific trumps in "Bianca's Garden." That's OK, but the same issue gets discussed in different threads at nearly the same time. I argue (following Vitali) at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=404&start=10#p5795 that Jesus as King of Heaven, Mary as Queen of Heaven (both crowned in the Bembo altarpiece), and Minerva were all personifications of the same concept of Sapienta, the Wisdom of God. Probably Plato's Aphrodite Urania (in the Symposium, from which Durer's Urania might be derivative, http://www.flickr.com/photos/zeevveez/2900531631/) would fit there, and his World-Soul (Timaeus). By the Marseille II, there is also the Orphics' Phanes (http://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Phanes.html, older than most other World-style images), with the Marseille II sash replacing the serpent. In that sense, the "original" image--actually, images--re-used, in whole or part, by various pre-19th century cardmakers at various times were both male and female, and both pagan and Christian. As far as the "original" card, well, no one knows, as I think Ross pointed out; but the earliest designs known or projected had adult females (CY, d'Este, Charles VI, Rosenwald), putti (PMB), and one adult male (Beaux Arts-Rothschild), all relatively pagan-looking.
Well, maybe not, but Marco relates the Tower card to the Inferno at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=399#p4969. And at http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.ph ... 931&page=4, I say how I think the Star card relates to Purgatorio XXVIII, 121ff, and XXXI, 100ff, the parts about the lady Mathilda and her two streams.from which Dante must drink to enter Paradise. This is not to exclude other associations. Perhaps we are dealing with a polysemous image, and the Tower of Babel, the Commedia imagery, etc. are to be interpreted apocalyptically.So if we are looking for narrative cognates, it seems like we have Dante or the Apocalypse to compare with. Dante seems far-fetched, since there is nothing else in the sequence to suggest it is related to the Commedia.
In the "Steele Sermon," the Tower is called the Arrow, which fits your suggested cognate imagery. But perhaps the card interprets non-consecutive verses of Revelation: in the BAR, the two gentlemen losing their balance do not look like devils; nor have I seen a lake of fire and brimstone in any version of the card. In some versions, the devil stays in the burning tower while the person or persons flee.
I notice that people are not using the option of discussing the iconography of specific trumps in "Bianca's Garden." That's OK, but the same issue gets discussed in different threads at nearly the same time. I argue (following Vitali) at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=404&start=10#p5795 that Jesus as King of Heaven, Mary as Queen of Heaven (both crowned in the Bembo altarpiece), and Minerva were all personifications of the same concept of Sapienta, the Wisdom of God. Probably Plato's Aphrodite Urania (in the Symposium, from which Durer's Urania might be derivative, http://www.flickr.com/photos/zeevveez/2900531631/) would fit there, and his World-Soul (Timaeus). By the Marseille II, there is also the Orphics' Phanes (http://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Phanes.html, older than most other World-style images), with the Marseille II sash replacing the serpent. In that sense, the "original" image--actually, images--re-used, in whole or part, by various pre-19th century cardmakers at various times were both male and female, and both pagan and Christian. As far as the "original" card, well, no one knows, as I think Ross pointed out; but the earliest designs known or projected had adult females (CY, d'Este, Charles VI, Rosenwald), putti (PMB), and one adult male (Beaux Arts-Rothschild), all relatively pagan-looking.