Re: Nightmare Alley

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Ross Caldwell wrote: 25 May 2022, 17:22 I'm very happy that somebody picked up on Brunelleschi's obsession with the "architecture" of Dante. I'll post pictures of Eugenio Battisti's brief essay on the writings of Brunelleschi, since I don't want to retype it and the book is not online. Whatever he wrote or the drawings he made on the subject of Dante have been lost, but Battisti covers everything that can be known.
Thanks, Ross for providing again very interesting material, which I will read as soon as I can. [I can read Italian, but slowly].
Last edited by vh0610 on 26 May 2022, 22:26, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Nightmare Alley

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Phaeded wrote: 26 May 2022, 04:21
There still must have been a text that selected the themes of the sequence and on that point I still insist on Dante.

Phaeded
Phaeded, thanks for this, we fully agree.

This is what I want to express all the time since opening the other thread "For tarot: Dante, Plato and no Fool", viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2282 , in this very Forum : it is Dante. After reading the whole Dante -more or less-- I am even quite sure that the Commedia is the key. I can only ask you again to see the three triumphal processions (trionfi!) in the Commedia which fully form the Minchiate deck. And two of them form the tarocch' /Tarot de Marseille deck, see viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2282.

We can explain so many special features in MInchiate and in Tarot de Marseille with Dante (the order(s) of Minchiate and Tarot de Marseille, the red background of the aria cards in MInchiate, the lady with the wheel in Minchiate, the flames on the aria cards in Tarot de Marseille, the young twins on the sun card in Tarot de Marseille etc. etc.), such that it is really unlikely that it is another source. And we have to --and can!-- read the trumps in Tarot de Marseille as the Commedia: in the fourfold sense of the scripture (litteral, allegoric, tropal/moral, anagogic), as Dante tells Cangrande about the Commedia. Tarot de Marseille is the greatest piece of art I ever saw. It is even depth psychology in the Freudian and in the Jungian sense before its invention. Stunning.

First of all we have to understand that it is a Christian mystical game, that it is all about Christian moral and mystical philosophy - on Dante/Ficino ground, not on Church ground. It is a child of its time, it's a Renaissance game. That it is a Christian mystical game is also the reason for the three Christian virtues not being inlcuded in Tarot de Marseille - they should not be triumphed over. They structure the Tarot de Marseille game, which is full of allusions to the Bible (the naked lady on the star card is -aside from being Mary- Eve in paradise, the tower on the saetta card is evidently the tower of Babylon, but the same card contains on another level one of the three temptations of Jesus and so on and so on). The literature to understand this is vast, but it was the main literature of the time in which the cards where invented (and even the following century): after the Bible, the next most read Book was the Commedia (there were and are more than 600 manuscript copies, and after it was printed, the commentaries on the commmedia were the most read book after the Bible following Ore). The Bible and the commedia --and some surrounding texts of the commedia-- fully suffice to understand the cards. With one exception: but Ross gave us recently the key for this in hands. [ I can still not believe and will comment on it as soon as I can]


Now I am torn between news on Mamluks, JvR [finally I know what I was overseeing all the time: JvR writes in apocalyptic mode], Carnöffel, Dante - what is more important for you?


P.S.: And if you doubt that Dante is in the game: look on any Tarot de Marseille card of the Lovers: we can certainly all agree that one person has a kind of crown of green leaves on his head. In Renaissance times, it is clear that this must be a poet with a laurel crown, a poet laureate. Depicted is a well known story: Dante being at the marriage of Beatrice with Simone Bardi (she has a flower crown on her head as brides had), as reported by Boccaccio. Look closely: Simone Bardi shields Beatrice away from Dante with his left arm, whereas Beatrice has a warm look for Dante. So the point of this card is: the lovers are all three persons on the card. And Dante is introduced in the game when reading the trump sequence at exactly the point where individuality starts: "you are your own pope and king [emperor] now" says Vergil to Dante in the earthly paradise in the Purgatorio. This is the way to follow.

