I am not saying that the Wheel of Fortune must have been necessarily inside the Cary-Yale. It just seems as likely as anything else. The Brera-Brambilla Wheel is closer and surer, relative to Filippo, than France and its exotic variation on chess, whatever the rest of the deck was. It has an old man on it, much like that on the PMB Time. And it is a triumphal motif, which I take to be a unifying feature of the cards, unlike Folly, which is something to be overcome.This is nothing, what one can rely upon, but some reason not to assume, that Wheel of Fortune must have been necessarily inside the Cary-Yale.
Phaeded wrote:
You say quince flowers for the King of Swords. For the others, are you assuming pomegranate flowers or pomegranate fruits? Your wording is not clear to me....zoom in on the King card: the only two fruit/flower images that are really clear are on the top and bottom/right one on his chest - they clearly have pointed "3-lobed tulip-like shapes" as I mentioned originally.
Either it is the flower of a quince or a pomegranate - photos of either are inconclusive.
One other note: I have searched for Pomegranate as a Visconti stemma in vain - e.g., nowhere in the Visconti Hours which is overloaded with every stemma available in a variety of ways. Kaplan is surely wrong here, retrodating the combined Sforza-Visconti stemma back to the Visconti themselves for this one. Let’s assume then the possibility of quinces (flowers) on the male Swords and pomegranates on the female.
Also, when I look at the Sforza Hours, I seem to see lots of both quinces and pomegranates, at least the fruits. However I don't have the plates in color, just scans of an old black and white edition. I use the plate numbering there. E.g, for quinces: XLVI, top; XXXIV, two-thirds the way down. Pomegranates: XXVIII, two-thirds the way down; LI, three-fourths the way down; LIII, bottom. These are all on pages where the illuminations are only on the sides, with text in the middle of the page. I don't see any of these particular plates online. Perhaps you have the book. If so, I can describe the pages in more detail for identification purposes. None are on branches quite like on the cards. And I don't think it matters, if we're trying to distinguish Sforza from Visconti.
'Phaeded wrote,
Pomegranates, possibly, because it was a standard symbol of resurrection, as you illustrate. But then you switch to quinces, as that's what you need to link Muzio to the King card via the allegory, if the card has quince flowers. The Queen's pomegranate is reborn as a quince? Such mythological botany seems a bit over-subtle and unprecedented. Or is there some mythology of quinces I am overlooking? I sure would like to find a relevant heraldic.But then there is the odd significance of pomegranates – Persephone’s seeds eaten in Hades that lead to the seasons (known via Ovid in such works as Boccaccio). It could be seen as a foreshadowing pagan proto-symbol of resurrection – split time spent in Hades and some back on the earth. The context here is King of Swords as the deceased Muzio, looking away from the page he tried to save but drowned in his armor instead; the page wears his oversized helmet. This almost seems too “humanistic” for c. 1441 but I can’t see any other significance for the pomegranate. The flowering quince reborn from death (along with the rest of life with Persephone’s annual return in the spring).
Ross: Reviewing Hind's Appendix, I see your point, especially considering that Rosselli had done just such prints of the Petrarchan triumphs and planets. These are not games in the sense of card games, but "games" in the sense of amusements. I don't know examples of his prints of the seven virtues, but since it's in 5 blocks, it's probably the same. I have removed the offending sentence from my post. It was a minor point, but I appreciate very much pointing it out. I will stop repeating it!
Note: paragraph above about Sforza Hours added 40 minutes after the rest. And thanks for the comments below, Steve.