Re: Noblet Emperor's new clothes

31
Okay...
As David Bowie could say here : Let s Dance !

-Empereur at the (L)eft and at the (R)ight side positioned.

L : Vieville / Pierre Madenie / Dodal / Jean Pierre Payen / Jean Payen / Tourcaty / Chosson / Conver

R : Noblet / TdP ?
Last edited by EUGIM on 11 Apr 2009, 06:37, edited 1 time in total.
The Universe is like a Mamushka.

Re: Noblet Emperor's new clothes

32
jmd wrote:
OnePotato wrote:I personally don't think the direction of the Emperor makes any difference in the original intent.
If it DID, they would have made a point of consistently getting it right. I have no reason to believe that cardmakers didn't know what they were doing. In other words, I think he's facing "reversed" from the usual standard because it doesn't actually matter which way he faces.

The concept of left-to-right narrative is relatively modern, and is rooted in the later dominance of literacy and writing.
...except that the dexter-sinister orientation was important even in heraldry... so there is a sense in which the direction the Emperor faces has importance. Also, the 'face of God' is at times described in profile.
I stand by the whole of what I said.
I did not mean to suggest that there was never ANY significance to left-right orientation prior to the rise of literacy.
Rather that the directional aspect of NARRATIVE has changed.

But regardless of that, if we are to accept your suggestion that the L/R orientation of the figure in this particular card carries some intentional, significant meaning, then I'm left wondering why several cardmakers seem to have overlooked this rule and depicted him facing the "wrong" way from the majority. Noblet, Heri, Solesio, Mayer and a few others are in the minority here. I find it hard to believe that they are "wrong", and even harder to believe that they are "right" and all others "wrong".

The circumstantial evidence suggests that this is all simply a function of how the reference image is transcribed onto the woodblock. The various renderings of the Mantegna deck are a good example of this phenomenon.

ETA:
The Morgan Visconte Emperor faces right.
The Carey Yale Visconte Emperor faces forward.
I am not a cannibal.

Re: Noblet Emperor's new clothes

33
Okay JMD and One...

* Which is the deepest stream flowing here ???

-Which is the point afterall ?
I think that is no irrelevant the postural side position of IIII,but also I see that is somewhat strange that this figure don t face the normal sequence of the deck in a 97 % of the cases.
The point will be why ?
The Universe is like a Mamushka.

Examining old book bindings

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Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: 17 Jun 2008, 16:52 I did peek at 16th century book bindings when they were broken open a little, to look for playing cards, and one time I found a beautiful red and black devotional print in a cover binding - scenes from the life of Jesus, crucifixion at the center. But I resisted the temptation to pry the binding open further. Maybe I was stupid...
I just read this article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/ ... ding-x-ray and it made me think (not for the first time) that something like X-ray microtomography would be an ideal way of investigating the contents of old book bindings. I then did some cursory googling to see if I could find any examples of people doing this, but I didn't find any (admittedly I only googled for about half a minute). Nevertheless, it seems like it would work, and I imagine the results would be invaluable for historians of all kinds, not just historians of playing cards. Those old book bindings had all kinds of things in them.
cron