Cristina Fiorini

Ross G Caldwell

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your clarifications and citations. I've found a PDF of Didron "Iconographie chrétienne. Histoire de Dieu" (if that isn't inspiring enough for you) at
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k114544z

I'll enjoy it, I'm sure.

mjhurst said:
P.S. Adolphe Napoléon Didron, BTW, was essentially the forerunner of Emile Male in terms of Christian iconography, and there is a fair amount of info about him online.

It seems as if Christian iconologists of that caliber had taken on tarot earlier - (could they have?) - we could have had a much better appreciation of its origins now.

By my caveat, I mean all those things that earlier generations of scholarship overlooked about popular culture, including games. They looked at churches, ideas, and illuminated manuscripts (as much as they could). When all the big stuff got exhausted, we are left with the dregs. But the dregs are proving to be the most interesting, not least because they are still with us, while the age of the cathedrals is not.

Now ironically we look through their lives' work to find clues to our current fascinations, hoping to find in them insights about what they considered far beneath their dignity to think about, if they even knew about or considered them.

(of course I have to qualify those thoughts... Didron couldn't have considered tarot as an expression of popular ideas of the time, not because tarot already had an occult reputation (which it probably didn't in his day), but because not enough was known about the history of playing cards, and because the very idea of popular culture (as I alluded to above), at least as an object of proper historical study, was unknown (folklore study itself was just getting started). It was in the hands of a few "savants", of historical and/or occultist bent, and remained so until 1980)

Best regards,

Ross

mjhurst

Hi, Ross,

Your comment about the polygonal halos being an interesting enough story for a thesis might be right. It certainly seems to center on Florence; it involves some of the most prominent artists (Pisano and Giotto) of the 14th century with one tradition, the haloed virtues; it seems to center around a quite different tradition in the 15th century, haloed Fame; the haloed virtues are revived in Florentine Tarot cards; and the change from a more medieval Christian attribute of the virtues to a more Renaissance humanist attribute of fame makes for a catchy narrative arc. It looks like a great story could be told about the revival of an attribute, with enough examples from both periods, and with multiple interesting anomalies.

(I feel much better about the idea that it the attribute "screams" Florence after paying attention to who the author of that book was. If I'd ever heard of him, I'd forgotten it.)

Then there is another interesting line of inquiry as well, one which I've avoided because I've got to make a library run. It's the Franciscan thing. I wouldn't bring it up yet, except that it ties into the business about the symbolism of the hexagon, which you asked about. Here are some snippets gleaned from a book that talks about it.

It seems that the symbolism of the number six and the hexagon mathematical principles play an even greater role than in that of the square and the number four. The tradition of the six being a numerus perfectus, the sum as well as the product of the numbers 1, 2, and 3, can be traced back to antiquity and persisted throughout the middle ages. Since the hexagonal nimbus first occurs in Franciscan allegories, it should be noted that the mathematical perfection of the six is discussed in the works of the great 13th century theologian of the [Franciscans?] St. Bonaventure, especially in his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard and in the Hexaemeron. The title of the latter work, which is permeated by a variegated and original symbolism of numbers, suggests another widespread symbolical significance of the number six, that of the six days of creation. The (mutilated) verse inscription under the Assisi fresco showing the allegory [...]

Intriguing, eh?

That the hexagonal nimbus was a Franciscan invention is confirmed by the fact that in the fourteenth century it occurs in several Franciscan churches but, as it seems, nowhere else, with the sole exception of the doors of the Baptistery of Florence made by Andrea Pisano (see Mediaeval Studies, III, 43). As had been the case with the square nimbus, the original meaning of the hexagonal one, after some time, was forgotten. In addition to the fourteenth and fifteenth century examples in which lozenge-shaped, hexagonal, or octagonal nimbi were given to "saints'' of the[...]

They're from Mediaeval Studies, by Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1939. It's another of those damned "snippet view" deals on Google Books.

