Re: The Marriage Contract

11
We cross posted Huck.
The point I was making is that it is not actually an Emperor/Empress at all. I must admit I see a strong resemblance to Sigismondo in the PMB. In my story I need a reason for a sponsor for the idea of a Civil contract based on Virtue- do you think Sigismondo fits with his Empress wife in that scheme?
and yes I see the connection with 16 points and a compass.
~Lorredan
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

Re: The Marriage Contract

12
Lorredan wrote:Now the 6 cards that were by a different hand in th PMB Visconti
are Force/Temperance/Star/Moon/Star and Mondo(World)
As I maintain that Justice is the balance that need to be applied for there to be a Just Contract- that leaves Temperance or Moderation and that seems to be included in all sequences- I take it that there was a not suitable Temperance in the first 14 cards. As Force seems to be a deviation from the usual image of that Virtue I presume that was changed also, to reflect Sforza. So The Visconti does not seem able to be a 14 Trump deck to start with.
It seems to be a 16 Trump deck and it would seem that the Cary Yale had 16 Suit cards- maybe it was a 5x16 deck as was the PBM originally?
Anyways, if that is the case all that seems different is that the Cary Yale had Faith/Hope and Charity and then the Visconti PBM had Star/Moon and Sun.
Then you have an image of Prudence holding a mirror with a compass in her Hand in the Book of Hours
So that Monde is the reflection of Prudence's mirror and the Star/Moon and Sun are the body of Prudence?
There is Prudentia in the Heavens?
So was Faith/Hope and Charity removed/not used/reconfigured with the Star/Moon and Sun? Looks like it to me
I do not know about those missing or not there cards of the Devil and the Tower. I believe it is "not there"
Now I need to explain whom I think is the forth parentado of the Contract- the card we call the Pope.
~Lorredan
The 5x14-theory assume, that the PBM-card World was Prudence. This seem also to be true for 16-special-cards Charles VI: World = Prudence (here the card World has an octagonal halo as the three other cardinal virtues). And it is assumed, that the Cary-Yale had 16 special cards (in a 5x16-deck), and that 4 of them were cardinal virtues.

It is not assumed, that the 14 Bembo cards inside the PMB belonged to a 5x16-deck. It's considered as a 5x14-deck. The later addition was perceived as 3 cardinal virtues (one, Justice, was already part of the 14 earlier trumps) plus 3 astrological symbols Sun-Moon-Star.

"Hiding the Prudentia" seems to have been already a "game" inside the structure of the "Decamerone" (Boccaccio a century earlier) ... so it wasn't new.
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=163397
This is very complicated ... :-), but nonetheless true, I think.

In the course of this development Prudentia became the most variable virtue, that's generally accepted. There are even figure with 3 heads, I've read.
So was Faith/Hope and Charity removed/not used/reconfigured with the Star/Moon and Sun?
Yes, his is assumed as an essential part of the change from Chess Tarot Cary-Yale to Chess Tarot Charles VI (though the star wasn't part of this change; the 3rd replacing element is considered to have been the Fool):
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=788

This is assumed (inside the Chess Tarot theory) to have happened around 1463 in Florence. A little later the Medici chapel with 3 Holy Magi was finished and celebrated. Then it seems to have developed an idea with Sun-Moon-Star replacing the three cardinal virtues (also in Florence). Also in Florence the Minchiate developed. Then 3 cardinal virtues were grouped as trumps 6-8 and Prudentia with 3 theological virtues were grouped as trumps 16-19. The 3 "replacements" sun-moon-star were used also at trumps 36-38.

06-08
16-... 19
36-38

Well, a sort of system. Interestingly the "confusing" Prudentia is not given as 16 (at begin of the row) or at 19 (at end of the row), but at 17.

In matters of the Minchiate recently the article of Franco Pratesi ...
http://trionfi.com/rosenwald-tarocchi-sheet
... brought up the "new" dimension, that the Rosenwald Tarocchi might have been a fragment of a 96-cards-Minchiate (not 97) deck and as this possibly very early, perhaps also in the period 1464/65.
That's naturally rather insecure, but it opens a lot of other perhaps necessary models of the development.

