Early Tarot designs and contemporary works of art?

[aimeedanger]

Ah yes. But they were made by a Dutch artist working in the netherlands in the 1480s, and the Sforza decks start in the early 1400s. So the Housebook couldn't be the allegorical root of the Tarot. It's just another example of the same imagery floating around at the time. I just wish I could find mention of some story, play, poem, or pageant that outlines the cards' order and how people at that time knew it to heart.

[Debra]

Originally Posted by aimeedanger

So the Housebook couldn't be the allegorical root of the Tarot. It's just another example of the same imagery floating around at the time.

You think there's a single source of the images, a single sequence and story to back it?

Hm.

[louiseb]

Originally Posted by Huck

There's an article in Kaplan Encyclopedia II, p. 154-181

There are Andrea Vitali's essays to each card at this page
http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=310&lng=ENG
in the middle part of the menu
Andrea Vitali's Iconological Essays
You've to click the "figure"-links to see pictures

There is a
wild collection in "Bianca's Garden"
to each card

There are occasional iconographic themes here at aeclectic, though not sorted. Likely difficult to find.

this is so interesting especially as the essay quotes;
Many other images of Fides (the High Priestess) are to be found in renaissance and baroque art: we find one with the same attributes on the marble tomb stone of a Master of the Order of the Knights of Malta inside the church of Saint John at La Valletta and a second in an image of Petrarch's Triumph of Love (Venice, 1488) (figure 3 - figure 4: detail).
Knights of Malta well i,ll be.... im from malta and i never saw this before thanks for this info.

[aimeedanger]

Yes.

Only because it was a game of trumps, and with all the different languages and dialects there was little to no discrepancy in the card order. With playing cards, the order is obvious to them and to us: 1-10, then the royal family by rank. This order was taken from the Mamluk decks which were 1-10, the helper, second viceroy, viceroy (general, basically) and king. The titles didn't quite correlate to European audiences so they converted it to their royal family.

Then a trump suit is invented. It follows logic that the trumps would also follow a hierarchy that the people in that region at that time understood. The earliest cards aren't numbered, and many early decks weren't named. So while there were variations like minchiate, I think that the Tarot -the one that standardized eventually - had a story that people were familiar with.
Gertrude Moakley thought it was a card-form representation of the Carnival parades, and that makes a LOT of sense considering the parade floats would come to you chronologically, hence establishing the trump order. Sooo... where did the Carnival floats' order come from? That's kind of where I'm at now.

[Debra]

I think I've misunderstood what you're looking for!

The ordering of the trumps for card play, it seems to me, is a different question than the imagery on the cards themselves. Variation in ordering is revealed once the trumps are numbered (documented in Kaplan, Vol. II). Prior to that, who knows? Going on my memory of Moakley's book--does she say there was a single accepted order of triumphs in the parades? I don't remember that. I am not so enamored of the sequence questions. If they were crucial at the outset, the cards could have easily been numbered from the start. I suspect that discussing who trumps whom was part of the fun of play.

What I meant with my poorly-phrased question ("You think there's a single source of the images, a single sequence and story to back it?") is that I doubt there was a single source for the images themselves. That's why I referred to the medieval housebook--not as the first time the images were made, but rather because it shows that these images were common--floating around, as it were, not just on carnival floats.

The strange elements (the bird on the Star, for example, and the dog on the Fool) are not explained by sequencing narratives.

[aimeedanger]

Floating around... even common imagery has a source!
I'm fascinated by the way that culture and image overlap and weave throughout history, especially where religion and gods are concerned. But I'm obstinate enough to try to track down a single story for the Visconti decks... I understand there could be some that were even earlier than those that were more common and so have fallen apart in the interim, but I'm going on the operating assumption that the images were nearly identical with these more sturdy and cherished court decks.
What is Kaplan v2?

[Debra]

http://newsletter.tarotstudies.org/2...arot-vol-i-iv/