Wonders of the Minchiate Etruria

f. silvestris

Every now and then, there is some intelligent discussion of the Minchiate here, but it always seems to peter out, presumably because these cards are so far out of the mainstream: this seems a pity, as the Minchiate Etruria, at least, is a deeply wonderful deck. (Sadly for me, full deck’s excellent Minchiate study group came and went before I acquired my copy.)

I’m posting a non-systematic, not altogether serious, list of things which have bothered, puzzled or amused me about the Minchiate Etruria over the last 6 months, avoiding the obvious differences from the familiar tarot pattern, in the hope that some of you might have specific information about one or two of them, and that others might be drawn to investigate these cards for themselves.

TRUMPS

I have a lurking suspicion that the Grand Duke and the Eastern Emperor are hermaphrodites: their heads seem to belong on each other’s bodies.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a58/invbks/minchherms.jpg

What is the creature on the Air card? It’s obviously nourishing itself by drawing in breath.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a58/invbks/minchair.jpg

Libra shows the hedgehog and the fox (well, the wolf and the porcupine ... ) along with the scales.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a58/invbks/minchlib.jpg

There are ducks (seagulls?) bobbing around on the water on the Pisces and Scorpio cards – just to show that it IS water? – and why is Scorpio rising above the water, does this have some astrological significance?

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a58/invbks/minchducks.jpg

There’s a tortoise on Capricorn: or perhaps a turtle, because they’re both amphibians? And what is the significance of Capricorn’s crescent moon tipped staff (it looks as if it’s wandered in from the Thoth)?

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a58/invbks/minchcapr.jpg

There’s also a splendid wild pig on the Sagittarius card.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a58/invbks/minchsag.jpg

And the Aquarius card is my favourite.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a58/invbks/minchaq.jpg

WANDS.

2. Naked man with a palm branch (?) and ribbon/banner. Plus a wolf/fox and a crane like bird on either side of a lamp – does this illustrate a fable or motto?

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a58/invbks/minchwands.jpg

CUPS.

4. Ape with a mirror.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a58/invbks/minchups.jpg

SWORDS

3. Romulus and Remus. There, I have identified the single most obvious card in the deck.

4. A bear (?) on a stool, apparently reading the paper. And a unicorn.

5. Chickens with a fox/wolf in a strange architectural box (when I first saw the card I thought it was meant to be a courtroom scene, with the fox in the dock). Is some fable or motto invoked here?

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a58/invbks/minchsw1.jpg

6. A glitter ball and a kitty. Have I mentioned that I really, really love this deck?

8. A monkeyish creature with satyr’s legs, looking either straight through a hoop or into a handleless mirror. Also a hedgehog and a mole staring at each other.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a58/invbks/minchsw2.jpg

COINS
A. Two figures at an altar with smoke coiling up. One has a headdress, the other billowing robes.

4. An elephant. Why? Was there an elephant craze in the early 18th century?

9: Birds. All the others show heads.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a58/invbks/minchcoins.jpg

Apologies in advance if some or all of these have been covered elsewhere in Aeclectic: put it down to my ineptness with the search feature. Felis
 

DoctorArcanus

Fame and Folengo

One thing that you could find interesting is that Fame appears in the last verse of Folengo's sonnet that includes all the trumps of the tarot deck.
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=44556&highlight=Fame

Code:
Tu imperatrice ai corpi sei, ma un cuore    You are the Empress (3) of bodies. But you cannot kill 
benchè sospendi, non uccidi, e un nome      hearts, you only Suspend (12) them. You have a name 
sol d' alta [b]Fama[/b] tienti un bagatella.       of high [b]Fame[/b], but you are nothing but a Trickster (1).

Marco
 

Cerulean

No information, just posted on Amor and Theatre d'Amour

because I found a similiarity of someone kneeling in the corner picture of the Allegory of Love, supposedly in the act of being crowned, and a similarity in the Minchiate card Amor.

I'll link to it again if you are interested.

I've wondered if anyone ever traced the Minchiate itself as a game to any direct poetic sequences or any specific family or group of originators. I'll have to check forum archives.

Best regards,

Cerulean
 

f. silvestris

Many thanks to both of you. Cerulean, yes please do link again.

One further point: a contributor to a different forum drew my attention to El Gran Tarot Esoterico - I notice that both the Minchiate Time card and L'Anciano in the Spanish deck feature a stag in the background. Anyone know of any other Hermit variants that do so?
 

DoctorArcanus

f. silvestris said:
One further point: a contributor to a different forum drew my attention to El Gran Tarot Esoterico - I notice that both the Minchiate Time card and L'Anciano in the Spanish deck feature a stag in the background. Anyone know of any other Hermit variants that do so?

I think the stag is commonly associated to Time and the trump that became the Hermit originally was time.

This is a fresco of the XV century, in the Pio Palace in Carpi, representing Time+stag
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/gpasett/car2.jpg

Giordano Bruno in his De Umbris Idearum represents Saturn as "a Man with a Stag's face upon a Dragon, having on his right hand an Owl which devours a Snake."
http://www.renaissanceastrology.com/brunoplanetaryimages.html

The origin of the association of the stag with Saturn/Time is not clear to me...

