Ross Caldwell wrote: 29 May 2022, 17:22
Phaeded wrote: 29 May 2022, 16:58
...So when you say the PMB was based on the two-artist deck and not Malatesta's Bembo cards, I would just like to clarify the essentials must have been the same, but the window-dressing (literally the figure's dressing) is likely all that changed.
Phaeded
It just looks to me like the Von Bartsch
Temperance and Guildhall
World are really copies of De' Russi's (for argument's sake) versions, not the underlying originals from Bembo.
If they had been lost, what was De' Russi's model anyway?
I focused on Strength because I believe the classicizing of the subject afforded the most possibilities for a changed look; the CY Strength, BTW, is quite close to the Bernabo statue's Strength - lion on same side and lion-female size ratio, albeit in the CY the lion's mouth is being pulled open: Bernabo statue Strength detail:
https://equestrianstatue.org/wp-content ... 5x349.jpeg
CY Strength:
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/bc/23/68/bc23 ... -decks.jpg
Temperance isn't worth quibbling over since its missing in the CY, albeit the older sheathed sword attribute is used on what I'm showing next....
As for the "World" - you're probably tired of my referring to this Visconti Hours leaf, especially my Prudence/World argument, but we have these fairly exact parallels:
1. Hexagonal city with central dome and towers
2. Set in a tondo
3. Same pink, blue and green colors used within the tondo
4. Jagged rocks/rough landscape edge (arguably used almost as an island in the PMB "World" to place the city in its celestial 'New Jerusalem' setting (IMO = Sforza's promise to restore Milan to its grandeur, reflected in the later ideal city
Sforzinda proposals by Filarete, also radial/polygonal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sforzinda ).
Perhaps the banderole-esque swags get added to the putti and the wings made smaller (versus Eros's larger wings on the CY and PMB Lovers card) to look more like those in later 15th century manuscripts, but Donatello had already set that standard by the 1430s. I really don't think there was much variation going on from the Bembo prototype - maybe the pointless orthogonal vs. diagonal background. And if I'm not mistaken, the Visconti Hours were retrieved for Bianca during the siege, thus readily available.
And of course I can't finish this without reiterating Prudence is on top for a reason in the VH leaf - the "World" is prudence. Her convex mirror was an attribute initiated by Giotto with a compass, but only a thin line like unopened chopsticks is visible, going to a rounded end with a tension screw on the topside - her compass is not open. Her convex mirror is being pointing at with the compass in the Scrovegni - but here in the leaf the compass is pointing downwards as if to inscribe the circle of the encompassing tondo about the city. Even her elongated mirror matches the elongated tondo here (actually its the letter "O" in this instance, but still a veduta). Look again at the VH prudence with her convex mirror and compass atop a veduta in a tondo, and the
clear equivalence of convex mirror and "world"/veduta-tondo here with the Ferrara variant:
In the difference between the two one can almost see the transition unfold from an Aristolelian/Aquinas advocacy for contemplative life to the active life spurred on by the post-Petrarch early humanists such as Salutati.
At all events, the active life is guided by prudence and the
"World" is Prudence.
That it accrues additional layers of meaning and eventually does become some version of the "World" in later decks (e.g., a woman floating in space surrounded the tetramorphs) doesn't change its 15th century meaning when it was first conceived. And yet Prudence always had a cosmic reach, as in this illumination by F. Barberino in his
Documenti d'Amore (c. 1313); its just that princes wished to have the world reflect some semblance of their dominion, a'la "mirror for princes", which of course could not be more appropriate with the Giotto prudence-with-mirror prototype:
Phaeded
PS Its not on JSTOR, but well worth hunting down as fundamental for the above: Lackey, Douglas P. “'Giotto's Mirror.'”
Studi danteschi 66 (2001), 243-253.
But an equally valuable study (from which the Barberino image was taken) is available:
Frojmovič, Eva. “Giotto’s Circumspection.” The Art Bulletin 89, no. 2 (2007): 195–210.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25067314.