Dante and the Commedia, Florence Cathedral, Domenico di Michelino, ca. 1465:
Image

Re: Nightmare Alley

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vh0610 wrote: 26 May 2022, 18:02
Phaeded wrote: 26 May 2022, 04:21
There still must have been a text that selected the themes of the sequence and on that point I still insist on Dante.

Phaeded
Phaeded, thanks for this, we fully agree.

... I can only ask you again to see the three triumphal processions (trionfi!) in the Commedia which fully form the Minchiate deck. And two of them form the tarocch' /Tarot de Marseille deck, see viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2282.

We can explain so many special features in MInchiate and in Tarot de Marseille with Dante...
Not sure why you want to jump to later variants of the ur-tarot to explain the original context of Dante, but I've already proposed a very specific schematic program based on Dante - how he was used for political purposes in the 1430s in Florence (the Medici exile, followed by the Albizzi faction exile and then the culmination of that internecine strife in the battle of Anghiari [Albizzi allied with Visconti], quickly followed by the oldest known reference to trionfi in Giusti some 3 months later):

Literary source for the trumps: Dante’s Paradiso
viewtopic.php?t=1062

Phaeded

PS I've never gotten around to explaining the last 7 cards (+ Fool) added via the PMB (and subsequently misnamed for the most part due to their confusing depiction from the "children of the planets" genre), as iconographically each is very complex (besides the obvious Sun, Moon, and "Star", but even they have idiosyncrasies). The Paduan influence on the PMB is undeniable (where Filelfo went to University with the likes of Alberti as a classmate) in the form of Justice and the Fool based on Giotto's virtue/vices scheme in the Scrovegni chapel, but also note the early planetary schema in the apse of the Eremitani church, right next door to the Scrovegni chapel, by Guariento - half of the cycle was blown up by US bombers in WWII, and I believe the only book that has images of the missing planet allegories is in this work: Catherine Harding, “Time, History and the Cosmos: the Dado in the Apse of the Church of the Eremitani, Padua”, (in Eds. Louise Bourdua, Anne Dunlop, Art and the Augustinian order in early Renaissance Italy, 2007). Fig 35 in that work shows the no longer extent Mercury making the same odd grasping gesture as the PMB "Bagatto/Juggler" (in the former Mercury is guiding the hand of an child who is learning; in the latter reaching out with the same right hand for a peasant's straw hat - as if to guide that class of people, re. the fickle, starving popolo - represented by the Fool - that rose up in Milan during Sforza's siege and created chaos within the city. Mercury is the trickster, the advisor not be trusted, especially those supposedly representing the people; his out of fashion and drooping hat is from the earlier CY deck, suggesting he is an elite on the "out", possibly fomenting trouble for the vacant ducal seat - perhaps one of the many Visconti relations not initially aligned with Sforza. The PMB Mercury even holds the stylus in his left hand as a sceptre. At all events, a Mirror for Princes warning.).
Image
There is much more to add to the meaning of this trump, but you can perhaps intuit how complex this iconography could be...and misunderstood without tituli.

Re: Nightmare Alley

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Phaeded wrote: 26 May 2022, 19:06
Not sure why you want to jump to later variants of the ur-tarot to explain the original context of Dante, but I've already proposed a very specific schematic program based on Dante - how he was used for political purposes in the 1430s in Florence (the Medici exile, followed by the Albizzi faction exile and then the culmination of that internecine strife in the battle of Anghiari [Albizzi allied with Visconti], quickly followed by the oldest known reference to trionfi in Giusti some 3 months later):

Literary source for the trumps: Dante’s Paradiso
viewtopic.php?t=1062

Phaeded
Phaeded, I do not "want to jump to later variants of the ur-tarot to explain the original context of Dante", but you are right, in the later variants one sees Dante even more. In viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2282, hopefully I tried to explain that Dante is already in the ur-tarocch' from the beginning onwards - Petrarca and his trionfi do not suffice. On this we agree.