Best regards,
Michael

Ross G Caldwell

Hi Michael,

Cool thoughts... and the sum of 1-6 is 21 - but let's not get carried away; we're playing dice here! I need some proof texts before I'll even think about Bonaventure and Franciscans (and Olivi and Joachim) having something to do with the imagery OR the numbering of the trumps... (or even directly the shape of the halo)

... but I wouldn't put it past them. But how do we account for Bernardino et al.? Even if Tertiaries had some autonomy (and influence in the guilds, especially the pharmacists/painters), surely it wasn't without some kind of guidance, exactly the kind we would expect, when tarot was born, to be of the Bernardino-nature? (of course he had enemies, even in the Order)

In any case, trying to be sober, I'm still working under the courtly-invention scenario. But the origin may not really matter, if the message is the same.

mjhurst said:
Your comment about the polygonal halos being an interesting enough story for a thesis might be right. It certainly seems to center on Florence; it involves some of the most prominent artists (Pisano and Giotto) of the 14th century with one tradition, the haloed virtues; it seems to center around a quite different tradition in the 15th century, haloed Fame; the haloed virtues are revived in Florentine Tarot cards; and the change from a more medieval Christian attribute of the virtues to a more Renaissance humanist attribute of fame makes for a catchy narrative arc. It looks like a great story could be told about the revival of an attribute, with enough examples from both periods, and with multiple interesting anomalies.

Perhaps... I'm personally working on getting a more mundane project at the moment, but it would be great to meet someone equally interested in something like this, who could do it.

If that is the narrative arc you are telling, to what do you attribute the change in the 15th century? I would guess - all Petrarch.

(I feel much better about the idea that it the attribute "screams" Florence after paying attention to who the author of that book was. If I'd ever heard of him, I'd forgotten it.)

You mean Didron?

Then there is another interesting line of inquiry as well, one which I've avoided because I've got to make a library run. It's the Franciscan thing. I wouldn't bring it up yet, except that it ties into the business about the symbolism of the hexagon, which you asked about. Here are some snippets gleaned from a book that talks about it.

It seems that the symbolism of the number six and the hexagon mathematical principles play an even greater role than in that of the square and the number four. The tradition of the six being a numerus perfectus, the sum as well as the product of the numbers 1, 2, and 3, can be traced back to antiquity and persisted throughout the middle ages. Since the hexagonal nimbus first occurs in Franciscan allegories, it should be noted that the mathematical perfection of the six is discussed in the works of the great 13th century theologian of the [...] St. Bonaventure, especially in his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard and in the Hexaemeron. The title of the latter work, which is permeated by a variegated and original symbolism of numbers, suggests another widespread symbolical significance of the number six, that of the six days of creation. The (mutilated) verse inscription under the Assisi fresco showing the allegory [...]

Click to expand...

Intriguing, eh?

Absolutely. I've looked at the Commentary on the Sentences from time to time, but I've never found my way through it (I've even tried going back to the Sentences themselves). Bonaventure is one of the biggies I've never got my teeth into yet. I need a teacher there. Hexaemeron I don't know at all.

This may mean I'll (we'll all) have to go to Hopper, to start. I tried to avoid it, since he is expensive these days, but at least in the meantime we can start by "Look Inside."

That the hexagonal nimbus was a Franciscan invention is confirmed by the fact that in the fourteenth century it occurs in several Franciscan churches but, as it seems, nowhere else, with the sole exception of the doors of the Baptistery of Florence made by Andrea Pisano (see Mediaeval Studies, III, 43). As had been the case with the square nimbus, the original meaning of the hexagonal one, after some time, was forgotten. In addition to the fourteenth and fifteenth century examples in which lozenge-shaped, hexagonal, or octagonal [...]

Wow! I thought so. If the origin is with Franciscan number mysticism, then we could find a very clear chain of ideas in Florence, and the artists connected (starting with Giotto). Then we have to look at the meaning of the Virtues and other allegories in Franciscan writings around 1300. Then - Dante of course, and the commentaries, especially the early ones. Dante being a tertiary and all (and all). And then...

