Greek Statues & Iconography and the Tarot Images

Huck

MikeH said:
I have lots of Greco-Roman imagery at hand that was, or probably was, available in 15th-17th century Italy and France, relating to various tarot cards. How do I put it up for people to look at?

Finally, what is your source for her being the original for Aquarius? All I find is Ganymede in that role. It makes sense--she had to go somewhere after she lost her job. I just can't find a source.

"img" at the begin at the begin and "/img" at the end of the picture address - img and /img inside square brackets.

Ganymedes became Aquarius, not Hebe. Hebe became the "bride in heaven" of Heracles. Which job did Hebe lost?
She is "forever young" in the triade young woman, married woman and old woman. Sister Eileithiya is goddess for birth, so "married", although the husband is missing, and half-sister is Eris as "old goddess" (as Ate oldest daughter of Zeus in some variants; in obscure manner daughter of Nyx; called a half-sister of Ares, who is brother to Eileithiya and Hebe and all are children of Hera and Zeus). One man and three women, which are only one.
 

MikeH

Thanks, Huck, I will try learning how to put up some images, if Beanu or anyone else is still interested. In the meantime I have a few comments about some of Beanu's other posts in this thread. First, I don't know who the figure is in your first image. She could be Venus, but she could also be a nymph or even another goddess bathing (famously Artemis). Admittedly she is similar to the figure in the Cary Sheet Star card. But that one has a star on her shoulder, two jugs pouring liquid, and two fish below her. The star is one of five small ones on the card, suggesting the five star-like planets, of which Venus is the only female. The fish below her suggest the legend that Venus and Cupid escaped the monster Typhon by jumping into the Tigris and turning themselves into fish. The two jugs, in the context of my overall interpretation of the card, suggest the two aspects of Venus, celestial (Aphrodite Uranos) and common (Aphrodite Pandemos), in Plato's Symposium. Drinking from one gives you the one, drinking from the other gives you the other. As for the image you posted, we would need to know more about it before making a positive identification.

The image of Jupiter that you posted is interesting because of Pausanias's description, cited on Wikipedia. Pausanias was a frequent source of images during the emblem-crazy Renaissance and cited often by the emblem books (e.g. Cartari). And the 1572 engraving is also relevant. It is very much like engravings of emperors from that time. (Maybe I will try posting one later.)
Other Greco-Roman mythological figures shown on thrones are Pluto, Dionysus, Sol, and Serapis. (And maybe Neptune, but I don't know.) Often during the Renaissance Sol was considered the king, and Jupiter more of a monk or adviser, even sporting a cowl. (See Seznec, Survival of the Pagan Gods, pp. 161, 165, and the "Renaissance Astrology" website, under "professions" on the pages for Jupiter and Sol. Sol Invictis, the Mithraic chief god, would also fit here.) Dionysus might have been considered an emperor, since he conquered so many lands. There is a relief of him in profile much like the Emperor card, with his hair falling down his neck, in the manner of the gold or red hat on the Emperor card. (See http://www.bacchos.org for the image and comparison. It would be important to know whether this image was known during the Renaissance; I suspect it was.) Also, in Italy Dionysus was sometimes merged with Pluto. There is a relief of Pluto and Proserpine together on a throne, Proserpine holding a stalk of grain and Pluto (or Dionysus) a bunch of grapes. In Roman times Serapis was a hybrid of Zeus and Osiris (the latter also identified with Pluto and Dionysus). I will look to see if there are images of him similar to the Emperor card. Osiris, part of the pantheon during Roman times, would also have been shown on a throne.

And yes, Chronos and Kronos were deliberately mixed in Greco-Roman times. The myth-writers loved homonyms.
 

