The most important fact being lost here is the
appropriation of Florence's Magi tradition by the Medici; the red ostrich feather on the
hanged man is a relatively minor point and merely another data point pointing towards the
CVI deck as Florentine/Medicean. Pivotal to identifying themsleves with the Magi was Cosimo’s undertaking of rebuilding San Marco, the church and convent where the feast of the Epiphany procession ended up as that is where the Christ child's manger was kept and where the Magi would place their gifts. The Epiphany procession was also a key time of the year in which Florence received foreign dignitaries. By eventually controlling this procession the Medici placed themselves in a position to feature themsleves in regard to the city’s relations with foreign powers
The festival of the Magi became closely associated with the Medici soon after Cosimo’s return [after 1434]. On the feast of the Epiphany the great man took part in the Magi’s journey, wearing a gold gown one year, walking in rich fur in another (R. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 1980: 423)
Plus:
The aristocratic ethos of this period of Florentine history had as one of its main cultural artefacts the spectacular processions of the Three Kings, which were staged by a Company of the Magi from 1390 until 1469. This festive period roughly corresponds to that in which foreign rulers were most welcome in the city, the reception of real kings as against play Magi beginning with the entry of Pope Martin V in 1419. Rab Hatfield’s view that “the sensibility of Florentine’s in matters of pageantry was changing” around 1470 may be compared to the reception of real princes: By the 1480s the city welcomed fewer foreign dignitaries, and put more and more effort into receiving the Medici.” (Trexler, 1980: 298)
See also Trexler’s
The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in History of a Christian Story, where he refers to the Magi as a ‘legitimizing icon’ as appropriated by the Medici (1987: 90).
Back to the red ostrich feather on the
CVI hanged man – I do believe its primary meaning is an antitype to Charity, particularly as associated with the Church/Papacy. But the red ostrich feather was previously featured in the Strozzi altarpiece of the magi that in fact served in many respects as a model for Gozzoli. To quote myself from a post from some months back:
In fact the Stozzi altarpiece was directly "quoted" in Gozzoli's famous painting of the Magi for Cosimo in his new palace in 1459: one of the kneeling Magi's feathered headress is exactly reproduced but with the Medici colors of green/red/white instead of the Strozzi red/gold:
http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/201 ... three.html [original thread:
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Stozzi altarpiece magi headdress and that in the Medici chapel by Gozzoli:
Stozzi, as a one-time rival to the Medici for both control of the “legitimating icon” of the Magi and power in general, are explicitly mapped over here but in an almost bizarre merging of papal/church symbols (however secular as derived from Dante) with the Medici themselves. The Strozzi had placed their family colors on the Magi but there does not seem to be any evidence that the Medici ever used the theological colors (see the old Sacristy for instance) until 1449 on Piero’s birth tray for Lorenzo’s birth (ten years before the Gozzoli painting). The Medici in effect belatedly assumed the colors of the Magi as their own and so could defensively be said to not be painting over Strozzi’s family colors so much as restoring the magi’s true colors (which are now theirs as well). Strozzi was of course banished in 1434 with the Albizzi and, with guilt by association with the Albizzi party, essentially banned for life after Anghiari in 1440 (Palla Strozzi died in exile in Padua). The traitorous acts of 1440, the Albizzi aligning with Visconti to invade the Florentine
contado, speaks specifically to proper - or in this case, improper - acts of foreign relations. Thus the red ostrich as tainted as traitorous (out of its theological colors context) in its use by an enemy of the Medici in a Magi setting.
In regard to the
CVI, as an anti-Sixtus IV deck in my view, in 1478 the Papacy itself turned into a foreign power to be shunned when it viciously turned on it’s former ally of Florence, which previously had given refuge to Pope Eugene and the Council celebrated on the doors of St. Peter’s.
Phaeded