I do admit that I was not aware of you already pointing to Dante in https://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=1062, I have to read that first [I am only a beginner, I don't know how someone should ever be on your level of scholarship...]. What I can already say from the title Literary source for the trumps: Dante’s Paradiso, is, that for my understanding, it is not only the Dante's Paradise which is the key. Elements from the Inferno are as well important, even so the then famous triumphal procession in the earthly paradise in the Purgatorio.

Re: Nightmare Alley

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Addendum to
vh0610 wrote: 26 May 2022, 18:02
This is what I want to express all the time since opening the other thread "For tarot: Dante, Plato and no Fool", viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2282 , in this very Forum : it is Dante. After reading the whole Dante -more or less-- I am even quite sure that the Commedia is the key. I can only ask you again to see the three triumphal processions (trionfi!) in the Commedia which fully form the Minchiate deck. And two of them form the tarocch' /Tarot de Marseille deck, see viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2282.
for Ross, since in combination of what I wrote on the "dome of heaven" and thus on the architectural Dante:
vh0610 wrote: 26 May 2022, 15:42 Note especially “ancient Near Eastern ideas of guardians of the corners of the world and of bearers of the firmament in the first (Taurus), fourth (Leo), seventh (Aquarius) and tenth constellations (Scorpio Man or eagle)” - the tetramorph carries the weight of the dome of the firmament at the four corners of the world as it does for every cupola in Renaissance churches: these are representations of the firmament with the hole in it towards the eternal “overheavenly” reality of God.
Note that the final cards of the zodiac in Minchiate form the tetramorph (they lead the second triumphal procession in Dante and the first one is also led by the tetramoprh):

Acquarius, Leo, Taurus, Gemini

I know Gemini don't fit - but if you read the respective chapter in Dante's Paradise, then it gets clear that Dante is in Gemini like an eagle. He even descibes his view on the earth like from the perspective of an eagle.

So this second triumph ending with the tetramorph prepares the carrying of the dome of heaven - which comes thereafter: the aria/etherial cards.

Re: Nightmare Alley

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vh0610 wrote: 26 May 2022, 22:17 What I can already say from the title Literary source for the trumps: Dante’s Paradiso, is, that for my understanding, it is not only the Dante's Paradise which is the key. Elements from the Inferno are as well important, even so the then famous triumphal procession in the earthly paradise in the Purgatorio.
That triumphal procession is accompanied by the 7 virtues, which then form the outline of the first seven parts of the Paradiso, where they are each expanded upon in multiple cantos each:

The three Theologicals and four Cardinals behind them in the carro at the end of Purgatory (Egerton MS 943, f. 117r):
Image

The Paradiso structure (Trionfi not going beyond the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant in the spheres above Saturn, which strictly speaking are more on the "ineffable" levels):
Image

Never seen that diagram before - but note how they list the exempli for Mercury: "ambitious statesmen" - too perfect; see my Mercury comments.

Phaeded

Re: Nightmare Alley

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Phaeded wrote: 26 May 2022, 22:52
That triumphal procession is accompanied by the 7 virtues, which then form the outline of the first seven parts of the Paradiso, where they are each expanded upon in multiple cantos each:

The three Theologicals and four Cardinals behind them in the carro at the end of Purgatory (Egerton MS 943, f. 117r):
We fully agree Phaeded, that the famous triumphal procession at the end of the Purgatory is decisive for the ur-tarocch' (I prefer to name it like this since the name signifies exactly the 14 (18) -> 21 + 0 transition).

As far as my memory goes, in Dante's description at the end of the Purgatory the virtues are not in the carro, they are leading the procession behind the tetramorph. One can look it up:

https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante ... atorio-29/
Purg 29, 58ff


Then I looked at the extraordinary
things that were moving toward us—but so slowly
that even brides just wed would move more quickly.