Intriguing, eh?

Daunting. And the fact that the tarots we are talking about represent the decadent stage of any such symbolism makes it probably tangential. But it could lead to some good discussion.

If I find any suggestion, or any reason to think, that the trump series of cards (or worse, another medium) may go back to the late 14th century, I'm going to cry. Loudly. I'll admit my mistakes, I'll make my mea culpas, I'll get back to the books. And I won't make any more charts. I will stand dumbfounded before the utter blanks that make up the ideas of historians.

But otherwise, I'll carry on as before

They're from Mediaeval Studies, by Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1939. It's another of those damned "snippet view" deals on Google Books.

Yeah, I hate those. In most cases where I need them, they are utterly unfair, the result of either greed or laziness (since no copyright or any conceivable idea of profit could constrain them).

I'll look them up. Thanks.

Hope I didn't read too much into your thoughts. Maybe I've read too much O'Neill... Confraternities and all.

Best regards,

Ross

John Meador

Fascinating thread!
The individual below would perhaps be able to clarify a number of contingent perplexities:

Mark J. Zucker, "The Polygonal Halo in Italian and Spanish Art," Studies in Iconography 4 (1978), 61-78
Mark J. Zucker: "Early Italian Engravings for Religious Orders"
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 56 Bd., H. 3 (1993), pp. 366-384
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0044-2992(1993)56%3A3%3C366%3AEIEFRO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G
Mark J. Zucker: The Master of the "Sola-Busca Tarocchi" and the Rediscovery of Some Ferrarese Engravings of the Fifteenth Century
Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 18, No. 35 (1997), pp. 181-194
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=03....0.CO;2-C&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage
Mark J. Zucker: An Allegory of Renaissance Politics in a Contemporary Italian Engraving: The Prognostic of 1510
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 52, 1989 (1989), pp. 236-240
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0075-4390(1989)52%3C236%3AAAORPI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

Professor Mark J. Zucker
mzucker@lsu.edu 225-578-5406
Ph.D., Columbia University. A specialist in Renaissance art, Professor Zucker has contributed seven volumes on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian engraving to The Illustrated Bartsch, a definitive series of scholarly reference books on Old Master prints. He has also published on various aspects of Renaissance art in leading international journals and is currently working on relationships between Italian Renaissance art and literature. Professor Zucker was the recipient in 2001 of LSU's Distinguished Faculty Award and was named J. Franklin Bayhi Alumni Professor of Art in 2003. He chaired a sesion on "The Italian Renaissance Print" at the 2002 conference of the College Art Association, and his paper "Homeliness and Humor in Renaissance Italy: Tales of Ugly (and Witty) Artists and Other Paragons of Ugliness" won the award for the best article of 2004 published in the journal Explorations in Renaissance Culture. Zucker is currently Professor and Art History Area Coordinator in Renaissance and Baroque Art.
http://www.design.lsu.edu/artschool/arthistory/profileZucker.html
best regards
-John

Ross G Caldwell

Hi John,

Thanks *very much* for finding this specialist in the topic. He seems like the right person to pose certain questions to - for instance, if you saw these haloes on these images (or even just these images in any way), would you think "Florence" or "Tuscany" and "circa 1450", or could they be anything else?

But before writing him, if someone doesn't do it first, I'm going to think of a very good way to present my questions and compose my letter. Chiefly, he has to know that the attribution of the cards to Florence is already made, and by whom - that only means, cite Bellosi and Fiorini (and me and Depaulis from the Playing Card 36 no. 1 (July-Sept. 2007) if it is a detailed enough letter).

But I'd love to read his articles... the Sola Busca one sounds very interesting.

Did you check on prices for the volumes of "The Illustrated Bartsch"? Average about $200. At least we only have four or five to interest us - LOL.

