Phaeded had some interesting questions about Temperance in relation to Saturn. I have some comments, first a short one and then a longer one. If what I say withstands criticism, I will post a link on the Temperance thread.
Phaeded wrote,
I was thinking of a possible later conflation of Temperance/Saturn imagery (more on that below), but one can connect Temperance and Saturn at an early date via Dante’s Paradiso (they represent the same sphere). The question is: was Temperance represented as diluting wine with water with two jugs at a date prior to Mike’s Saturn image with a jug in the 14th century? Very speculative here (need the full context of Mike’s image) but Aquarius seems to be a negative aspect (upside down) with Saturn looking away from that constellation’s upturned jug. Saturn is usually considered malefic so perhaps the opposite of Temperance here – not diluting the wine (his jug) with water?
The context of the Saturn image isn't much. Just a series of illustrations of the planets, of which Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter exist, perhaps the others weren't made, as Mars is unfinished. (I thought it was the Sun at first, as there are rays behind him; but Dorez says Jupiter, and indeed he's with Pisces and Sagittarius.) Probably they are from the same workshop as the Bartolomeo "Virtues and Liberal Arts" series, Bologna, then transferred to Milan after Bruzio Visconti, who commissioned it, was exiled.
Looking in Katzenellenbogen,
Allegories of the virtues and vices in mediaeval art, I see that most of the depictions of Temperance showed her with two vessels, sometimes mixing them. Mixing water with wine is mentioned specifically on p. 45, in relation to the depictions of the virtues on "the Eilbertus Altar from the Guelph Treasure, circa 1150-1160"; also p. 49, from the Meuse School, circa 1160-1170. On that one, there is the inscription, "Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulei", from Horace, he says. There is nothing about Temperance with an hourglass. That must have come later, perhaps localized in Italy. The book mainly draws on Northern European images, from the 9th through 13th centuries.
I see no significance to Aquarius's being upside-down. After all, the other one is sideways. It just fits there. Also, that's where the context in the manuscript might be relevant, which I didn't give. For Jupiter, one of the fishes of Pisces is in back of the figure, the other on his right; and Sagittarius is on his left. All are sideways. For Mars, no zodiac signs appear to have been drawn, as far as I can make out.
Also, from the description, it would appear that Saturn is not being portrayed negatively. He is portrayed as a god of agriculture, hence beneficial.
Phaeded wrote, very interestingly, I think,
The conflation of Temperance/Saturn attributes I hinted at above is in regard to the Temperance(?) card from the AS deck. The naked person atop the deer appears to be pouring the liquid out onto his own genitals – presumably inhibiting the sexual desire, just as the effects of wine are diluted when mixed with water. By this date Time/Saturn was shown with an hourglass, its two chambers pouring into one another resembling that of the two jugs pouring into one another by Temperance (and again, Dante explicitly links them). But to my primary point: why Temperance on a deer? As we know from the Florentine cassoni, that animal is Saturn’s – thus the conflation (or rather loaned attribute). I can see no other explanation for a deer with Temperance.
Well, let's see:
Someone has taken pains to rub out whatever was there. From the whitish spots, it looks to me like a female-genitalia-looking cup being poured onto a male-genitalia-looking torch. I get "torch" from data in Katzenellenbogen. Talking about the 9th century ms. with the four cardinal virtues that I referred to and Huck found a colored picture of, he says (p. 55):
Temperance holds a torch and pours out a jug full of water, for, as Julianus Pomerius says: "Ignem libidinosse voluptatis extinguit". Footnote: De vita contemplativa lib. III, cap. 19 (Migne P. L. 59, 502)
I could not find Migne listed in his bibliography, to decipher the "P. L." But here is Ross's enlargement of that Temperance, somewhat reduced:
Katzenellenbogen adds that
Temperantia's attributes were exchanged, in the course of the 11th century, for a cup and bottle. Mixing water with wine, the virtue reduces the over-potent drink to one of moderate strength (Figs. 33, 34).
Fig. 33 is a "Rhenish Lectionary, c. 1130" (
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hGMv1LYaD8k/U ... /Fig33.JPG). Here are its Temperance and Justice:
Fig. 34 is French, early 11th century. Here is the Temperance from his Fig. 34:
Here are both 34 and 35, whole illuminations:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZtTONtCGrpM/U ... 252635.JPG. I did not see anything of interest in 35, but it was on the same page.
Unfortunately Katzenellenbogen does not give other illustrations of the cardinal virtues. On the cards, of course, we usually have two similar vessels, not dissimilar as in his examples (an exception is the Catelin-Geoffroy).
Katzenellenbogen continues (p. 56)
Temperantia bears a spray of blossom as well as her usual vessels.
He cites examples from the 12th century.
