For those who would indulge me in a bit more silliness…an overlooked but telling attribute of the Fool: its bushkins.
If the PMB Fool was not modified from its Psalmist God-denying Fool source, then was it the Bolognese who transformed this character into military band figure, complete with bushkins?
And yet the PMB already had this militaristic attribute - bushkins (Greek
kothornos or Latin
cothurnos - something a humanist such as Filelfo would have been familiar with).
A buskin is a knee- or calf-length boot made of leather or
cloth which laces closed, but is open across the toes. It was worn by Athenian tragic actors, hunters and
soldiers in Ancient Greek, Etruscan, and Roman societies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buskin
I often wondered why the PMB Fool inexplicably wore bushkins when none of the source images from the Visconti
Tacuinum Sanitatis, the God-denying Fools from Psalms nor Giotto's fool do. The incontrovertible proof, however, that the Fool has indeed been modified from a mere idiotic rural peasant into an idiotic militaristic figure (to my mind: an allegory for the sedition of the
popolo or mob, freshly experienced under the Ambrosian Republic) is that
the classically dressed imperator figure in the PMB Strength card also wears bushkins:
Bushkins on PMB Fool and Strength cards.jpg
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Not that additional proof is needed after the internal evidence of the PMB, but note that later iterations of the Fool in the Sola Busca (not standard tarot trumps but a kindred card production) and the Bolognese decks that retain the buskins, thus the Fool as solider outfitted with various musical instruments:
Bushkin-clad Fool in Sola Busca and Bolognese decks.jpg
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Sola-Bolognese fools' bushkin details.jpg
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Finally, the upward trumpet-like pipe from the bagpipe held by the Sola Busca Fool extends at the same angle up into the frame of the card, exactly like on the PMB Fool, as if the latter were the model (again, the essential information here is that these Fools carried musical instruments - not clubs):
Sola PMB Fools - detail of trumpets.jpg
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Phaeded