MikeH

Checking out the various Greco-Roman candidates for Emperor that I listed earlier, I see that Brian Ines, in his book "The Tarot" (p. 25) attributes the image of Dionysus discussed at http://www.bacchus.org to Herculaneum, which was excavated long after the Marseille tarot was developed. It appears that Dionysus is out. Also, Sol Invictus always had a sun-burst halo around his head. And Pluto was not associated with an eagle: he has Cerberus, or bunches of grapes (or parsley, as one site has it). So far the closest fit is with the statue of Zeus at Olympia: not the statue at the Hermitage that Beanu shows us, but the 1572 engraving, the coins representing it, and Pausanias' description.

The coin on the right at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Zeus_at_Olympia

is from Elis, Greece, but of Roman issue (Frazier, 1898, "Pausanias's description of Greece," Vol. 3 p. 532) and housed in Florence. I read somewhere on the internet that it was issued by Hadrian, with the head of Zeus in Hadrian's likeness. So such a coin might well have been known in Italy during the 15th-17th centuries. (The other coin is in Paris, according to Frazier, also an auspicious place for it to be. And looking on the internet, I see that other Roman-era coins have been found with a similar image on one side.)

One thing of interest on the coin is the crossed legs, as on the Marseille Emperor card. During the Renaissance people would have known the significance of crossed legs, which appears on some Marseille Kings as well. Panofsky, writing of Durer's use of it in an engraving of Christ, says, "This attitude, denoting a calm and superior state of mind, was actually prescribed to judges in ancient German law-books" (Durer, p. 78). Another thing, on both coins, is the mass of hair at the top, going down the neck. That is like the Emperor's hair, and also like his hat. The Emperor's face is also like that on the coin of the face. The eagle, of course, is associated with Jupiter. On the Emperor's shield it is positioned like the eagle in the 1572 engraving, even though that one (in the engraving) does not follow Pausanias's description (where it is on his scepter). The image of Nike is missing from the Emperor card, of course, but it is replaced by the cross and globe on the scepter, a Renaissance version of the same thing, domination. Another point of similarity between card and statue is that both are in a rural setting--the statue was at the site of the Olympic Games.

The statue that Beanu shows us may be based on the discovery in 1888 at Eleusis (Frazier Vol. 2, p. 506) of a Roman-era painting of the original statue. In this painting, Frazier tells us (vol. 3, p. 532), Victory is holding the wreath. Pausanias has her wearing it on her head. No sculpture copies of the statue itself are known to have survived from ancient times, Frazier says.

Here is Pausanias's description (http://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias5A.html):

"[5.11.1] XI. The god sits on a throne, and he is made of gold and ivory. On his head lies a garland which is a copy of olive shoots. In his right hand he carries a Victory, which, like the statue, is of ivory and gold; she wears a ribbon and – on her head – a garland. In the left hand of the god is a scepter, ornamented with every kind of metal, and the bird sitting on the scepter is the eagle. The sandals also of the god are of gold, as is likewise his robe. On the robe are embroidered figures of animals and the flowers of the lily."

Also of interest may be other accounts of the statue given by Frazier (Vol III, p. 531: this might be in Google Books; I know parts of the book are there, but I looked at the book itself). For example, the rhetorician Dio Chrysostrom, in Orationes xii, represents Phideas speaking of his "peaceful and gentle Zeus, the overseer, as it were, of united and harmonious Greece, whom by the help of my art and of the wise and good city of Elis I set up, mild and august in an unconstrained attitude, the giver of life and breath and all good things, the common father and saviour of mankind."

And here is another story. "The emperor Caligula meditated transporting the image to Rome, and replacing the head of Zeus with his own; but it is said that the ship which was built to convey the image perished by lightning, and that as often as the emperor's agents approached to lay hands on the image, it burst into a loud peal of laughter (Seutonius, Caligula, 22; Dio Cassius, lix. 28.3 sq.; Josephus, Ant. Jud. xix. 1)." Apparently Zeus does not suffer fools.

At some point I will try inserting images. But these few are easy enough to find at the Wikipedia web page.
 

MikeH

OK, now I will try my hand at inserting images.

