I think the problem is not that there are too few possibilities indicated in the art and literature of the time, but that there are just far too many. My idea, (my moment of enlightenment if you like...
![Idea :idea:](./images/smilies/icon_idea.gif)
![Yin Yang (%)](./images/smilies/75.gif)
Pen
That is what Vitali suggests, as I recall, due to the lunette. But even he is careful to say that similar lunettes surrounded other figures, for example Venus in a wedding chest image he supplies.My thought is this: If the dancing figure in the World is feminine divine mercy, wouldn't that be the Virgin Mary--she's the closest to a "goddess" in Christianity.
Now isn't that a thought. No Jesus, just Mary..
This is as good a pace as any to argue against your pont 1. Iconography was characteristically polysemous, with many meanings in different frames of reference. There could be one easy to understand meaning for the people, and others for the erudite (humanists, courts), or the politically suppressed (e.g. alchemists, Kabbalists, Hermetics). In that way a deck not only sells to the masses, but perhaps gets patronage as well, from those who sponsor the erudite references.Well, in the case of Tarot de Marseille I asume this premises:
1. The iconographic codes should be understood by the people. In a luxury deck (as PMB or tarot of the Medici), the artist can develop codes cults, for an intellectual elite. But a deck Tarot de Marseille should be understood by the common people.
2. A good way to understand the visual culture of ordinary people in the sixteenth and seventeenth century is the theater, the television of this time . Inside the theater there are some pieces of particular interest, such as morality plays. For example, I see the same christian discourse of the tarot in the Cortes de la Muerte of Lope de Vega.
Seeing how nowadays players don't give a damn about the meaning of the cards, what makes you think if would have been different then ?mmfilesi wrote:Yes, maybe. But in any case, the apparent meaning must be understandable. If we put a woman over the World, nude and surrounded by the Tetramorphos-hide it a secret message or not (I think not)- should be, necesarily, a picture that people can understand.
Or that the fantastic narratives of Gebellin-Eteilla created a popular interest...mmfilesi wrote: I think in the past as the present, people ask what mean the images of their favorite game. This can explain, for example, the triumph of Gebellin-Eteilla.