[...]


and I could see the candle flames move forward,
leaving the air behind them colored like
the strokes a painter’s brush might have described,

[...]

then—as in heaven, star will follow star—
the elders gone, four animals came on;
and each of them had green leaves as his crown;

each had six wings as plumage, and those plumes
were full of eyes; they would be very like
the eyes of Argus, were his eyes alive.

Reader, I am not squandering more rhymes
in order to describe their forms; since I
must spend elsewhere, I can’t be lavish here;

but read Ezekiel, for he has drawn
those animals approaching from the north;
with wings and cloud and fire, he painted them.

[...]

The space between the four of them contained
a chariot—triumphal—on two wheels,
tied to a griffin’s neck and drawn by him.

[...]

Three circling women, then advancing, danced:
at the right wheel; the first of them, so red
that even in a flame she’d not be noted;

the second seemed as if her flesh and bone
were fashioned out of emerald; the third
seemed to be newly fallen snow. And now

the white one seemed to lead them, now the red;
and from the way in which the leader chanted,
the others took their pace, now slow, now rapid.

Upon the left, four other women, dressed
in crimson, danced, depending on the cadence
of one of them, with three eyes in her head.

[...]

Then I saw four of humble aspect; and,
when all the rest had passed, a lone old man,
his features keen, advanced, as if in sleep.

Note that there are several elements which later show up in Tarot de Marseille (which I understand as an elaboration of the Dante structure already present in the ur-tarocch'): the bride on the Lovers-card, the candles flames lighting the sky colourfully as in the aria cards, the carro, the seven virtues (outside of the chariot), the lone old man as on the Time card.



One can map this procession to the structure of the Paradise as you showed --and Dante certainly used it-- but the structure of the Paradise is not an explicit mention of a triumphal in the Commedia. There are exactly three explicit mentions of triumphal processions in the Commedia which then form the ur-tarocch' and Minchiate, in my eyes.

Re: Nightmare Alley

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vh0610 wrote: 27 May 2022, 14:28 Phaeded, I will transfer our discussion to viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2282&start=10, since we are now talking about Dante and this has nothing to do with the Nightmare Alley. In contrast, Dante provides in his Commedia a stairway to heaven, an alley of light. See you there.
VH,
Agree this is the wrong thread, but I don't think Plato has much if anything to do with the ur-tarot, so not sure what I would add there.

"We fully agree Phaeded, that the famous triumphal procession at the end of the Purgatory is decisive for the ur-tarocch' (I prefer to name it like this since the name signifies exactly the 14 (18) -> 21 + 0 transition)."

Actually I only see the tripartite structure of the first 7 realms of the Paradiso adapted as the schema reflected in tarot - 7 Virtues, 7 Exemplary themes (exempli generalized), and 7 Planets. The Fool, as the negation of virtue - the exact oppositive vice of stulticia from Prudence in Giotto's frescoes, bumped up to the highest virtue - properly stands outside of this schema, as the lowest null card. The key for me is the ur-tarot must have matched the CY in trumps - so only three trumps are missing - the Wheel (which we know existed in the Brambilla), and the two missing cardinals of Temperance and Justice. 14, no fool.

The planets and fool are missing in the Florentine ur-tarot, in my theory, because it was a triumphal celebration of the allied Florentine and Papal forces. The planets are a dubious series, and relatively under-represented in art at this point, in regard to the church, hence just the focus on Virtues and their exempli. And if Bruni was behind them then Filelfo, exiled from Florence and now newly arrived in Milan, would have known precisely what his old friend (now doing Cosimo's bidding) was up to: taking Filelfo's Dante-based diatribes against Cosimo - lectures held in the duomo no less - and returning Dante to the Florentine fold as part of the regime's propaganda (following his 1436 vita of Dante by just a few years - the most popular thing he wrote in the volgare - a whopping 156 MS survive; see James Hankins, "Humanism in the vernacular: the case of Leonardo Bruni." In Humanism and Creativity in the Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Ronald G. Witt, ed. Christopher, 2006: 25).