First, I take back what I said earlier about Canova's Hebe being irrelevant to the tarot's Temperance. A work of art done after the development of the card shows how the card might have been seen at the time, i.e. Temperance as Hebe in the late 18th century.

Here are two other examples, relating to the Lover card. First, Ricci's "Bacchus and Ariadne," 1713. This image is from http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/BacchusAndAriadneSebastianoRicci.html:

BacchusAriadneRicci1.jpg


Here we have Cupid on top, the Bacchante as the woman on the left of the card, Ariadne as the woman on the right, and Bacchus as the man.

For a different interpretation of the card, here is Veronese's "Choice of Hercules," c. 1580 (from http://www.topofart.com/artists/Paolo_Veronese/art_reproduction/3193/Allegory_of_Virtue_and_Vice_(Choice_of_Hercules).php):

veronese002.jpg


But my favorite is Durer's variation, 1498 (from http://www.relewis.com/durer-hercules.html):

durer-hercules.jpg


He will perhaps be suggesting a menage a trois among the three of them.

In looking on the web, I discovered one place relating this kind of thing to tarot, Michael J. Hurst's blog, for example the entry:

http://pre-gebelin.blogspot.com/2008/04/prodicus-allegory-of-virtue-and-vice.html.

However he seems to have a rather narrow focus, moral allegories. I don't think you will find the Ricci there, for example. And I'm not sure what he makes of the Durer; he doesn't say. It seems not to fit his analysis of the theme, even though he posts the image. In Durer's image, Hercules prevents the bellicose Virtue from lambasting innocent Pleasure, who seems to be minding her own business (with a satyr). Durer's Hercules seems to be on the side of Pleasure, as though saying, "I've had enough of people killing other people in the name of virtue."

And in Durer's time the slaughter had just begun. Late in life, he drew a plan for a monument to the hundreds of thousands of German peasants (whose uprising had been condemned by both Luther and the Catholic Church) massacred by the "virtuous" troops of Emperor Charles V. The monument, featuring a peasant at the top with a sword in his back, was never built, of course. (Correct me if I am wrong, Huck. And I know there is a different one, quite modest, in a modern style at one of the battlefields; I don't know the date it was done.)

ART316796%20copy.jpg


If I digress, it is because I think Durer's Hercules offers the best allegorical interpretation of the tarot card that I know of. The choice is for both: virtue is pleasurable and pleasure, within limits, is virtuous. (On the card, the young man looks for direction to Virtue, and Virtue says, Your young lady is a worthy choice.) This, moreover, was a common Renaissance view, articulated by such writers as Ben Jonson in England and Montaigne in France (among many others).

Now I will see if the images show up on this post!
 

Bernice

Congrats! Images up and stunning.

Bee :)
 

MikeH

Thanks, Bernice. Now I'm going to try something a little more iffy--an image I scanned and then uploaded to a blog of mine that I normally keep hidden, but which I unveiled, i.e. published, just for this purpose. I clicked on the image so that it's own particular URL would appear, then copied it to this reply the way I did before, and added
after.

043JupSez(2).jpg.jpg


This should be Jupiter with a cowl, from Seznec, Survival of the Pagan Gods.

Judging from the preview, it didn't work. So how do I insert images that I've scanned and put on a blog? Is there some trick that I have missed?
 

MikeH

I am trying again after creating a different URL address.

JupSez2.jpg


The preview tells me it doesn't work. Could it be that Google doesn't allow inserting of pictures from its blogs? If so I will have to set up my blogs somewhere else.
 

Debra

Copy the image back onto your desktop first.

:)

eta: there are some rules for the AT forum about posting links to personal web pages which I can't recall because I don't care...but you can ask a moderator for guidance. Click the little "oh no!" button on the lower right of your post, "report" yourself to the mod, and perhaps he or she can help.
 

kwaw

MikeH said:
I
The preview tells me it doesn't work. Could it be that Google doesn't allow inserting of pictures from its blogs? If so I will have to set up my blogs somewhere else.

Save your images to a photo sharing site such as photobook and link from there.