This early Minchiate - if it existed in the form as suggested - would have had a Devil and a Tower ... Cary-Yale and 5x14-Bembo cards hadn't a devil and Tower and also PMB (20 trumps) is assumed to have had none. The Charles Vi (Chess Tarot) had a Tower (the Rook in Chess). This early Minchiate (a very cheap deck and so for the cheap market) had a devil. Karnöffel already knew the devil as a card or a figure before, it might well be, that the early Minchiate merged different Trionfi decks to one new big game ... with lots of trumps, and between them also a devil, to satisfy or attract those, who played with such cards.
Last edited by Huck on 25 May 2012, 09:29, edited 1 time in total.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: The Marriage Contract

13
Thank you Huck. I have stared at these cards for so long I can no longer see the wood for the trees........
Perhaps I could explain better what I mean without deviating much from my Story of a contract.
You have a set of cards that like the Cary Yale that included Faith Hope and Charity.
In that set you had Temperance, Strength, and World- That is 20 Cards.
For the expansion The image of Temperance looked like the Star -you know the Aquarius type figure or an indeterminate Lady Virtue card like the Cary-Yale Faith Hope and Charity.
The World card needed to reflect Milan not some other place.
The Strength card could be made to look like Sforza.
So they remove Temperance which looks like a star and repaint it in the style of Star/Moon/Sun which used to be formally Faith Hope and Charity. So now you have clear Virtues. Justice was OK. and you have an image now that is clearly Temperance and a signal in style that the Star/Moon and Sun cards are Virtues. I perfectly accept that later rather than earlier the World is in that convoluted "Lets hide Prudence". In the Visconti Family Prudence seems to have been missing as a direct depiction of Prudence.
I had to laugh at the possibility that the Devil was only in the mind of those cheap editiions of playing cards we mere mortals are so superstitious down at the Tavern.
There is this wonderful painting of Saint Augustine meeting the Devil which brings me to the last Parentado of the Contract....which we call the Pope- Saint Augustine.


~Lorredan
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

Re: The Marriage Contract

14
Lorredan wrote:Thank you Huck. I have stared at these cards for so long I can no longer see the wood for the trees........
Perhaps I could explain better what I mean without deviating much from my Story of a contract.
You have a set of cards that like the Cary Yale that included Faith Hope and Charity.
In that set you had Temperance, Strength, and World- That is 20 Cards.
For the expansion The image of Temperance looked like the Star -you know the Aquarius type figure or an indeterminate Lady Virtue card like the Cary-Yale Faith Hope and Charity.
The World card needed to reflect Milan not some other place.
The Strength card could be made to look like Sforza.
So they remove Temperance which looks like a star and repaint it in the style of Star/Moon/Sun which used to be formally Faith Hope and Charity. So now you have clear Virtues. Justice was OK. and you have an image now that is clearly Temperance and a signal in style that the Star/Moon and Sun cards are Virtues. I perfectly accept that later rather than earlier the World is in that convoluted "Lets hide Prudence". In the Visconti Family Prudence seems to have been missing as a direct depiction of Prudence.
I had to laugh at the possibility that the Devil was only in the mind of those cheap editiions of playing cards we mere mortals are so superstitious down at the Tavern.
There is this wonderful painting of Saint Augustine meeting the Devil which brings me to the last Parentado of the Contract....which we call the Pope- Saint Augustine.

~Lorredan
I don't mind the connection between Trionfi cards and wedding or marriage or (even) marriage contracts. One of the customs, which developed parallel with the Trionfi cards, were the Cassoni with Petrarca motifs. And these were typical objects for wedding marriages. Cards seem to have played also a role in the love rituals, there is clear evidence, that Bianca Maria Sforza brought playing cards to her wedding with Maximilian and these cards were discussed in the evening of the wedding (I've seen a clear description of it in a serious German book in a time, when I was not collecting such things, so I don't know, where this book is).
The function is relative clear ... girls were married to husbands, which they possibly never had seen in life. So there were "rituals" to break the ice at the wedding and playing cards made with personal character for the bride were objects, which could be shown ... and to have some talking and smile about it and getting some wedding mood. Actually leaving virginity is a difficult act. The young girl had to be relaxed ... and the reported custom, that the wedding was done publicly (even if it wasn't done always) might have been reason enough to be nervous or a little hysterical.
The new data, that we have from Florence, confirms, that in the 1440s Trionfi cards were rare. In the 1450s we've a larger public, but still its only for persons with some money.. Around 1463/64 we've signs of "real mass production" ,... which doesn't exclude, that very expensive personal Trionfi cards still were produced.

