Tarocchi goes west
Posted: 13 Nov 2018, 20:35
The near-twins of Paris, Viéville and Noblet, and the five lost trumps
[ This continues "Catelin Geofroy and the C order" but since it is not primarily about order I thought I should start a new thread. ]
After Geofroy in Lyon, in 1557, the story of tarot in France shifts to Paris for 150 years; there isn't another tarot deck made in Lyon or anywhere south of Paris until 1709. This is a vast expanse of time. In Paris there were three cartiers: the Anonymous Parisian, Jacques Viéville, and Jean Noblet. Noblet's deck is dated by the BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France) to 1659, a century after Geofroy. The other two are more vaguely dated, but the AP is likely first. Viéville gets a date of 1650 from the BnF, before Noblet, but not everyone agrees that Viéville's deck is before Noblet's. Noblet's deck was later copied nearly exactly by all makers of tarot cards in France, making the style that later became known as the Tarot de Marseille. Two early copiers are Jean Dodal, 1710, of Lyon, and Pierre Madenié, 1709, of Dijon. The Cary sheet played a role in this Paris story, but when and where it was made is quite a mystery,
While Noblet was copied to the south, Viéville was copied to the north, by Adam de Hautot of Rouen, and by cartiers in Liege and Brussels. They copied Viéville's images, but in Geofroy's order. Four of these decks are online at the British Museum. The first three are very similar to each other, and the fourth one may be similar also, but can't be seen online fully due to some error. The decks are:
1) F. I. Vandenborre, online here:
https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/ ... 2&partId=1
Vandenborre's deck is the subject of a modern reproduction, as are AP's deck (under the name Tarot de Paris) and Viéville's deck.
2) Jean Galler, online here:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/c ... 5&partId=1
3) Jean Gisaine, online here:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/c ... 5&partId=1
4) Martin Dupont, online here:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/c ... 0&partId=1
The AP and Noblet follow Geofroy's order, but Viéville tried to restore the correct Italian C order. No one followed him; it is Geofroy's order that prevailed in the west. Even the Brussels copiers of Viéville use Geofroy's order.
Geofroy' images, and the AP's, are very interesting indeed, but first I want to look at Viéville and Noblet.
When we compare the trumps of the Viéville and Noblet decks, the results are striking. Remember that we don't know for sure who is first. For sixteen trumps, plus the fool, Viéville and Noblet are so close you can hardly tell them apart. But for five consecutive trumps, Devil XV through Sun XIX, they are not even remotely similar. If Viéville was first, Noblet copied him extremely closely for all except those five trumps, but for those five trumps Noblet did not copy Viéville at all; he was not even influenced by him, but came up with five striking and original images like nothing the world had ever seen. However, and this is quite interesting, for two of these novel concepts, the lobster climbing up the beach for Moon, and the naked woman pouring two jugs for Star, Noblet's image is nearly the same as the card on the Cary sheet.
Here is Bagato, one of the trumps where the copying is very close. I have switched the Viéville right to left, because when a card is copied, the copier, working from the cards or a printed sheet, carves the pattern into a block, so the copied printed card comes out switched right to left from the original. All later French decks copied Noblet this closely. The third Bagato shown here is by Jean Dodal, 1710, of Lyon. Of these three, Dodal is most similar to Viéville, down to exactly how much of his fingertips the fraudster has hidden behind the table [note the thread tied to his wrist]. The point about switching right and left applies to the carver of the printing blocks; it does not apply to the colorist (I think these are stenciled). The shirt in Dodal is just like the one in Viéville, blue on the right and red on the left, with a yellow button plaquet down the middle. We will see this same shirt again and again.
Viéville : https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10510963k
Noblet : https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b105109641
Dodal : https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10537343h
[ I would link to Pierre Madenié, 1709, Dijon, if I could. The BM has a deck with no trumps, here:
https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/ ... 8&partId=1
This next site concerns a repro, but possibly the images are the ones they used, rather than pictures of the cards they made:
https://tarot-de-marseille-heritage.com ... llery.html
the images can be downloaded, but not easily, and perhaps they don't intend that they should be.
