Andrea del Sarto's "Hanged Man" sketches

Hi, Jean-Michel,

jmd said:

Interesting that use of the FALL of 'man' is used in conjunction with the hanged man - I have, in my notes, this concept and the fall as a consequence of the consumption of the Tree of Life linked with the Maison Dieu ('Tower'), rather than with Le Pendu.

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The Fall, as the origin of Death, is always connected with both the death of individuals and Mankind. This may be implicit or explicit. This is why Camille sometimes refers to the scene Remiet depicted as "Death" -- the Fall is the introduction of death to the world.

The idea of a Betrayal resulting in death (the Traitor/Death combination in Tarot) is also a commonplace, and treason against God (Judas) or the just ruler (Cassius and Brutus) are what Dante put as the archetypal sins. And, of course, there is Satan, whose betrayal of God caused his own fall and whose subsequent treachery lead to the Fall of Man and sovereignty of Death over Mankind. So for those who actually want to understand why these subjects were chosen and put in the orderings most commonly known, we finally have a sound answer... although it also entails fitting that pair of cards into a larger narrative of the middle trumps, and the middle trumps into the overall narrative of the three sections.

Best regards,
Michael

jmd said:

Interesting that use of the FALL of 'man' is used in conjunction with the hanged man - I have, in my notes, this concept and the fall as a consequence of the consumption of the Tree of Life linked with the Maison Dieu ('Tower'), rather than with Le Pendu.

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There are two "Fall of Man" themes. One is the Fall from the Garden of Eden which is often linked with the Tower. But, the Gnostics talked about the Fall into Matter of man-who-was-made-in-God's-image. They are related, but not exactly the same thing. In the Gnostic view, the Fall-into-Matter also involved the Godhead itself and relates to the descent of Sophia who "falls" through pity at the lot of humans and Christ who comes to find her. I may not be explaining this very well as it's off the top of my head. It has to do with the paradox of the necessity of knowing matter in order to know spirit - to see oneself "reflected" in the below.

Oedipus Exposed

Mary mentioned finding some images of the "Oedipus Exposed" motif online, and Kwaw also pursued this digression a bit, so I've followed up on it some more. Camille said that the inverted hanging was a medieval elaboration on the Oedipus story, and I wondered when the inverted hanging thing started, but the answer wasn't immediately apparent via Googling. However, Google did turn up some examples.


A famous 19th-century representation is by Millet. There is an article discussing that one at the National Gallery site.

Millet's "Saint Jerome Tempted" and "Oedipus Taken Down from the Tree":
The Discovery of a Lost Painting (Bulletin 24, 1974)
http://national.gallery.ca/bulletin.../laughton1.html


If someone wanted to pursue the subject of the hanged infant Oedipus in fine art, this list of works would be a good place to start.

Rutgers University Libraries Research Guide
Images of Oedipus in Art: Medieval Period to Present
http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/ru...dipus_art.shtml

The earliest example included on that Rutgers list is a 17th-century etching by Salvator Rosa. There are a couple illustrations of it online, including a large version linked on the following page.

The Genius of Salvator Rosa (2006 Giornale Nuovo blog)
http://www.spamula.net/blog/2006/09...tor_rosa_1.html


Google Books, which rarely fails to turn up something useful, gave me The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe, by John Boswell. It includes a 13th-century illustration of the infant Oedipus hanging from a scaffold rather than a tree. Naturally, this makes him look even more like the Hanged Man in Tarot.

Google Books: The Kindness of Strangers
http://tinyurl.com/2zxpo2

Oedipus, in a thirteenth-century illumination. In the upper left, Oedipus is exposed at the order of his father, King Laios; in the upper right he fights with Laios, unaware of his identity; in the lower left, he slays the Sphinx; in the lower right, he rules as king. The exposing of children at the the command of the father, consequent misfortune for the parents, and great accomplishment by the foundling himself are common themes of the literature of abandonment. The peculiar mode of exposing depicted here (hanging the child by his feet) is probably a conflation of the Greek story, in which the baby's ankles were pierced, with the medieval custom of hanging children in trees to protect them from animals. Contemporary written descriptions, however, suggest that such infants were carefully wrapped and left with tokens. Cf. plates 3 and 13. (Courtesy of the Schlossbibliothek, Pommersfelden: Cod. 295, fol. 52v -- Bildarchiv Foto Marburg)

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Two other books which seem to be worth looking into are Oedipus, a Folklore Casebook, ed. Lowell Edmunds and Alan Dundes (1983) and Oedipus : the Ancient Legend and its Later Analogues, by Lowell Edmunds (1985). Those should have the answers about when and where this variation on the Oedipus story was introduced, as much as answers exist.