Ross

John Meador said:
Fascinating thread!
The individual below would perhaps be able to clarify a number of contingent perplexities:

Mark J. Zucker, "The Polygonal Halo in Italian and Spanish Art," Studies in Iconography 4 (1978), 61-78
Mark J. Zucker: "Early Italian Engravings for Religious Orders"
Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 56 Bd., H. 3 (1993), pp. 366-384
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0044-2992(1993)56%3A3%3C366%3AEIEFRO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G
Mark J. Zucker: The Master of the "Sola-Busca Tarocchi" and the Rediscovery of Some Ferrarese Engravings of the Fifteenth Century
Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 18, No. 35 (1997), pp. 181-194
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=03....0.CO;2-C&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage
Mark J. Zucker: An Allegory of Renaissance Politics in a Contemporary Italian Engraving: The Prognostic of 1510
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 52, 1989 (1989), pp. 236-240
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0075-4390(1989)52%3C236%3AAAORPI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

Professor Mark J. Zucker
mzucker@lsu.edu 225-578-5406
Ph.D., Columbia University. A specialist in Renaissance art, Professor Zucker has contributed seven volumes on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian engraving to The Illustrated Bartsch, a definitive series of scholarly reference books on Old Master prints. He has also published on various aspects of Renaissance art in leading international journals and is currently working on relationships between Italian Renaissance art and literature. Professor Zucker was the recipient in 2001 of LSU's Distinguished Faculty Award and was named J. Franklin Bayhi Alumni Professor of Art in 2003. He chaired a sesion on "The Italian Renaissance Print" at the 2002 conference of the College Art Association, and his paper "Homeliness and Humor in Renaissance Italy: Tales of Ugly (and Witty) Artists and Other Paragons of Ugliness" won the award for the best article of 2004 published in the journal Explorations in Renaissance Culture. Zucker is currently Professor and Art History Area Coordinator in Renaissance and Baroque Art.
http://www.design.lsu.edu/artschool/arthistory/profileZucker.html
best regards
-John

John Meador

Google's preview of Zucker's Master of the Sola-Busca article declares:
"In general, however, the style of the Tarocchi is typical of Ferrarese art of ..... At the same time, comparison may be made with several of the Otto Prints that have the same format, among which one can be singled out for special ..."

Have the Florentine Otto prints been discussed here before?

Zucker (Early Italian Engravings for Religious Orders) refers one re:
For the Otto Prints, see especially Paul Kristeller, Florentinische Zierstiicke in Kupferstich aus dem XV. Jahrhundert (Graphische Gesellschaft, X)

-John

Huck

John Meador said:
Google's preview of Zucker's Master of the Sola-Busca article declares:
"In general, however, the style of the Tarocchi is typical of Ferrarese art of ..... At the same time, comparison may be made with several of the Otto Prints that have the same format, among which one can be singled out for special ..."

Have the Florentine Otto prints been discussed here before?

Zucker (Early Italian Engravings for Religious Orders) refers one re:
For the Otto Prints, see especially Paul Kristeller, Florentinische Zierstiicke in Kupferstich aus dem XV. Jahrhundert (Graphische Gesellschaft, X)

-John

I don't know. The Istor article speaks of 5 engravings attributed to the Master of the Sola Busca (at least at the start page) ... are these the Florentine Otto prints?

Ross G Caldwell

Huck said:
I don't know. The Istor article speaks of 5 engravings attributed to the Master of the Sola Busca (at least at the start page) ... are these the Florentine Otto prints?

No, the Otto Prints are something else.

The wikipedia article to "Old Master Prints"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_master_print

explains -

"A chance survival is a collection of mostly rather crudely executed Florentine prints now in the British Museum, known as the Otto Prints after an earlier owner of most of them. This was probably the workshop's own reference set of prints, mostly round or oval, that were used to decorate the inside covers of boxes, primarily for female use. It has been suggested that boxes so decorated may have been given as gifts at weddings.[6] The subject matter and execution of this group suggests they were intended to appeal to middle-class female taste; lovers and cupids abound, and an allegory shows a near-naked young man tied to a stake and being beaten by several women."