Zurich has four trumps, but in this case, the images available are tiny. ]
And here is Devil, one of the five trumps where Viéville and Noblet are completely different. I presume I don't need to show that Dodal and later Tarot de Marseille are very similar to Noblet. I have included instead the Cary sheet Devil: in this case neither Viéville nor Noblet is much like the Cary sheet. Viéville's Devil resembles the one from the Orfeo minchiate, and other Italian Devils.
Cary sheet: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... c1500..jpg
And here is Star, another one of the trumps where Viéville and Noblet are different, but in this case the Noblet is quite like the Cary sheet. Viéville on the other hand has an image, an astronomer, that shows up in Italian B-order and A-order decks, and in some handmade Italian decks, either for Star or for Moon. The naked woman with two jugs is a novel image, very unlike anything anywhere.
And here is Moon: Again, Noblet is like Cary, with a lobster, and not at all like Viéville, who has an image, a woman spinning, that is found in Italy, in A- or B-order decks, either for Moon or Sun.
But on the other hand, here is SUN. The red half of the Cary sheet sun is a reconstruction due to Andy Pollett. This time it is Viéville who is like the Cary sheet, and Noblet has an image of two people in front of a wall with some nudity, unlike anything ever seen before.
Pollett : http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=322&lng=ENG
Noblet's Tower is like the Cary Tower, while Viéville has a lightning bolt, an original image.
The sum of the Italian similarities, and the Cary sheet similarities
For the five cards where they are very different, Noblet is like Cary for Moon, Star, and Tower; Viéville is like Cary for Sun; neither is like Cary for Devil.
Viéville's spinning woman for Moon is like some Italian cards (for either Sun or Moon), Viéville's astronomer for Star is like some Italian cards (for either Moon or Star). Viéville's Devil is alone, striding, and in profile, like some Italian A- or B-order decks. Viéville's naked boy rider for Sun, is a bit like the Visconti-Sforza deck's Sun (this is one of Antonio Cicognara's replacements). But Viéville's lightning flash with no building in sight, for Tower, has no precedent in Italy. We shall discuss the source for this card in a bit. In sum, four are like Italy, one, the lightning bolt, is original.
For the five cards where they differ, Noblet has a tower on fire, for Tower, and to that extent, but in no further details, he is like Italy. But other than Tower, Noblet has a Devil and a Sun and a Moon and a Star very different from anything ever seen before, except that two of them are on the Cary sheet. In sum, one slightly Italian, four quite original (leaving aside the Cary sheet)
This suggests a working theory, although it has a monkey-wrench. Call it the "Viéville copies Milan, Noblet copies Viéville" theory: Viéville, who was before Noblet as the BnF thinks, had a C-order Italian source, from which he acquired the astronomer for Star, the spinning woman for Moon, the striding Profile Devil, and the naked boy on a horse for Sun. He brought also many other Italian images, for the 16 trumps and Fool that Noblet copied from him. He followed his Italian source closely: he even tried, and failed, to bring France into line with the Italian C order, 90 years after Geofroy had started his new French C order, (as brought to Paris by the AP). Viéville printed his cards, and sheets were printed from his blocks and stored as reference. But a strip was torn off one of the sheets, and lost, causing the loss of five trumps. Noblet, a fellow Parisian, had Viéville's sheets, but had to come up with replacement images for the five lost trumps. Noblet's ideas were original. He made a Devil, Star, Moon, and Sun unlike anything ever seen before. About Tower, he knew a little bit more than just the name: he knew it was a tower on fire. But that was all he knew about Tower.
The monkey-wrench is the Cary sheet. How does it have the lobster Moon concept, and the naked woman pouring jugs concept?
The five non-copied trumps are consecutive. The explanation of this that makes most sense to me, is that Noblet worked from sheets printed from Viéville's blocks, and a strip of one of the sheets was torn off. The blocks would have been 4 cards by 5 (as are French blocks for the printing of regular decks). One block would have been the trumps block, including the fool, but since the block was twenty cards, two trumps would have been left off, and most likely the last two. They would have been carved on some other block. The Cary sheet is an example: a 4x5 block which has the fool and most likely never had trumps XX and XXI. The top row (blocks were carved from the bottom up) of Viéville's trumps block would have been, most likely, the last five trumps before the two that weren't on that block. That is, trumps XV - XIX, the exact five trumps which Noblet was not able to copy from Viéville.