Best regards,
Michael

The Oedipus Story in Sophocles

Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King)
Sophocles (trans. Francis Storr, 1912)
http://www.ancient-mythology.com/greek/oedipus_rex.php

Argument: To Laius, King of Thebes, an oracle foretold that the child born to him by his queen Jocasta would slay his father and wed his mother. So when in time a son was born the infant's feet were riveted together and he was left to die on Mount Cithaeron. But a shepherd found the babe and tended him, and delivered him to another shepherd who took him to his master, the King or Corinth. Polybus being childless adopted the boy, who grew up believing that he was indeed the King's son. [...]

MESSENGER Since Polybus was naught to thee in blood.
OEDIPUS What say'st thou? was not Polybus my sire?
M. As much thy sire as I am, and no more.
O. My sire no more to me than one who is naught?
M. Since I begat thee not, no more did he.
O. What reason had he then to call me son?
M. Know that he took thee from my hands, a gift.
O. Yet, if no child of his, he loved me well.
M. A childless man till then, he warmed to thee.
O. A foundling or a purchased slave, this child?
M. I found thee in Cithaeron's wooded glens.
O. What led thee to explore those upland glades?
M. My business was to tend the mountain flocks.
O. A vagrant shepherd journeying for hire?
M. True, but thy savior in that hour, my son.
O. My savior? from what harm? what ailed me then?
M. Those ankle joints are evidence enow.
O. Ah, why remind me of that ancient sore?
M. I loosed the pin that riveted thy feet.
O. Yes, from my cradle that dread brand I bore.
M. Whence thou deriv'st the name that still is thine.

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The name, Oedipus, means "swollen feet", and was given to the infant by his adoptive father because of his injury.

mjhurst said:

Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King)
Sophocles (trans. Francis Storr, 1912)
http://www.ancient-mythology.com/greek/oedipus_rex.php


The name, Oedipus, means "swollen feet", and was given to the infant by his adoptive father because of his injury.

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BTW, the three part Oedipus play cycle by Sophocles can easily be related to all 22 Major Arcana cards as a symbolic parallel. The details fit awfully well, in sequence. I did my work on this back in the early 70s, and so I can't remember the precise connections without re-reading the works. It was one of my first big "breakthroughs" in seeing how such archetypal motifs fit Tarot ala Jung & Campbell.

Mary

mjhurst said:

Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King)
Sophocles (trans. Francis Storr, 1912)

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There is also the latin play by Seneca which was probably more widely known in the medieval to early renaissance period than those of Sophocles. And Seneca's influence upon medieval tragedy narratives also has parallels with tarot:

Medieval tragedy: A narrative (not a play) concerning how a person falls from high to low estate as the Goddess Fortune spins her wheel. In the middle ages, there was no "tragic" theater per se; medieval theater in England was primarily liturgical drama, which developed in the later middle ages (15th century) as a way of teaching scripture to the illiterate (mystery plays) or of reminding them to be prepared for death and God's Judgment (morality plays). Medieval "tragedy" was found not in the theater but in collections of stories illustrating the falls of great men (e.g. Boccacio's Falls of Illustrious Men, Chaucer's Monk's Tale from the Canterbury Tales, and Lydgate's Falls of Princes). These narratives owe their conception of Fortune in part to the Latin tragedies of Seneca, in which Fortune and her wheel play a prominent role.

http://cla.calpoly.edu/~dschwart/engl339/tragedy.html#sources

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Also of consideration perhaps, as previously mentioned in other threads, is the medieval conflation of Oedipus with Judas in the Golden Legends.

Kwaw

kwaw said:

Also of consideration perhaps, as previously mentioned in other threads, is the medieval conflation of Oedipus with Judas in the Golden Legends.

Kwaw

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According to the Golden Legends the wife of Ruben Simeon, of the race of David, living in Jerusalem, dreams of the birth of a son who will bring disaster and upon awakening immediately realizes she is pregnant with the very son of her dream. Unable to bring themselves to kill the child they put him in a little ark and put it out to sea, and the ark washes up on the island of Iscariot, where the Queen finds it and adopts him [traces here to Moses too, also to an alternative etymology of Oedipus as - pais, relating to his abandonment to death by exposure by being cast away on water].

Enraged by his brothers reminding him he was a foundling he kills him and runs off to Jeruslam where he is employed by Pontius Pilate. Caught stealing apples from a neighbours garden he knocks the neighbour on the head with a stone and kills him; and pontius Pilate gives him the property of the neighbour and his widow in marriage. From conversations with his wife it is pieced together that the neighbour and his widow are in fact his parents. Struck with remorse he seeks forgiveness through Christ and becomes his disciple; the rest we know.

Frazer [Golden Bough] suggests the legend was concocted by a medieval monk, who having read the tale of Oedipus turned it to the purpose of "casting a still deeper shade of infamy on the character of the apostate and traitor".

In reference to Judas stealing apples, in his confessions St.Augustine goes on over 30 to 40 pages about his scrumping as a child. Reflecting upon his 'crime' of stealing pears from a neighbours fruit tree as a child over numerous pages he deducts a whole philosophy of the innate sinnfullness and 'inborn' evil nature of humanity.

