I agree Mac- but I guess that is not what I meant.mac22 wrote: The Church was also GOOD at co-opting earlier sites, symbols & concepts to suit the needs of the "new faith" e.g. 3hares, greenman, dying & rising gods, the Good Shepard, Madonna & child, the fish symbol[Vesica Pisces], the cross[ankh, tau, Greek] , the sacred meal etc.
Mac22
I meant in a round -about way- if the images were co-opted from somewhere, no matter what stream of thought they combined or considered, we have not been able to find that group together(except in Tarot)- similar but not the same.
Now if you were a printer- the model came from somewhere- the commission came from someone, who was most likely Catholic or possibly a reformist. The nearest I have been able to find is the diagram of Scrovegni Chapel- with its Vices Virtues and layout of the Chapel. This looks to me like the most homologous group that incorporates the three groups of seven images + Judgment. Well although the paintings of the Vices say Vices- they are more like synonymic of Virtues- rather than the traditional Vices(like Greed, Sloth etc) So you have Faith and Unfaithful - Strength and Inconstancy for example.
The other angle is that the printmaster had a design for the game then went and got disparate images from all over the place and combined them in the order required. To me, at least this seems the most unlikely scenario.
Maybe rather than the Church directly they came from the design folios of Tableau organisers for parades, celebrations and triumphs as others have spoken about? Pageants seem to have an order about them too- the ones in Italy seem the nearest to a group of images.
Although I sound as if I have made up my mind- I have not- this is just an exploration that seems to have some logic to me. Today we take the sequence and we apply all sorts of things to it- like say The Haindl Tarot with it's world view- 500 years ago the world view was Catholic. What set of images inspired the Printmaster?
~Lorredan~