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?

2
Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: - it is wood-coloured, like the Hermit's stick

How do we know the richly dressed “hermit” is holding a wood staff? Its perfectly straight and may as well be brass; on that note, what are the similarly straight sceptres made of, held by the court figures? The ragged person in the Fool card should be holding a natural limb repurposed by a peasant as a herding stick and for means as self-defense, such as we find in Giotto and every other God-denying fool (he wouldn’t have been able to afford tooled/turned wood, even if that if what we would agree to call what the “Hermit” is holding). Natural wood is represented twice in the PMB – once by the original/same artist (as the Fool) in the gallows of the Hanged Man and by the second artist in the Strength card which is unambiguously a club and looks nothing like what the Fool is holding. In either case the object is explicitly made to resemble wood, either through the grain or by being gnarled (such as in Giotto’s “foolishness” club).
Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: - the PMB artist's trumpets in Judgment are metal and black

Metal is shown as both gold or blackish in the PMB; e.g. the swords are both (as are the batons/staves). The CY Judgement shows the trumpets as gold. The Fool is an entirely negative figure – to disassociate God’s judgement in the form of his angels' trumpets from that of the Fool’s impertinence is not an unusual finding here.
PMB swords-02-deuce-250x500.jpg PMB swords-02-deuce-250x500.jpg Viewed 14511 times 62.1 KiB
Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: - precedents already noted by others
Could you please point to such a precedent that comes close to matching the object held by the PMB Fool? I’ve yet to see a long, straight “stick/limb” ending in a flaring cone that is somehow considered a “club”.


Ultimately that which overrides all precedents is the internal evidence of the PMB deck itself, in which both trumpets and a club appear in other cards, but each, unfortunately, comes with qualifications: the club is by a second hand, the trumpets of a different color. Dummet, among others, minimizes the problem of the second hand by placing it in the same Cremonese family studio, which begs the question as to how wildly different depictions of “clubs” could have been produced for the same artistic production. So it comes down to this: which is more difficult to reconcile – the color of the PMB comparable trumpet (reproduced upside down below to match the attitude of the Fool’s) or the size, shape and color of the club of the PMB comparable club?
Fool trumpet.jpg Fool trumpet.jpg Viewed 14511 times 91.91 KiB
PMB Judgement trumpet reoriented.jpg PMB Judgement trumpet reoriented.jpg Viewed 14511 times 40.52 KiB
PMB Strength club detail.jpg PMB Strength club detail.jpg Viewed 14511 times 26.64 KiB
Didn’t vote – but then again I wouldn’t be voting on a Huck opinion poll on whether tarot is chess-derived (nor changing my mind if the vote came out in favor of chess).
Phaeded

Re: PMB Fool - club or trumpet?

5
SteveM wrote:A little musical interlude brought to you from Mugla, Turkey:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=381012082987
Hilarious. And looks exactly like the instruments held by the Bolognese Fool - ironically perhaps he was intended to be Alla turca:
a musical style called Alla turca that was occasionally used by European composers of the 17th and 18th centuries. Alla turca was a European stylized convention meant to satisfy the Turquerie fad of the 17th and 18th centuries, with stereotyped conventions which were not consistent with the music of Turkish military bands (Janissary bands, or mehter in Turkish), except in instrumentation. But European bands were profoundly influenced by Janissary instrumentation, discipline, and uniforms.
17th c Bolognese fool.jpg 17th c Bolognese fool.jpg Viewed 14463 times 18.82 KiB
But for the love of vuvuzela, that music is, um, not my cup of tea. I've traveled throughout Turkey (from Aphrodisias to the Nemrud Dagh), love the people and the country, but I don't remember hearing those tunes.

Steve, what town are you in? I'm envious, would love to live in Turkey.

Re: PMB Fool - club or trumpet?

6
I live in Kusadasi, not far from Ephesus, Selcuk.

I 'think' the pipes they are playing (which look similar to that of the fool above), are called Zurna, according to wiki:

The zurna (also called surnay, AMO A GIOT birbynė, lettish horn, surla, sornai, dili tuiduk, zournas, or zurma), is a multinational outdoor wind instrument, usually accompanied by a davul (bass drum) in Anatolian folk music. The name is derived from Persian سرنای surnāy,[1][2] composed of سور sūr “banquet, feast” and نای nāy “reed, pipe”. Turkish lore says that Adam, who was moulded from clay, had no soul. It is said only the melodious tuiduk-playing of Archangel Gabriel could breathe life into Adam. According to a Turkmen legend, the devil played the main role in tuiduk invention (note the term ″devil openings", şeytan delikleri, in Turkish for the small apertures on the bell). A ritual of inviting guests for a celebration has survived since ancient times: two tuiduk players stand in front of each other, point their instruments upwards and play in unison. During this act, they perform circular movements in a ritualistic fashion suggestive of shamanism.

Re: PMB Fool - club or trumpet?

8
FROM: THE STUDY OF GOITER THROUGH ART

The characters represented with goiter mainly belong to the LOWER
SOCIAL CLASSES: SHEPHERDS, PEASANTS, WORKERS, MAIDS,
WANDERING MINSTRELS (26%)

ONLY 3% of the representations are PORTRAITS OF IMPORTANT
INDIVIDUALS.

Considering all the works of art that have been studied, 33% of the
characters had OBVIOUS SIGNS of CRETINISM and in 5% of cases it
is possible to DIAGNOSE the CAUSE of GOITER.

The goitre often (but not always) represented the curse of the physically or morally corrupt, a bad man.

Image


A medieval biblical illumination for Psalm 52:

Psalm 52: For the director of music. A maskil of David. When Doeg the Edomite had gone to Saul and told him: “David has gone to the house of Ahimelek.”

1 Why do you boast of evil, you mighty hero?
Why do you boast all day long,
you who are a disgrace in the eyes of God?

2 You who practice deceit,
your tongue plots destruction;
it is like a sharpened razor.

3 You love evil rather than good,
falsehood rather than speaking the truth.

4 You love every harmful word,
you deceitful tongue!

5 Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin:
He will snatch you up and pluck you from your tent;
he will uproot you from the land of the living.

6 The righteous will see and fear;
they will laugh at you, saying,

7 “Here now is the man
who did not make God his stronghold

but trusted in his great wealth
and grew strong by destroying others!”

8 But I am like an olive tree
flourishing in the house of God;
I trust in God’s unfailing love
for ever and ever.

9 For what you have done I will always praise you
in the presence of your faithful people.
And I will hope in your name,
for your name is good.

http://dn3g20un7godm.cloudfront.net/2011/AM11SA/161.pdf
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