So let's consider the original images that Noblet found for his five missing trumps. That will be the subject of my next posts; the next one after this will consider sources for the Noblet STAR card.
[ This continues "Catelin Geofroy and the C order" but since it is not primarily about order I thought I should start a new thread. ]
After Geofroy in Lyon, in 1557, the story of tarot in France shifts to Paris for 150 years; there isn't another tarot deck made in Lyon or anywhere south of Paris until 1709. This is a vast expanse of time. In Paris there were three cartiers: the Anonymous Parisian, Jacques Viéville, and Jean Noblet. Noblet's deck is dated by the BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France) to 1659, a century after Geofroy. The other two are more vaguely dated, but the AP is likely first. Viéville gets a date of 1650 from the BnF, before Noblet, but not everyone agrees that Viéville's deck is before Noblet's. Noblet's deck was later copied nearly exactly by all makers of tarot cards in France, making the style that later became known as the Tarot de Marseille. Two early copiers are Jean Dodal, 1710, of Lyon, and Pierre Madenié, 1709, of Dijon. The Cary sheet played a role in this Paris story, but when and where it was made is quite a mystery,
While Noblet was copied to the south, Viéville was copied to the north, by Adam de Hautot of Rouen, and by cartiers in Liege and Brussels. They copied Viéville's images, but in Geofroy's order. Four of these decks are online at the British Museum. The first three are very similar to each other, and the fourth one may be similar also, but can't be seen online fully due to some error. The decks are:
1) F. I. Vandenborre, online here:
https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/ ... 2&partId=1
Vandenborre's deck is the subject of a modern reproduction, as are AP's deck (under the name Tarot de Paris) and Viéville's deck.
2) Jean Galler, online here:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/c ... 5&partId=1
3) Jean Gisaine, online here:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/c ... 5&partId=1
4) Martin Dupont, online here:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/c ... 0&partId=1
The AP and Noblet follow Geofroy's order, but Viéville tried to restore the correct Italian C order. No one followed him; it is Geofroy's order that prevailed in the west. Even the Brussels copiers of Viéville use Geofroy's order.
Geofroy' images, and the AP's, are very interesting indeed, but first I want to look at Viéville and Noblet.
When we compare the trumps of the Viéville and Noblet decks, the results are striking. Remember that we don't know for sure who is first. For sixteen trumps, plus the fool, Viéville and Noblet are so close you can hardly tell them apart. But for five consecutive trumps, Devil XV through Sun XIX, they are not even remotely similar. If Viéville was first, Noblet copied him extremely closely for all except those five trumps, but for those five trumps Noblet did not copy Viéville at all; he was not even influenced by him, but came up with five striking and original images like nothing the world had ever seen. However, and this is quite interesting, for two of these novel concepts, the lobster climbing up the beach for Moon, and the naked woman pouring two jugs for Star, Noblet's image is nearly the same as the card on the Cary sheet.
Here is Bagato, one of the trumps where the copying is very close. I have switched the Viéville right to left, because when a card is copied, the copier, working from the cards or a printed sheet, carves the pattern into a block, so the copied printed card comes out switched right to left from the original. All later French decks copied Noblet this closely. The third Bagato shown here is by Jean Dodal, 1710, of Lyon. Of these three, Dodal is most similar to Viéville, down to exactly how much of his fingertips the fraudster has hidden behind the table [note the thread tied to his wrist]. The point about switching right and left applies to the carver of the printing blocks; it does not apply to the colorist (I think these are stenciled). The shirt in Dodal is just like the one in Viéville, blue on the right and red on the left, with a yellow button plaquet down the middle. We will see this same shirt again and again.
Viéville : https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10510963k
Noblet : https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b105109641
Dodal : https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10537343h
[ I would link to Pierre Madenié, 1709, Dijon, if I could. The BM has a deck with no trumps, here:
https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/ ... 8&partId=1
This next site concerns a repro, but possibly the images are the ones they used, rather than pictures of the cards they made:
https://tarot-de-marseille-heritage.com ... llery.html
the images can be downloaded, but not easily, and perhaps they don't intend that they should be.
Zurich has four trumps, but in this case, the images available are tiny. ]
And here is Devil, one of the five trumps where Viéville and Noblet are completely different. I presume I don't need to show that Dodal and later Tarot de Marseille are very similar to Noblet. I have included instead the Cary sheet Devil: in this case neither Viéville nor Noblet is much like the Cary sheet. Viéville's Devil resembles the one from the Orfeo minchiate, and other Italian Devils.