Ross

Ross G Caldwell

Starnina and saracen shield

Earlier in the thread I noted that one of Cristina Fiorini's arguments for attributing the Rothschild cards to Giovanni dal Marco (or "del Ponte") was the particular type of shield on the Knight of Swords. This shield is "double domed" (I don't know the real heraldic term, if there is one), and Fiorini claims that this shield is unknown in Italian art except for one instance, done by Giovanni's teacher Gherardo Starnina, in a painting called "Battaglia tra Orientali" (Battle between Orientals) or various titles, "Kampf orientalischer Reiter" in German, and "Battle scene with eastern knights" in English, at this webpage (it is in the Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg, Germany) -
http://www.deutschefotothek.de/obj12350711.html

Details -

You can see clearly the double shields.

What struck me most was the similarity with two other early playing cards, which have until recently have had wildly different dates attributed to them -

(from Trevor Denning, "The Playing Cards of Spain" (Cygnus Arts, 1996), figs. 6 and 7)

When Hoffmann ("The Playing Card: An Illustrated History" (Leipzig, 1973) showed the latter card in color (fig. 11a), along with others of the set, he attributed it to Provence and a date of 1545. But Denning was able to allude to more recent evidence, and an article of Michael Dummett in 1991, that shows that the paper is dated to around 1400. People don't print cards on 150 year old paper, so these cards must be some of the earliest printed images known (Thierry Depaulis also independently confirms the scientific information of the paper's dating in his article "L'Apparition de la xylographie et l'arrivée des cartes à jouer en Europe" (Nouvelles de l'Estampe nos. 185-6, Dec. 2002-Fev. 2003, pp. 7-19) p. 18; here he cites Dr. José Eguia, director of the Fournier Museum of Playing Cards in Vitoria, Spain, where this set is located).

For us, what is interesting is the similarity between the depictions of the Saracen shields of Starnina's painting and the printed cards; the Lindenau Museum dates the painting to 1425 (which is strangely after Starnina's death, which is usually given as between 1409 and 1413), so the cards are likely to be earlier.

Also interesting is to make a comparison/contrast between these cards and the Rothschild Knight of Swords -

First comparison is that it is the same card which gets the special shield (the Knight of Batons (ill. Denning) in the first pack doesn't have it, the Knight of Cups (ill. in Hoffmann) doesn't have it, and the Knight of Batons in the Rothschild doesn't have it). So we are looking at a definite evidence of a tradition in which the Knight of Swords is portrayed as a Saracen.

Another comparison can be made between the Starnina and the two printed cards - they show very much the same kind of shield, with two flat sides and decorative/heraldic tassels hanging from them. This contrasts with the dome-like Rothschild card, which also bears no tassels.

A contrast can also be drawn between the combatative stance of the printed cards, and the defeated posture of the Rothschild image.

It could well be that the Rothschild artist intended to portray this figure as a defeated Saracen (giving us an opportunity to interpret the St. George-like portrayal of the Knight of Batons as slaying the Saracen dragon), and it could well be that the artist was drawing from a tradition known through Aragonese cards and/or artistic convention; but given that such a tradition did in fact exist among cardmakers, and the differences in the style of the two printed cards and the painted one, it seems to me unnecessary to posit a direct link of the Rothschild to the work of Gherardo Starnina, through Giovanni del Ponte.

Ross

Ross G Caldwell

Ross G Caldwell said:
the particular type of shield on the Knight of Swords. This shield is "double domed" (I don't know the real heraldic term, if there is one)

I found the word for the type of shield - Adarga (thanks to people who like to play with toy soldiers and battle re-enacters).

That's just the normal Spanish word for "shield", coming from the Arabic "el daraqah". The Spanish themselves seem to have adopted them some time after the Reconquista (like the one above), but in the time that interests us, it seems they were identified fully with the Moors (that's my impression anyway, I'm just learning).

They seem to have been flat and of many layers of leather, so the Rothschild depiction is very atypical (however I'm sure the artist was conveying one, in a very stylised way).

Ross