Marco
 

DoctorArcanus

Deer and Time

http://www.regione.taa.it/tar.tn.it/arte/sala_1/allegoria del tempo.jpg

A painting from Trento, AD 1583. The chariot of Saturn / Time has two deer. A black one and a white one: I assume they represent night and day. In this painting a strange looking Ouroboros is also present.

I still could not find any information about when and how stags were related to Saturn. I read that the origin is in Petrarca's Trionfi, but I could not find such information in that text.

Marco
 

DoctorArcanus

le pendu said:
The deer makes me think about the discussion we had regarding the Ursino card:
http://www.robertmealing.com/tarot/ursino.jpg

(Thread where it is discussed: http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=24374&highlight=ursino )

THANK YOU ROBERT!!! I did not know this card and I found both the card and the thread quite interesting. The card really is exceptional. I have no idea of its meaning, but maybe it could indeed be a "prudence".

What I learned about the stag/deer in researching it is how often it is associated with Prudence.

Here's an example:
http://www.humi.keio.ac.jp/~matsuda/ripa/catalogue/ripa_illus_html/043k0096w.html

Yes, I think the deer is associated to Prudence because it is so shy and, well, prudent :)

Here is a Deer with "Long Life" from an English Ripa:
http://emblem.libraries.psu.edu/Ripa/Images/ripa081b.htm
I think I read somewhere that deer were believed to live for hundred years. Maybe this could also explain the association of Deer with Time.

Yet in one more Iconologia by Cesare Ripa (1603, but alas with no images) I found this:

Cesare Ripa said:
CARRO DEL TEMPO.
Come dipinto dal Petrarca.
Un Vecchio con due grand'ali alle spalle, appoggiato a due croccio-
le et tiene in cima del capo un horologio da polvere e starà sopra un
carro tirato da due velocissimi cervi.

Chariot of Time. As painted by Petrarch.
A old man with great wings on his shoulders leaning on crutches. He keeps an hourglass on his head. He stands on a chariot pulled by two very fast deer.


So apparently the deer is associated to Time because both run fast.
This 1603 Ripa describes a chariot for each of the six Trionfi by Petrarch. Still in Petrarch I could not find a description of the Chariot of Time.

Is Petrarch the origin of the Time/Deer association? In which work? Is the origin more ancient than that? Earlier?

What a mistery :)

In Ripa, the Chariot of Saturn is represented "in the style of Boccaccio" (Genealogia Deorum Gentilium) and it is pulled by two oxes:
http://www.humi.keio.ac.jp/~matsuda/ripa/catalogue/ripa_illus_html/043k0011w.html

Marco
 

DoctorArcanus

Deer and Petrarch's Triumph of Time

Petrarch did not describe the Chariot of Time in his Trionfi poem, but the poem was soon illustrated with a series of six chariots.
I still don't know when and where the deer joined Time, but now I understand why Ripa thought that the origin is Petrarch: he looked at the images in an illustrated Trionfi and did not notice that the image of the Chariot of Time is not derived from the text....

Here are a few Renaissance examples (with deer / stag):

before 1483:
http://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/britishlibrary-store/Components/252/25229_2.jpg

XV Century:
http://www.italica.rai.it/rinascimento/iconografia/prot_1310_1311.htm

1494:
http://www.italica.rai.it/rinascimento/iconografia/prot_1910.htm

1550:
http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/aria/aria_assets/BK-1961-102?page=0&lang=en

1560:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/Newsletter/img/visual.gif

Marco
 

Ross G Caldwell

DoctorArcanus said:
Petrarch did not describe the Chariot of Time in his Trionfi poem, but the poem was soon illustrated with a series of six chariots.
I still don't know when and where the deer joined Time, but now I understand why Ripa thought that the origin is Petrarch: he looked at the images in an illustrated Trionfi and did not notice that the image of the Chariot of Time is not derived from the text....

Here are a few Renaissance examples (with deer / stag):

Thanks for those images Marco.

I don't know why the stag or deer is associated with Time either; on reflection, I might guess it is because the deer, like time, is *fleeting*. It is a fast and shy animal, perhaps this makes it a good symbol for time itself.

From what I understand, Petrarch's Trionfi were not as popular as some of his other writings for quite a while; until the 1430s or '40s. The earliest illustrated edition known about (but not surviving) is from 1441, commissioned by Piero di Cosimo de' Medici from the artist Matteo de' Pasti.
http://www.artnet.com/library/06/0657/T065724.asp

The great Italian site "I Triumphi di Francesco Petrarca" has notes about the published commentaries. An interesting one was done for Borso d'Este, by Bernardo Ilicino, begun in 1468. This is interesting because Bernardo was the son of Pietro, who was Filippo Maria Visconti's physician and made a commentary on Petrarch's "Rerum vulgarium fragmenta" for the Duke around 1443:

"L'interesse per la poesia petrarchesca non era nuovo nella famiglia del Lapini: già Pietro Ilicino, padre di Bernardo e medico personale di Filippo Maria Visconti, aveva composto intorno al 1443 per il suo illustre paziente un commento in chiave allegorica dei Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, che non ci è pervenuto."
http://www.humnet.unipi.it/~paolino/CIBIT_02/esegesi/schede_es/ilicino.html

(see also
http://www.rarebooks.nd.edu/exhibits/durand/italian/petrarca.html )

Bernardo's commentary on the Triumphi is available on gallica.bnf.fr -
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-60185

- this is an Italian edition of 1497.

Ross