Cary sheet: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... c1500..jpg
And here is Star, another one of the trumps where Viéville and Noblet are different, but in this case the Noblet is quite like the Cary sheet. Viéville on the other hand has an image, an astronomer, that shows up in Italian B-order and A-order decks, and in some handmade Italian decks, either for Star or for Moon. The naked woman with two jugs is a novel image, very unlike anything anywhere.
And here is Moon: Again, Noblet is like Cary, with a lobster, and not at all like Viéville, who has an image, a woman spinning, that is found in Italy, in A- or B-order decks, either for Moon or Sun.
But on the other hand, here is SUN. The red half of the Cary sheet sun is a reconstruction due to Andy Pollett. This time it is Viéville who is like the Cary sheet, and Noblet has an image of two people in front of a wall with some nudity, unlike anything ever seen before.
Pollett : http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=322&lng=ENG
Noblet's Tower is like the Cary Tower, while Viéville has a lightning bolt, an original image.
The sum of the Italian similarities, and the Cary sheet similarities
For the five cards where they are very different, Noblet is like Cary for Moon, Star, and Tower; Viéville is like Cary for Sun; neither is like Cary for Devil.
Viéville's spinning woman for Moon is like some Italian cards (for either Sun or Moon), Viéville's astronomer for Star is like some Italian cards (for either Moon or Star). Viéville's Devil is alone, striding, and in profile, like some Italian A- or B-order decks. Viéville's naked boy rider for Sun, is a bit like the Visconti-Sforza deck's Sun (this is one of Antonio Cicognara's replacements). But Viéville's lightning flash with no building in sight, for Tower, has no precedent in Italy. We shall discuss the source for this card in a bit. In sum, four are like Italy, one, the lightning bolt, is original.
For the five cards where they differ, Noblet has a tower on fire, for Tower, and to that extent, but in no further details, he is like Italy. But other than Tower, Noblet has a Devil and a Sun and a Moon and a Star very different from anything ever seen before, except that two of them are on the Cary sheet. In sum, one slightly Italian, four quite original (leaving aside the Cary sheet)
This suggests a working theory, although it has a monkey-wrench. Call it the "Viéville copies Milan, Noblet copies Viéville" theory: Viéville, who was before Noblet as the BnF thinks, had a C-order Italian source, from which he acquired the astronomer for Star, the spinning woman for Moon, the striding Profile Devil, and the naked boy on a horse for Sun. He brought also many other Italian images, for the 16 trumps and Fool that Noblet copied from him. He followed his Italian source closely: he even tried, and failed, to bring France into line with the Italian C order, 90 years after Geofroy had started his new French C order, (as brought to Paris by the AP). Viéville printed his cards, and sheets were printed from his blocks and stored as reference. But a strip was torn off one of the sheets, and lost, causing the loss of five trumps. Noblet, a fellow Parisian, had Viéville's sheets, but had to come up with replacement images for the five lost trumps. Noblet's ideas were original. He made a Devil, Star, Moon, and Sun unlike anything ever seen before. About Tower, he knew a little bit more than just the name: he knew it was a tower on fire. But that was all he knew about Tower.
The monkey-wrench is the Cary sheet. How does it have the lobster Moon concept, and the naked woman pouring jugs concept?
The five non-copied trumps are consecutive. The explanation of this that makes most sense to me, is that Noblet worked from sheets printed from Viéville's blocks, and a strip of one of the sheets was torn off. The blocks would have been 4 cards by 5 (as are French blocks for the printing of regular decks). One block would have been the trumps block, including the fool, but since the block was twenty cards, two trumps would have been left off, and most likely the last two. They would have been carved on some other block. The Cary sheet is an example: a 4x5 block which has the fool and most likely never had trumps XX and XXI. The top row (blocks were carved from the bottom up) of Viéville's trumps block would have been, most likely, the last five trumps before the two that weren't on that block. That is, trumps XV - XIX, the exact five trumps which Noblet was not able to copy from Viéville.
So let's consider the original images that Noblet found for his five missing trumps. That will be the subject of my next posts; the next one after this will consider sources for the Noblet STAR card.