Ross Caldwell wrote: 21 Aug 2023, 20:57
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, and you mean specific historical figures as exempla of the vice, while the virtue is just the allegory, not a person.
Specifically in regard to the cassoni, yes the allegory is generic, but there is no vice (that's the Florentine innovation, per my last post) and the exempli are mythic (Hercules) or historic (Scipio).
And again, per my previous post, in tarot the exempli get reduced to what Hurst called "ranks of mankind" but what I think of as more akin to "children of the planets" (whether tarot is dependent on the astrological schema or both drawing from a similar idea I can't say - the German material is early but Baldini is late or at least more difficult to date for his originals). In either case the exempli have been made generic.
How does this work for my schema? The "planets" row below wouldn't have existed in my theory for the initial ur-tarot of 14 trumps, and just the "exemplary theme" row would be the exempli, none of whom in the ur-tarot would really be an anti-type (the PMB does have that - e.g., 'hopelessness' of the hanged man replaces Hope); not even Death, which is merely the last physically visible planet (Saturn) where one casts off the last vestiges of one's mortal coil (planetary taints informing the embryo's development) before proceeding to the Empyrean, necessary for salvation. Technically Dante only uses historical exempli (e.g., Constance in the Moon), but there are no individual attributes in tarot, and just typical exempli of those types can be found at each thematic/planetary level (the planets themselves not getting added in until the PMB). So...
The
Wheel,
Judgement (just burghers rising from the graves) and
Death all would naturally be shown without specific historical exempli.
The
Chariot, all contemporaries no doubt thinking of the one Beatrice arrives with the Virtues, could simply have been a virago meant to indicate Florence herself, placed upon the St. John's palio cart (the winning prize of the cloth becoming an awning in the CY chariot; for the original Florentine one, see Zanobi Perini's 1408 description (very similar to Dati's 1420 description):
On a beautiful triumphal car, guarded by a lion on each corner, painted with a pattern of golden lilies and their coats of arms, drawn by two horses, each caparisoned, in the way that I shall now describe, in white and red, in fine fabric. And unarmed, on each horse, rode a page, beautiful, swift and light, and both dressed in similar livery. Let us leave them. In the middle of the car stands a pole where the noble palio of vermilion cloth is displayed, and at its top sits a lily...). A predecessor example would be like that found in the c. 1335 Royal MS 6 E IX f. 13r, the personification of Florence as a woman with arms folded across her chest and Florentine lily behind her (Convenevole da Prato, Carmina regia: Address of the City of Prato to Robert of Anjou).
! Royal MS 6.e.IX. f. 13r. Miniature of the personification of Florence as a woman with arms folded across her chest..jpg
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Love, as I've argued countless times here, would be similar to that version in the CVI (dancing couples with putti above them, the latter as we find also in dal Ponte virtues cassone).
dal Ponte virtues on left (c. 1436?), CVI Love on right (c. 1460-1480) [although the CVI comes later it is not adapting the earlier dal Ponte, but rather dal Ponte is adapting a Florentine festival involving dancing for his allegory of female virtues paired with male heroes; dancing was central to notions of communal peace and prosperity. Of course the virtues are not dancing here, but the notion of harmony is underscored by the celestial symbol on the book held by the central exemplar beneath Charity; see above in earlier post]
Dante does give pronounced roles for the historical figures in the moon as
Empress Constance (as well as the Franciscan nun Piccarda, who gets added in as the "Popess" in the PMB as a replacement for Faith) and
Emperor Justinian in the sphere of Mercury, but artistic convention would have shown those two as stock images of the Holy Roman Emperor and his consort.
Thus, seven ahistorical exempli but whose historical representatives are all described in each of the visible seven spheres of the heavens by Dante in his Paradiso.