The festival book of 1475 (Camilla Aragon married Costanzo Sforza) was very "personal" (but had similarity to Trionfi cards), and generally real great Trionfi actions always had individuality ... there was no "standard". Standards developed from the "cheap market" and from the practical playing tables and from the woodcut producers.
I had to laugh at the possibility that the Devil was only in the mind of those cheap editiions of playing cards we mere mortals are so superstitious down at the Tavern.
Well, would you invite the devil to your wedding ... :-) ... likely not. But the devil was a playing card factor with the invention Karnöffel, at least in the version, which Mysner described c. 1450.

We have also wedding/marriage with games connections in relations to the chess game.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: The Marriage Contract

15
It's fun to look at the cards this way. Lorredan, you are a unicorn hunter of the highest order.

It's a stretch to call Plato's Republic a social contract. (A long stretch.) The idea of a social contract--freely entered into by people who are in essence both rational and equal--emerges in the mid 1600's, with Thomas Hobbes's The Leviathan.

I am fixated on the holes in the tops of the cards. Here they are, such beauties, and someone poked holes in them to...nail them to the wall?

Re: The Marriage Contract

18
Ah this Unicorn has real possibilities for this Visconti Jewel.
When you read that I attributed The Hanged Man as Premortem - The Dowry, I am betting you readers of my story said "What??????" a fantasy it must be this Marriage Contract in cards. This woman is mad. LaLa Land. Well bear with me.
I have in my possession a ceramic wedding bowl that I bought in the Town of Gubbio. It must have been for little people as this marriage bowl - it is small. It has on it a shoe with a rope tied around it in a very pretty design and the word "Tros" which is means a Bundle. I took that to mean a marriage- you are hogtied LOL. I was not so far wrong as things turned out.
I decided to look at it with new eyes when I was deciding whether to write anything about this subject, because I was wary of been seen as nuts.
The English word for Trousseau/Dowry is the Italian word Dote.
Trousseau is from the French word Trousse that comes from the Latin word Torquere from which we also get Truss which is a collection of things bundled together and also a framework or scaffold and the way poultry are tied by the legs.
Torquere meant to turn, twist and hurl And formed the french word Trousse and formed the word we use today called Trousseau.
No wonder those guys looked quite calm on their Truss and some even had money pouring out of a purse.
It is a trousseau. It is a PreMortum -a depiction of money before death.
If you look at this wedding Bowl - it was a gift to the Medieval Man from his wife and the size was commensurate with the wealth of the groom's brideprice.
Now did not Sforza make a contract with the people of Milan- He would be their Lord and they would work together to make this a City State of greatness?
What is Death but postmortum -ones inheritance after Death if you have lived well-Heaven
~Lorredan
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

Re: The Marriage Contract

19
I am fixated on the holes in the tops of the cards. Here they are, such beauties, and someone poked holes in them to...nail them to the wall?
Oh Debra I have to agree with you. I have another possibility for the holes. In what we call Italy today, scrapbooking was a real passion for Italians 1400-1600. They paid good money for printed pictures, which they painted and embellished, they collected 'Holy Pictures' and secular ones. Books were beyond most peoples pocket. On the feast of Saint John the Baptist it was a custom to give these cards/pictures as gifts to family and friends. They would take the holy ones to Church and display them- in fact it got so bad at some stage that the Church got a little peeved with the damage to the pews- they discouraged the practice. I think we have this idea about the innocence of medieval people. They loved the purient as well, and some books or pictures of a sexual nature were very common. I reckon if they had have had fridge magnets we would be very surprised at what would be on their fridge.
So I reckon, they could not frame these little works of art so they had to hang them somehow.
~Lorredan
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts