vh0610 wrote: 27 May 2022, 14:28
Phaeded, I will transfer our discussion to
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2282&start=10, since we are now talking about Dante and this has nothing to do with the Nightmare Alley. In contrast, Dante provides in his Commedia a stairway to heaven, an alley of light. See you there.
VH,
Agree this is the wrong thread, but I don't think Plato has much if anything to do with the ur-tarot, so not sure what I would add there.
"We fully agree Phaeded, that the famous triumphal procession at the end of the Purgatory is decisive for the ur-tarocch' (I prefer to name it like this since the name signifies exactly the 14 (18) -> 21 + 0 transition)."
Actually I only see the tripartite structure of the first 7 realms of the Paradiso adapted as the schema reflected in tarot - 7 Virtues, 7 Exemplary themes (exempli generalized), and 7 Planets. The Fool, as the negation of virtue - the exact oppositive vice of
stulticia from Prudence in Giotto's frescoes, bumped up to the highest virtue - properly stands outside of this schema, as the lowest null card. The key for me is the ur-tarot must have matched the CY in trumps - so only three trumps are missing - the Wheel (which we know existed in the Brambilla), and the two missing cardinals of Temperance and Justice. 14, no fool.
The planets and fool are missing in the Florentine ur-tarot, in my theory, because it was a triumphal celebration of the allied Florentine and Papal forces. The planets are a dubious series, and relatively under-represented in art at this point, in regard to the church, hence just the focus on Virtues and their exempli. And if Bruni was behind them then Filelfo, exiled from Florence and now newly arrived in Milan, would have known precisely what his old friend (now doing Cosimo's bidding) was up to: taking Filelfo's Dante-based diatribes against Cosimo - lectures held in the duomo no less - and returning Dante to the Florentine fold as part of the regime's propaganda (following his 1436 vita of Dante by just a few years - the most popular thing he wrote in the volgare - a whopping 156 MS survive; see James Hankins, "Humanism in the vernacular: the case of Leonardo Bruni." In Humanism and Creativity in the Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Ronald G. Witt, ed. Christopher, 2006: 25).
In c. 1451 Filelfo's new ducal client is an astronomically-inclined condottiero, F. Sforza, who was on the outs with Pope Eugene and needing the new Pope Nicholas V to intercede for peace in his war with Venice; ergo, no theologicals (closed associated with papacy so why assume them as your own propaganda?)- they are replaced. Filelfo, self-proclaimed Dante scholar, one-ups his old friend by completing the Dante-based deck by adding in the planets and throwing in the Fool to boot, representing the Ambrosian Republic rabble of whom Filelfo couldn't complain enough about in his Odes or letters. Tarot was in this view, then, the result of a humanist pissing match - ephemera never conceived by its inventors as something that would persist for centuries, but something pressed into service for their respective regimes for propaganda purposes. Alas (or hurrah?), the card-playing public had other ideas; and other ideas they had a aplenty - many of the trumps are modified beyond recognition from what they were in the ur-tarot.
The planets could necessarily be misinterpreted immediately. In addition to my Mercury example, let's say Mars looked like the one in the
De sphaera produced for Sforza - who wouldn't identify this red-skinned Mars as the Devil, with no astronomical context? Just add some talons and wings to Mars's cuirass and
pteruges(the Roman defensive skirt), and make his face more monstrous-looking to clarify the subsequent interpretation, et voila, the "devil" (who is not featured in the Paradiso):
"As far as my memory goes, in Dante's description at the end of the Purgatory the virtues are not in the carro, they are leading the procession behind the tetramorph. One can look it up..."
Merely a manuscript's illumination, proving Ross's point that whomever came up with tarot it had to be executed by someone else, allowing for the odd artistic disconnect.
Phaeded
Again: