To quote myself from earlier in the thread, especially in light of Barizza's 1425 funeral oration of Marziano where he is described as foreseeing the future:
Phaeded wrote: ↑04 Feb 2019, 16:14
What strikes me as especially odd about Marziano's description of the gods is the epithet "celestials." Clearly there could be the Manilius link of at least 12 of the gods as tutelary deities over the zodiac, with perhaps the remaining four standing in as signs for the sublunar four elements ...?
I've wrongly used Marcello's word to describe the trump-like figures, "celestial", although that might have been how they were received by any Italian in the 15th century. Marziano instead uses the non-deity word of "heroes" and thus engaged in euhemerism - where mythological accounts are presumed to have originated from real historical events or personages; e.g. . Jupiter was merely "King of Athens" per Marziano. Expanding on that perspective, let's presume that some of the "heroes" may also be allegorical symbols for natural processes...or to go back to my main thesis, the Four Elements from which the entire world is derived. On to Manilius first....
Let's assume Marziano had an early look at Manilius after Poggio's 1417 find, or at least an description of the novel arrangement of the zodiac and gods, and that both Marziano and the Ferrara Schifanoia hall of the months share the same source for the 12 Olympians of Marziano's heroes...why it is the one deviation Bacchus replacing Vulcan by Marziano? Especially if there were no intervening years in which for other humanists' interpretations to adhere to Manilius, why would Marziano immediately alter a Roman text?
I think the answer is simple:
Vulcan was the consort of Venus. It doesn't matter which which alternate list of the Olympians that Vulcan was replaced (in this case with Bacchus), the fact is it was imperative that he was replaced because Vulcan (and the implied Vulcan/Venus pair) contradicts or at least confuses the stated genealogy of the Visconti, which was that Venus produced their line through the Italian-bound Trojan Anchises's son, Aeneas (and as Ross says earlier in this thread, this other work by Besozzo is of 'incalculable value'; agreed):
- Visconti genealogy via Venus.JPG (33.79 KiB) Viewed 2905 times
...after many medallions/generations henceforth from Venus, in the end we find our tyrant hero, Filippo:
- terminus of genealogy, Phillipus Maria Comes.JPG (27.31 KiB) Viewed 2905 times
Bacchus was a natural replacement because it was him who coaxed a brooding Vulcan back to Olympus after getting him drunk, a famous theme called "the return of Hephaestus/Vulcan" celebrated in plays and on Attic pottery imported into Etruria, etc.
Whence the zodiac in Marziano? There is no indication of the zodiac as such, but the one "hero" that is described with stars (apparently a catasterim after the King of Athens died), Jupiter, is described as if at least part of a constellation: "Four stars appearing above, attend him... On the lower right side appears a burning star like Mars." Manilius assigns Leo to Jupiter, and the head of Leo, that which is above, is formed of four stars:
mu Leonis, kappa Leonis, lambda Leonis, and
epsilon Leonis (see constellation diagram here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_(cons ... eo_IAU.svg. In respect to the overall lion outline, lowest and furthest to the right is the only magnitude one star in the constellation, Regulus, designated
alpha leonis. As for the epithet "like Mars", note that Ovid sometimes referred to it as
Violentus Leo, something befitting the God of War, hence the equivalence. That Marziano made this astral link with just the first hero was likely to take the lead god and indicate the linkage between his scheme and the zodiac; but too much astrological verbiage would be required to do this for each card's pictorial description.
Just the indication of the zodiac would still allow an association with the inherited medieval view of the zodiac as the seasonal circle depicted on carved church portals, pavements (especially baptistery floor mosaics) and especially Psalters or Books of Hours; the last are a demonstration of the role of the religious year in daily life, starting with a calendar, listing the feast days to be observed by their owner and usually two other types of illustrations featuring pictures of the signs of the Zodiac connected the religious year to the passage of astronomical time. The so-called Labors of the Month connected it to the seasonal activities, often painted in roundels like Besozzo's Visconti genealogy. Or if you were rich, like Piero de' Medici, you could even decorate the ceiling of your
studietto (c.1450s, now in the V&A museum) in such a calendar/zodiac roundel style, rendered in the glazed terracotta of della Robbia's workshop:
The point of showing the post-Marziano example of a calendar zodiac is that it was enduring, and not simply a backwards look at an obsolete medieval tradition. The Wheel of Fortune was not usually linked to the zodiac, but in an age of increasing astrological obsession, the linkage could not be considered an oddity considering both the stars and the Wheel both connote fate.
At some level it seems that Marziano has updated the Angera fresco cycle in light of the most recent fruits of humanist rediscovery (i.e., Ovid through the texts of Petrarch and Boccaccio) . Marziano's abstracting the twelve zodiacal signs to the tutelary gods behind each allows one to contemplate the inherent virtues and vices one might continue in the round of the year - this is truly a "modern" humanist touch. Going back to our earlier discussion of the the zodiacal cycle in Angera (albeit the tutelary gods are planetary there and do not derive from Manilius), that planetary/zodiacal scheme is juxtaposed - or rather complemented - at the other end of the hall with the Wheel of Fortune. So beyond getting lost in the description of each hero there is the ultimate concern cyclical time embodied in the zodiac, with each sign of extrapolated instead in terms of whether a virtuous or venal god is behind it.
That leaves us with four left over subjects in Marziano, and not at all obvious as enjoying the "celestial" aspect that Marcello read into the overall heroes (perhaps I'd even use the word "primordial" for the Four Elements, but created by God and thus "celestial"). And my suggestion that they may represent the sublunar elements will no doubt be met with raised eyebrows, but even on the face of it,
Aeolos would obviously be
Air, while
Cupid is often depicted in Petrarchan-derived depictions as basking in flames (from which his arrows enflame the hearts and minds of mankind) and thus
Fire (here in a Lo Scheggia triumph showing Venus's son standing on a brazier of flames):
So we have two reasonable elemental candidates, Aeolos/Air and Cupid/Fire, but Daphne and Hercules (the latter who becomes an Olympian but lives his life wholly on earth), look like hopeless dead ends. But I'll continue to insist Ovid is at the heart of this assembly of heroes and that we look to him for the missing elements of Water and Earth, as nonsensical as it would seem for those two unrelated figures.
Taking Daphne first as she comes before Hercules in the
Metamorphoses - she is turned into a tree, which would seem like earth is the likely element. Yet given the work she appears in, it is
that element which transforms her that is key. And in the opening line about her she is called "the daughter of a River God (Peneus)" (Ov. Met. 1.452); to underscore her watery element, which applies to all nymphs, of which she is one, it is also said of her "the nuptial torch seemed criminal to her." At the penultimate moment when she can no longer flee Apollo, she calls on her river father to transform her (using Brooks More's 1922 translation:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... 99.02.0028 ).:
"Her strength spent, pale and faint, with pleading eyes
she gazed upon her father's waves and prayed,
“Help me my father, if thy flowing streams
have virtue! Cover me, O mother Earth!
...Before her prayer was ended, torpor seized
on all her body, and a thin bark closed
around her gentle bosom..."
So that leaves the last element of Earth and Hercules. Given the large number of labors and vast number of myths surrounding the demigod it would seem any myth about him could be pressed into service to associate him with any of the elements. But again the theme here is transformation and as a demigod Hercules himself has that potential to transform; in fact his very last deed, as recounted in Ov. Met. 9.172f, is to transform someone - someone he wrongly blames for the poisonous fire engulfing his body - into earth:
There was no limit to his misery;
raising both hands up towards the stars of heaven...
...in his frenzy, as he wandered there [Mount Aetna],
he chanced upon the trembling Lichas, crouched
in the close covert of a hollow rock.
Then in a savage fury he cried out,
“Was it you, Lichas, brought this fatal gift?
Shall you be called the author of my death?”
Lichas, in terror, groveled at his feet,
and begged for mercy—“Only let me live!”
But seizing on him, the crazed Hero whirled
him thrice and once again about his head,
and hurled him, shot as by a catapult,
into the waves of the Euboic Sea.
While he was hanging in the air, his form
was hardened; as, we know, rain drops may first
be frozen by the cold air, and then change
to snow, and as it falls through whirling winds
may press, so twisted, into round hailstones:
even so has ancient lore declared that when
strong arms hurled Lichas through the mountain air
through fear, his blood was curdled in his veins.
No moisture left in him, he was transformed
into a flint-rock. Even to this day,
a low crag rising from the waves is seen
out of the deep Euboean Sea, and holds
the certain outline of a human form,
so sure]y traced, the wary sailors fear
to tread upon it, thinking it has life,
and they have called it Lichas ever since.
Seems rather petty, but that's Hercules last act. He lies down on the pyre he built upon Aetna and allows he flames to consume him. Ovid ends the scene with a pithy speech by Hercules's father, Jupiter, who underscores his son's connection to earth before taking him up to Olympus, clearly delimited from the world below as celestial (thus the enduring attraction of rulers to Hercules - an apotheosis of the human element transformed into the divine):
And now on every side the spreading flames
were crackling fiercely, as they leaped from earth
upon the careless limbs of Hercules.
He scorned their power. The Gods felt fear
for earth's defender and their sympathy
gave pleasure to Saturnian Jove...
...Let not vain thoughts
alarm you, nor the rising flames of Etna;
for Hercules who conquered everything,
shall conquer equally the spreading fires
which now you see: and all that part of him,
celestial — inherited of me—
immortal, cannot feel the power of death.
It is not subject to the poison-heat.
And therefore, since his earth-life is now lost,
him I'll translate, unshackled from all dross,
and purified, to our celestial shore.
I trust this action seems agreeable
to all the Deities surrounding me.
The pre-Socratic philosopher and mystic, Empedocles, famously followed in Hercules' steps to prove he was immortal by throwing himself into the cauldron-like caldera of Mount Etna, so literally dies "in" the earth, but becomes immortal (according to his cult).
If I didn't know any better, it would seem that Ovid himself has hinted all along at the Four Elements as central to his metamorphic theme. And he describes primordial life in elemental terms in the Pythian Games passage, primarily fire and water (but as we saw with Hercules treatment of Lichas, the other elements, such as air, also have the power to transform, its just that fire/water are primary among the four for Ovid). This passage occurs right before the Daphne episode, also in Book 1, implying Daphne is yet a human anecdote of these primordial forces:
And after this the Earth spontaneous
produced the world of animals, when all
remaining moistures of the mirey fens
fermented in the sun, and fruitful seeds
in soils nutritious grew to shapes ordained...
...the sun's ethereal rays impregn the slime,
that haply as the peasants turn the soil
they find strange animals unknown before:
some in the moment of their birth, and some
deprived of limbs, imperfect; often part
alive and part of slime inanimate
are fashioned in one body. Heat combined
with moisture so conceives and life results
from these two things. For though the flames may be
the foes of water, everything that lives
begins in humid vapour, and it seems
discordant concord is the means of life.
(Ov. Met. 1.416f)
So we have human prey of
Cupid epitomized by
Daphne,
Aeolos wreaking havoc on mankind (most pertinent being Aeneas' fleet blown about to Italy and thereby allowing the Visconti line to take root), and
Hercules as "earth's defender"...all acted out within the sublunar sphere beneath the 12 Olympians. And note that Hercules is called by Marziano as the "13th Olympian" thus excluding him from that Manilius zodiac group. It is to these heavenly heroes/gods the progenitors of mankind, Pyrrha and Deucalion, must pray:
“If righteous prayers appease the Gods,
and
if the wrath of high celestial powers
may thus be turned, declare, O Themis! whence
and what the art may raise humanity?
O gentle goddess help the dying world!”
No such dour histrionics from Marziano - he's merely invented a clever diversion...for a son of Venus,
ready to be aroused to virtue.
Finally, a schematic encapsulating the above:
If none of the above, but you allow the possibility of Manilius, why an extra four heroes? Just to fill in a 14 card suit? But Marziano hasn't suggested 14 card suits - just a king over pips.
Phaeded
