mikeh wrote:I didn't know the name Barzizzi. Thanks, Huck. I think that the dinner pieces were written in the 1430s and 1440s. I will look in the book's introduction the next time I'm at the library.
Barzizza with influence on Vittorino da Feltre (and his more advanced pedagogical model) is without doubt interesting.
Martiano da Tortona was also involved in a school project (I've only spurious information) and somehow he gave this to Pietro Lapini di Montalcino, an early astrologer of Filippo Maria Visconti. I wonder, how Barzizzi and Martiano might have interacted.
See the very interesting, more or less unsolved context:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=489
There are persons mentioned, who really worked on the Trionfi of Petrarca, on Petrarca and on Trionfi cards ... quite in contrast to persons, who only have a suspicion to have worked on one of the themes.
That Alberti was also involved, makes it more interesting. Angelo Decembrio with his elder brother Pier Candid is another interesting detail.
Barzizza worked for Pope Martin (during the council ?), who was chosen at the council. The he met Filippo Maria Visconti 1418. Pope Martin went straight away to Filippo Maria, so Barzizza likely accompanied him as part of the delegation. Poggio had found the Manilius manuscript (Roman astrology) during the council in a cloister library. Likely one can say, that the Manilius manuscript is part of the inspirations, which helped the Michelino deck to come to existence.
Pietro Lapini di Montalcino was also in Constance, as physician of John XXIII. From there he also found the way to Filippo Maria Visconti.
This is really a hotbed of interesting influences. One has to see, that Filippo Maria Visconti wasn't all the time apart from the public, as he was later. This "closed phase" is said to have started with the year 1421.
Huck, your "Parnassus" painting isn't Parnassus. Parnassus is in the right background. But the scene itself is on Mount Helicon, as Campbell points out in the Cabinet of Eros chapter on that painting. We know it's Helicon by Pegasus, who created the Hippocrene Spring with his hoof. Campbell says it's a painting designed to stimulate adulatory poems by Isabella's courtiers. They obliged with poems comparing her to Venus. Mars would then be her husband Francesco Gonzaga, as the courtiers' poems proclaimed, earning the comparison through having been the hero of the battle at the Taro River. Their union produces Harmonia, the harmony of the scene below them. I assume that the net-hurling Vulcan would be Mantegna himself, jealously "capturing" her for himself on canvas.
Wiki gives Parnassus as "common name", but explains ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parnassus_%28Mantegna%29
The traditional interpretation of the work is based on a late 15th century poem by Battista Fiera, which identified it as a representation of Mount Parnassus, culminating in the allegory of Isabella as Venus and Francesco II Gonzaga as Mars.
...
In a clearing under the arch is Apollo playing a zither. Nine Muses are dancing, in an allegory of universal harmony. According to ancient mythology, her chant could generate earthquakes and other catastrophes, symbolized by the crumbling mountains in the upper left. Such disasters could be cared by Pegasus' hoof: the horse indeed appears in the right foreground. The touch of his hoof could also generate the spring which fed the falls of Mount Helicon, which can be seen in the background. The Muses danced traditionally in wood of this mount, and thus the traditional naming of Mount Parnassus is wrong.
... .-) ... it's not mine Parnussus
...
The author, Nicholas Webb, complains of the difficulty of interpreting such a painting that has no program attached to it. He does a fair job of defending the view that Pallas represents prudence, I think. He is more cautious about "mother of the virtues." But the last sentence of the last paragraph on p. 69 is telling: "Two commonplaces of Renaissance moral philosophy were that prudence governs the other virtues and is itself subject to wisdom." That seems to me correct, and to lead to the conclusion that wisdom, i.e. sapientia, is probably the mother of the virtues in the painting.
hm ...
http://aworldofmyths.com/Greek_Gods/Metis.html
Metis is probably the equivalent to Roman Sapientia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metis_%28mythology%29
She was the first spouse of Zeus. Zeus swallowed her cause an oracle, that a son of Metis might be stronger than Zeus himself. Then he got a headache. Hephaistos helped and Athena jumped out, full in armor and with weapons.
The second wife was Themis (Justice), an aunt. She got 3 daughters ... (the other 3 virtues ?).
My private "Momus" about a conference of some unknown poets long ago, who discussed the question, how many children Zeus should have:
64 ... the half (32) daughters and the other half (also 32) sons. He should pair 16 times with goddesses, and 16 times with human mortal women. As the goddesses were a little more potent than the humans, they got 42 children and the humans got 22.
No. 64 (one as to count from above) Athena
No. 63-61: Three daughters of Themis
No. 60-51: 10 children of Rhea (5 daughters and 5 sons)
No. 50: from Leto: Artemis (it took 9 nights before Apollo was born)
No. 49-41: from Mnemosyne the 9 Muses (it took 9 nights)
No. 40 or Nr. 49: Apollo
.... (lost manuscript)
No. 1: Herakles
Herakles' birth had specific conflicts. For instance there was suddenly a motherless daughter Ate (which somehow means something like "NO" in contrast to to the "YES" of Zeus) and Eileithiya (goddess of child bed) also participated, and it also was wondered, how Eris could be called the twin sister of Ares.
And there were different political conflicts, upcoming new Greek cities also desired to have a local hero as "son of Zeus".
So, after all, we find more than 64 Zeus-children. Plans don't stay, what they are. So you have 78 Tarot cards, although (likely) once there had been versions with less.
So, joke aside, Metis was in the original the mother of Athena.
And Ate, the "NO", was thrown out of the Olymp. The question of "to be or not to be" was to difficult for the Olympic myth.
And true Prudentia is likely to be relaxed in the evaluation of mythological details ... :-) ...
The beginning of this article is also of interest, for someone interested in Alberti. It seems that there was another Momus, the other done in Mantua in the 1490s. It is not as interesting as Alberti's, Webb says. As for Alberti's, Webb says that Filelfo thought that Alberti was satirizing him in the character of Momus. Here is the relevant text:
Yes, that's indeed interesting. Filarete's text, however, is from much later than 1451.
I don't have data, when Filelfo was fully accepted by the Sforza court. I found this (from the English Momus edition)
http://books.google.de/books?id=2ZNcrOc ... us&f=false
Also this:
http://books.google.de/books?id=tjJ8VbF ... us&f=false
Filelfo was 18, when he left Padova, and Alberti was 12. And I wonder, how much relation between an 18-years-old and a 12-years-old really might have existed.
While I am mentioning odd things, I should add that I've been reading Alberti's Momus. After being kicked out of Olympus, he begets the goddess Fama, who wreaks havoc on earth. The sense of "Fama" here is equivalent to the English "Rumor", and that is how the translator translates it.
There's a similar take of Fama in Chaucer's text, where Fama has a relation to Aeolus. Aeolus (Fama ?)was then in the Michelino deck, followed by Daphne (Chastity ?) and Amor (Love) ... all Petrarca values. Hercules as "Time" (Hercules is an astronomer) is not impossible and above the 12 gods as "Eternity" seems also not totally impossible.
And one other thing: I recently read, in Lucrezia Borgia by Sarah Bradford, that Alfonso d'Este is shown clean-shaven on his wedding medallion. That suggests that he may have been clean-shaven in 1491, too, and so not the person on the Sola-Busca 2 of Coins. Have you seen that wedding medallion, or any portrait closer to 1491?
No, I haven't seen. But I see no reason to assume there problems for the Sola Busca identification. Actually a beard grows quickly.
when deciding how much trouseau one should gift etc. There is apparently heaps of information on the arithmetic out there which I would never understand anyway. Plato would have.
