Re: The Magician
Posted: 14 Apr 2010, 00:11
Thanks for your critique, Debra. I will try to explain better. In the Noblet, Conver, and Vieville, the back right leg (from our perspective) of this four-legged table is mostly obscured by the Bateleur's leg. They are the same color (not a different color), so it gives the table the appearance of instability. If you have a three-legged table where the legs are below three of the vertices of a rectangle, the result is very unstable. It doesn't look like the kind of three-legged table that would be stable, where the legs are under the vertices of an equilateral triangle. Since I used Flornoy's "restoration" of the card instead of the actual card in the Bibliotheque Nationale, I should probably post the original (from http://www.tarot-history.com/Jean-Noble ... eleur.html).
If you look carefully at the Bateleur's leg (the one on our right), you will see that the direction of the line (on the right) of the legging-material suddenly changes its angle just before we get to the table top. That's might be part of the table leg. In the Conver and Vieville, we don't see any change of angle at all, just a very straight pants-leg. But in all these cases the Bateleur's leg is in front of where the table-leg would be, obstructing our view. We are being played with.
Here is an example of the difference between a four-legged and a three-legged table. I have stuck together parts of two engravings of Mercury and his children, from Florence of 1460-1464. The one on the left is the earlier, looking darker because of the book I got it from, Lambert's Les Premieres Gravures Italiennes, 1998. The other is another version, slightly later (but still before 1465), with the images reversed and slightly changed. I took it from Hind's Early Italian Engravings, 1938. The Bateleur's table corresponds to the one on our left.
It is images like these that lead me to wonder if the "Bateleur with a four-legged table that looks like three" might be a very old image, seen in the popular trionfi of 1460s Florence, perhaps different from that seen in the elite decks of that time (although we have no image of the Bagatto that I know of from 1460's Florence).
If you look carefully at the Bateleur's leg (the one on our right), you will see that the direction of the line (on the right) of the legging-material suddenly changes its angle just before we get to the table top. That's might be part of the table leg. In the Conver and Vieville, we don't see any change of angle at all, just a very straight pants-leg. But in all these cases the Bateleur's leg is in front of where the table-leg would be, obstructing our view. We are being played with.
Here is an example of the difference between a four-legged and a three-legged table. I have stuck together parts of two engravings of Mercury and his children, from Florence of 1460-1464. The one on the left is the earlier, looking darker because of the book I got it from, Lambert's Les Premieres Gravures Italiennes, 1998. The other is another version, slightly later (but still before 1465), with the images reversed and slightly changed. I took it from Hind's Early Italian Engravings, 1938. The Bateleur's table corresponds to the one on our left.
It is images like these that lead me to wonder if the "Bateleur with a four-legged table that looks like three" might be a very old image, seen in the popular trionfi of 1460s Florence, perhaps different from that seen in the elite decks of that time (although we have no image of the Bagatto that I know of from 1460's Florence).