The decks of Noblet and Vieville are my favourites and sometimes I enter a comparative obsession for this reason, since encounter in them ¨beautifully disrespectful¨ iconographic details in comparison to the rest of the decks, is true ¨soul rebels¨ of the tarot…

With respect to my comparative one of the empress I would like to correct on an error I committed due to my idiomatic difficulty: when I wrote ¨The indications like already mentioned that they continues contributing MYSTICISM to him to these cards¨ I wanted to talk about to the MYSTERY and not to the MYSTICISM, I request excuses by this confused idiomatic error.

Saludos!

lamort wrote:I want to comment a curiosity that I found on the deck of Vieville, the one that humbly I consider its inverted order like deliberately and nonproduct of an inverted impression... The indications like already mentioned that they continue contributing mysticism to him to these cards; for example in The Empress, when comparing it with the one of Noblet, watch straight to the front and their shield and sceptre are inverted, but they observe the eagle of the shield, in both cases watches towards the same side:

And also I want to remark that the head of the eagle is pointing towards the right as in the cases of all the decks from Noblet to Conver as far as I know. Even the Imperatrice holds the sceptre with his right hand as I said before.

I've never considered the sceptre before, but the Empress holding it in her right hand does seem more natural to me than in her left. When I look at the Noblet and the Vieville, I'm left thinking that the Vieville looks more "natural", whatever that means. I suppose we could do some research to find out if either hand was more traditional for holding the sceptre? Some art of the period would also be interesting. Thanks for bringing this up. The fact that the eagle was "reversed" is also interesting indeed.

lamort wrote:another curiosity with respect to Vieville is its similarity as far as the direction with the rest of the historical ones in the XX:

So a card that was not reversed at all. Andy was mistaken when saying all but the Emperor were.

Thanks lamort!

SteveM wrote:

robert wrote: You can make up excuses about transparency as much as you'd like, but that's just not as simply an answer as "The Vieville is reversed".

But the figure is the same way as other figures of this type in other decks. In support of the possibility from another deck we have for example the ribbon on the D4 of the Tarot de Paris, here we see APARIS in reverse on the back of the ribbon, and PAR right way round from the front of the ribbon, so there is an example of inversion being purposely used to show the back of the ribbon.

Excellent point Steve, I may need to rethink my position.

lamort wrote:I do not consider that it is a monumental change, but a peculiar and mainly pertinent detail in this topic… Sometimes the small details hide great answers, and I do not only talk about the tarot.

Sure. In fact your examples are great to see how similar the images from all these decks are, and how characteristic is the style in which each engraver expressed the same iconography.

When it comes to our search for a logic behind the tarot’s design it seems to me that there are two lines of inquire running in parallel and often getting confused. One would be the inquire about the intention behind the whole design. Such ‘intention’ transcends and pre-dates our different engravers and seems to concern the trumps as a whole body of imagery. That is the intention that persists through an iconography that remains consistent along several decks and makes its exceptions very informative. The other line of inquire has to do with the alleged intention each engraver had when they printed their decks. We tend to believe such intention is expressed through minor details, omissions, changes and what could be defined as ‘mistakes’. Many times some ‘noise’ that is intrinsic to the printing process also gets thrown in the mix as part of a “buried but purposeful design”.

The theory of the “wise engraver” has become so prevalent that I wonder: can we really account for these engravers having a personal intention? Was the personal intention of these engravers in tune with the whole intention behind the tarot’s design? Was it against it? Did these engravers really cared about that?

I ask these questions with absolute curiosity.

These two lines of inquire: overall design vs. specific details decided by the engraver allude to two kinds of intentions that are not the same and I wonder if they are even transferable. In practice, the second line of inquire runs against the first one, in that it is often suggested by those who search for the “truth in the detail” that the engravers had a counter-cultural intention. My point here is that focusing on details, mistakes and omissions may not be conductive to any understanding of the overall ‘intention’ or ‘meaning’ behind the tarot, this is, to make sense of it. I would also submit that such inquire rather confuses than clarifies. We can ride a horse for our entire life and that won’t prepare us to drive a car. We can agonize over how many eyelashes Lestoille has in her several depictions, but it is very unlikely that this will tell us why is she in the deck. How much do we need to know about Titian to understand the Virgin Mary?

If we take Jacques de Gheyn the Elder’s Vanitas Still Life and Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God we will find a very early and a very late depiction of the same idea. Should be analyze the use of a skull to represent the immanence of death or should we focus instead in the fact that Hirst paid for the skull from his own pocket, or that at the end he chose to use the skulls original teeth rather than the titanium ones he had made?

Unless, we are just comparing styles. That is why my question was: what line of inquire are we following here by asking ourselves if this deck is reversed? Are we attempting to embrace and enjoy all the mutations the tarot suffered in a very brief period of time, so our understanding of it, at a formal level, is more rounded? Are we attempting to arrive at conclusions in regard of the tarot meaning based on the specific decisions each engraver made?


Best,


EE

lamort wrote:

EnriqueEnriquez wrote:Comparing both The Empress in the Noblet and the Vieville, I wonder: what does really changes in the iconography? It is really there a monumental change that will explain... what?

I do not consider that it is a monumental change, but a peculiar and mainly pertinent detail in this topic… Sometimes the small details hide great answers, and I do not only talk about the tarot.

I agree. I was bothered for years by the Cary Sheet Magician and his "backpack". It took another's eyes and imagination for the backpack to become a monkey, and for a whole new set of iconographic images of the bateleur and the monkey to become known to me. Now I have him as a major part of my concept of the Bateleur.

Thank you very much "Krishnamurti" ,your questions leave us in a poverty hard to support ahead...
It seems that anybody before asked the same questions...
See you...

:?

robert wrote: It took another's eyes and imagination for the backpack to become a monkey, and for a whole new set of iconographic images of the bateleur and the monkey to become known to me. Now I have him as a major part of my concept of the Bateleur.

Robert,

Do you know about the Gadawan Kura?

You may like these bateleurs...


EE

In discussing the mirroring image of a deck or not, it is not simply wondering about the inevitable careless errors of engravers that we are considering, but whether or not the right-left may be important.

The holding of the sceptre, of the shield, of the sword (and other implements), as well as heraldic emblems, each have their contribution to make to the overall discussion.

Do these add to the possibility that many of the images from the Vieville are 'reversed' in relation to the image originally drawn? I personally suspect that this is indeed the case, as it is also, incidentally, for many other cards in other decks.

In particular and apt given the current discussion about the card focused on, is indeed the Empress - though I consider in this case the Vieville more true-to-original likely intent, for iconographic considerations already mentioned in my previous post... and in this case, it may be a mirror-image of an already inverted model from an earlier woodcut!

jmd wrote:Do these add to the possibility that many of the images from the Vieville are 'reversed' in relation to the image originally drawn? I personally suspect that this is indeed the case, as it is also, incidentally, for many other cards in other decks.

Sorry Jean-Michel but your meaning is not clear to me. Are you suggesting that these cards were reversed following a heraldic-like intention or that the images in many decks were reversed as part of the dynamic of the printing process?

Thanks,

EE

Well given an engraving mould there is not another possibility to have a positive printing.
So the reversal if it s exists is given by the mould,the mommy gives us the child.