Do you think the PMB Fool is carrying a club or a trumpet?

Club
Total votes: 5 (100%)
Trumpet (No votes)
Total votes: 5

Re: PMB Fool - club or trumpet?

21
Nobody else is engaging with your silly theory, Phaeded, so I'll take that as a signal that any further engagement on my part is a waste of time. I have nothing to gain from arguing that you are wrong, for various reasons, and the minute it took me to write this is the last you'll hear from me on it unless someone comes up to say something else.
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Re: PMB Fool - club or trumpet?

22
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

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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 Bushkins on PMB Fool and Strength cards.jpg Viewed 8546 times 12.52 KiB
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 Bushkin-clad Fool in Sola Busca and Bolognese decks.jpg Viewed 8546 times 23.46 KiB
Sola-Bolognese fools' bushkin details.jpg Sola-Bolognese fools' bushkin details.jpg Viewed 8545 times 9.32 KiB
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 Sola PMB Fools - detail of trumpets.jpg Viewed 8543 times 20.62 KiB
Phaeded