So while the whole episode of 'stealing apples' may to modern sensibilities seem ridiculous in the extremity of its outcome, it is maybe in the context of Augustine's reflections upon 'stealing pears' and his resultant philosophy on original sin and the innate and irredeemable evil nature of humanity that we should be evaluating such a legend. Remembering in such 'reminiscences' the allusion to the biblical eating of the 'fruit of the tree of knowledge' and its consequence in the 'fall of mankind'. And the association between the 'traitor' Judas Iscariot and the initial 'betrayal' of God in the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

(In some variations of the Oedipus myth, he is suffering not for his own sins but those of his fathers, paralleling the concept of original sin as an inherited 'sin').

Kwaw
ref:
The Road to Delphi by Michael Wood.

Ahh Kwaw your posts are always great reading!
The message of Oedipus of that you can't escape your fate- seems a very logical one for a card game of Trumps- we are dealt the cards and must play them to the best of our ability and not leap to judgements- just as like life is dependent on how well we play the game or how well we live our life. It makes sense the mixing of the two streams of myth and morality and the reconciling Pagan/classical thought with Christianity(a Renaissance theme). Many Thanks ~Rosanne

Rosanne said:

The message of Oedipus of that you can't escape your fate- seems a very logical one for a card game of Trumps- we are dealt the cards and must play them to the best of our ability and not leap to judgements- just as like life is dependent on how well we play the game or how well we live our life.

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He was certainly a figure, like Judas, upon which the rhetoric of free will, foreknowledge and predestination (among other things) could be hung:

http://books.google.com/books?id=3k...ts=SjcDDjpYZW&sig=EgOYOmBJG4QBIUvx1LRULaYBNbw

The Hanged Man as Judas (it was all the wife's fault)

In trying to search for notebooks that show the Oedipus story in the Renaissance I came across some interesting things about the mixing of of biblical and myth in apocryphal writings and illustrations.

Some well-known and extremely popular works; The compilation Speculum Historiae by Vincent de Beauvais discusses the history of mankind from the creation to 1254, with the episodes of Christ’s Passion, Descension to Hell, and Resurrection taken from the Gospel of Nicodemus. It emerged before 1260.The Legenda Aurea was written before 1267 by Jacobus de Voragine; it was perhaps the most influential hagiographic work of the Middle Ages. Its author, just like Beauvais, makes use of the apocryphal narratives liberally: he cites chapters from the Gospel of Nicodemus many times and in many ways. Hundreds or even thousands of manuscripts of both works circulated in Europe. The Gospel of Nicodemus -The acts of Peter, Decensus and the Miracle of the Cock (Rooster) were recycled and copied time and again. (Ref: llona Nagy on continuing Folkstories of Europe)

Now here is a modern translation of The Miracle of the Cock from an early Latin Codice that the historians reckon still extant to about 40 copies with different emphasis on Judas.

Jesus then decides to travel to Bethany and celebrate the Passover in the house of Simon the Pharisee and his wife Akrosennā. Jesus sends Peter, James, and John to inform the couple of his arrival (2:1–9). [Jesus and his disciples arrive and have the Passover meal in Simon’s house.] When Jesus
expresses his wish to return to the Mount of Olives, Judas hurriedly
leaves the assembly and runs to betray his master to the religious leader
of Jerusalem. Jesus resurrects a rooster that Akrosennā had cooked and
orders it to follow Judas (4:1–8). Concealing itself, the rooster spies on
Judas in Jerusalem. First, the betrayer sleeps with his wife, who perfidiously
advises him on the best way to deliver Jesus to his enemies. Next,
Judas receives the reward for his betrayal, and he confirms with Saul of
Tarsus the signal that will enable Saul to recognize and seize Jesus (4:9–
16). At this point, the rooster swiftly flies back to Bethany and reports
these events to Jesus and the disciples. In return for its services, Jesus
sends the rooster to heaven for a period of one thousand years. [---] (4:17–
32).“And so Judas went home to get a rope for the hanging, and he found his wife roasting a cock on embers. Instead of getting down to it [the cock], he told her:‘Stand up, woman, and give me a rope because I want to hang myself’ His wife then told him: ‘Why do you say so?’ And Judas says: ‘I want you to know that I betrayed my master, Jesus, to the villains really unjustly so that Pilate will put him to death.
But he will resurrect on the third day, and then woe betide us!’
Then the woman tells him: Don’t you say this or even think of it, because
Jesus will resurrect as you say only if this cock roasted on embers is able
to give sound’. As soon as she uttered these words, the cock spread its
wings, and screams three times. Now Judas got even more astounded,
and immediately tied a knot on the rope, hanged himself, and breathed
his last.(aprocryphal Acts of Peter)

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Now it is noted that the this is one Gospel that mixes Oedipus with Judas- as the wife is the one that causes him to sin- and he hangs himself as a result.
This mixed theme was very common.
~Rosanne