In c. 1451 Filelfo's new ducal client is an astronomically-inclined condottiero, F. Sforza, who was on the outs with Pope Eugene and needing the new Pope Nicholas V to intercede for peace in his war with Venice; ergo, no theologicals (closed associated with papacy so why assume them as your own propaganda?)- they are replaced. Filelfo, self-proclaimed Dante scholar, one-ups his old friend by completing the Dante-based deck by adding in the planets and throwing in the Fool to boot, representing the Ambrosian Republic rabble of whom Filelfo couldn't complain enough about in his Odes or letters. Tarot was in this view, then, the result of a humanist pissing match - ephemera never conceived by its inventors as something that would persist for centuries, but something pressed into service for their respective regimes for propaganda purposes. Alas (or hurrah?), the card-playing public had other ideas; and other ideas they had a aplenty - many of the trumps are modified beyond recognition from what they were in the ur-tarot.

The planets could necessarily be misinterpreted immediately. In addition to my Mercury example, let's say Mars looked like the one in the De sphaera produced for Sforza - who wouldn't identify this red-skinned Mars as the Devil, with no astronomical context? Just add some talons and wings to Mars's cuirass and pteruges(the Roman defensive skirt), and make his face more monstrous-looking to clarify the subsequent interpretation, et voila, the "devil" (who is not featured in the Paradiso):
Image
Image


"As far as my memory goes, in Dante's description at the end of the Purgatory the virtues are not in the carro, they are leading the procession behind the tetramorph. One can look it up..."

Merely a manuscript's illumination, proving Ross's point that whomever came up with tarot it had to be executed by someone else, allowing for the odd artistic disconnect.

Phaeded

Again:
Image

Re: Nightmare Alley

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Ross wrote (May 26)
The fly in the ointment is Cupid, sexual obsession. Marziano apologizes for putting him in the game, but he says it is necessary to do so. We can only speculate on Cupid's ludic role, but at least we can say that the card was a spoiler of some kind, perhaps an excuse or wild like the Fool in Tarot, or the highest trump, similar to how Boiardo conflated the World and the Fool in his game
-
Ross, it is not just Cupid. Daphne defeats Apollo, and Aeolis sometimes defeats Ceres and Bacchus. Marziano says (p. 81 of your book):
Because of his fury, sometimes the non-ripe gifts of Ceres and Bacchus perish.
And although Marziano doesn't mention it, it was common knowledge that Hercules, in killing the serpents sent to his cradle and accomplishing the twelve labors, defeated the machinations of Juno.

What do these four have in common, besides being the four lowest member of the trump suit? They are all of a different row ("order," in Marziano's terminology) than the god they defeated. The ludic element might be that if a "deified hero" was in the extension of the suit led, they could beat even the highest trumps not of that extension. Dummett suggested such a rule long ago ("A Comment on Marziano," The Playing Card, Vol. XVIII, No. 2 [Oct-Dec. 1989], p. 75) , saying of Marziano's gods:
If they were trumps, their assignment to the suits is pointless; if they were superior court cards, their ranking among themselves is pointless. Of the two hypotheses, Signor Pratesi's, that they were trumps in our sense, seems the more probable. But there are other possibilities: for instance, that, when a King or pip card was led, the trick could be won by a god only if it was of that suit, but that, when a god was led, it could be beaten by any higher god. If this seems complicated, we should remember that evolution sometimes goes in the direction of simplicity; we should recall also the complicated rules about the trump suit in Karnoffel. This hypothesis would make Marziano's game ancestral to Tarot, but at a considerable remove.
Dummett in making this comment hadn't come to consider as well the allegorical point of the four lowest gods being able to defeat gods much higher than they. That elevates the suggestion, in my opinion. Surely some such rule (as I have suggested elsewhere, perhaps too many times, trying to get it right) is worthy of consideration, not only in Marziano's game, but in the proto-trionfi, if it was structurally similar.
cron