However even in the latter part of the 13th century Temperance was shown with torch and vessel. His example is Arundel ms. 83 II, British Museum, in Trees of the Virtues and Vices. He says (p. 72) "cf. Saunders [O. Elfrida Saunders,
English Illumination I, Florence-Paris 1928], pl. 105 and p. 103". I went to the library yesterday and looked up this reference. All it had was the Tree of the Vices; but it said that this ms. was also called the De Lisle Psalter. I found a book on this ms,
The Psalter of Robert de Lisle in the British Library, by Lucy Freeman Sandler, and scanned the relevant image. Below, the part with Temperance is on the right.
The whole illumination is at
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-c5EjM4lUmaA/U ... irtues.JPG.
Of the attributes, Sandler says:
Prudence holds a dove and a serpent at arms' length; Justice holds a palm branch (whip?) and scale; Fortitude, a sword and shield with a heraldic lion; Temperance, a chalice-like bowl (of water?) and a cornucopia of fire.
I would say a torch, following Katzenellenbogen's designation. And for Prudence, winged serpent. A similar image occurs at the bottom right of another illumination in the same book (by a different artist, not quite as good), this one of a "tower of wisdom," another diagram of virtues:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-URo3y37vpH0/U ... 3Tower.JPG. Same attributes, except that the lion on the shield is exchanged for a red cross on white ground. Both illuminations are part of a "speculum theologiae" series of 13 or 14 such diagrams that were extremely popular. Most do not illustrate the virtues with persons, just columns with words on them. I will have a post with more details about them on the "theological virtues" thread.
This Psalter is English, with a note written in it saying,
I Robert de Lyle give this book on this day [November 25] in the year of our Lord 1339 to my daughter Audere with my blessing. ... Written in my hand.
However it was done "in the years soon after 1308", Freeman says, based on the theological diagrams in it (including the Tree of Virtue) worked out in France that did not start appearing in manuscripts until the "first years of the fourteenth century" (p. 17)
Then there is the question of the deer. Deer as such are not listed in Katzenellenbogen. But he does have something on a stag:
Constantia with two windows in her breast (mirror of faith) and a leaping stag (heavenly longing) above them
It is in an illumination of Christ surrounded by five virtues, in a manuscript of Hildegard of Bingen's
Liber Scivias, c. 1175. It illustrates her first vision. But did Hildegard have conventional visions or idiosyncratic ones?
Looking in other books, I see that a stag meant "longing for God" in the
St. Albans Psalter. This work is 13th century. per
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/stalbanspsalter/english/. One image and explanation is at
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/stalbanspsalter/e ... e154.shtml. Another image, from a different copy, is reproduced in Kristine Haney
The St. Albans Psalter: an Anglo-Norman song of faith, p. 428. Since I can reproduce it here (unlike the other) I will focus on it, even though the one online is more beautiful.
The second verse is what is being illustrated:
As the hart panteth after the fountains of water, so my soul panteth after thee, O God.
However in the illustration it appears that the stag is consuming a serpent rather than water. Haney says (p. 493):
The visual theme here is the longing of the petitioner for God, expressed in v. 2. Here are two further themes not clearly addressed in the psalm itself. Goldschmidt (292) points out that there is a reference to the Physiologus, which describes the stag killing the serpent in order not to die but to obtain fresh water. The other is Christ's direct involvement with the psalmist. While the psalmist cries out to Christ in psalm 41, it would appear that the trust in God expressed in v. 2 is symbolized by the stag overcoming the serpent which symbolizes the soteriological power of Christ.
The online commentary points out what might be the best explanation:
The stag devours a serpent and no fountains are illustrated. This is because the illustration is allegorical. St. Augustine wrote that when the stag ate the serpent (evil) it developed a great thirst and came to drink the pure waters of baptism. (PL, St. Augustine, xxxvi, 465).
Haney notes (pp. 493f) that the same theme of the stag for this psalm is in the Utrecht Psalter, the Stuttgart Psalter, and several Byzantine psalters. These all have water instead of a serpent. The theme of the serpent seems to be an interpretation introduced by Augustine, according to the online commentary.
An illustration of a stag is in the
Physiologia of Angelos Gregorios, Crete 1510. I suspect this copies previous Physiologias.
So the stags for Time's chariot (not Saturn's; he usually had dragons, I think) is to suggest that in old age one longs for God.
Between Phaeded's analysis of what is in the hands, and mine of what the stag means, I think we now have a fairly complete interpretation of the Alessandro Sforza Temperance card. The extinction of the sexual appetite and a longing for God. In Platonic terms (the
Symposium), it is the transmutation of vulgar love into celestial love, Aphrodite Pandemos into Aphrodite Uranos, Göttliche Liebe.
This, it seems to me, is especially suitable for a Temperance card that either immediately precedes or follows the Death card, as it seems to relate particularly to old age, and so the soul just before or after death; in the latter case, not only are the bodily appetites extinguished, but the body itself.