Parzival
Beautifully summarized. Still, I wonder what those first painters were thinking.Neoplatonic Soul force? Astral world? Or maybe just an artistic non-touch.
In the earliest Italian Tarots, there is no fluidic flow between the two vessels --only invisibility. What do you suppose this meant to the artists who painted the mysterious first image of Temperance, before the later artists "watered" the space between the two vessels?
It's hard to know what the old artists has in mind without doing a deep study; but the liquid really isn't necessary for the symbolism. Take the Visconti-Sforza for example, one arm is raised in the act of pouring, and as the four cardinal virtues were usually depicted as a group,
everyone would have known what it symbolized;
and even if they weren't, the symbolism would have been common knowledge.
I know all four aren't in the VS, I was using that as an example where pouring is illustrated without any liquid. You don't have to have the liquid to know what she's doing; the symbolism is the act of pouring.
I agree the symbolism of the act of pouring does not require depiction of that being poured.
Pre-tarot I thought depictions of all four as a group were fairly common, in frescoes or statues for example. This would've been the source from which the early tarot artist drew.
zephyros said:Besides which, the idea of balance and moderation is already taken care of in another card, and so well that adding that to Temperance would essentially duplicate them.
In the earliest Italian Tarots, there is no fluidic flow between the two vessels --only invisibility. What do you suppose this meant to the artists who painted the mysterious first image of Temperance, before the later artists "watered" the space between the two vessels?