Updating Cards VI-IX (Howard)

My comments, explicating and updating Moakley:

1. Feminine Cups and Coins vs. masculine Batons and Swords is also present in the Cary-Yale, if Visconti heraldry=Bianca Maria and Sforza heraldry=Francesco. Perhaps minchiate got it from there (now that we have grounds for thinking it goes back to before 1466, for which see Pratesi, "Elucibrations"). My vague recollection is that the masculine 10 high vs. feminine 10 low goes back very far, at least to the Mamluk decks. So maybe it is determined by the sexual symbolism after all, which I think can be seen in the King of Batons with his phallic middle finger, like in the Noblet Bateleur (below, colors restored by Flornoy). Some of these Ferrara/Venice decks (Kaplan vol. 2) have maids and pages.

As to why the feminine order goes from Ace high to 10 low, she attributes it to "feminine humility". I would think that possibly r it is a joke coming from Muslim polygamy, that 10 women are 10 times worse than 1 woman, since you have to feed and clothe them and they bicker among themselves; but 10 soldiers can do 10 times the fighting of 1 soldier. Any other guesses?

2. In combining four cards into one scene, Moakley might have been inspired by a Chariot card in one of the Metropolitan sheets (catalog number 31.54.159), below, which I myself wonder if an Orphic medallion might have inspired; but I have no idea if that medallion was available then. I know another famous one, of Phanes in the egg, is now in the d'Este Library in Modena. I posted the image below at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=974&p=14337&hilit=Kerenyi#p14337; "Phaeded" posted the whole medallion in the next post.



It has Cupid (it seems to be a wing rather than a banner) on a chariot with the loving couple below, thus combining two motifs. Moakley's imagination supplies the rest, notably Temperance and Fortitude.

Unfortunately Moakley cannot allow this card to be a Petrarchan Triumph in its own right, since it has to be, on her analysis, the chariot on which Love stands. Freed from that interpretation, the card would suggest rather the allegory of Chastity, but of the married kind as opposed to Petrarch's nun. In Petrarch, the Triumph, strictly speaking, is Pudicizia, the avoidance of shame, of which Chastity is one aspect. We can imagine a noble marriage procession with such a lady coming to meet her husband, or escorted by that husband, in such a chariot, her reputation and virginity intact. Then after marriage her devotion to family and avoidance of lewdness continues to govern her conduct. There is one more Petrachan Triumph than she imagined.

3. Moakley says of the PMB Love card, "the bride's dress bears the heraldic device of the Visconti sun, and the bridegroom's a design which suggests the Sforza dragon's webbed wings." I can't see the Sforza dragon's wings. Help, anybody.

In the Cary-Yale, the Sforza fountain was on the groom's chest, so it makes sense.

4. Moakley says of the CY card,

The lovers in that set would be either Filippo Maria Visconti and Bianca Maria of Savoy, or Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Bona of Savoy.

and adds in the note,

For the card in which the bride is a lady of Savoy see Steele (Notice) p 190. The suggestion that she could be Bona of Savoy is mine alone, based on a genealogical table showing that she married Galeazzo Maria Sforza. Steele refutes Count Cicognara's statement that she is another bride of Filippo Maria's than the lady of Savoy.

Well, it's nice to know that it was Moakley who first suggested Galeazzo and Bona. Usually it is given to Angieri, 1981. Moakley apparently didn't know about the Visconti coins in the suit of Coins. It was Angeri who defended the idea that the lady was Galleazo's Bona of Savoy in lgiht of those coins, by saying that the suit cards were made during the time of Filippo Maria and the triumphs added to celebrate the 1468 wedding.,

The Bona of Savoy idea was decisively refuted, in my opinion, by Dummett in Il Mondo e l'Angelo. Among other things, he says, to my mind the best argument (see viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1019&p=15152&hilit=Bona#p15152):

... it would not be a great compliment to a woman to have emblems of Savoy painted on a single card, and other cards were full of those of the Visconti and Sforza...

Cigognara's suggestion was that the shield was that of the city of Pavia (Dummett, Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards, p. 14). Dummett says that Angieri agreed with Cigognara, as did Ron Decker.


It is true that Galeazzo Maria was Count of Pavia at the time, and Francesco wasn't, until after Filippo's death (Ady, A History of Milan Under the Sforza, 1907, p. 41, as Phaeded notes at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=862&p=18081&hilit=Pavia+count#p18081); but Dummett decisively refuted the idea, noting that there is no Savoy heraldry in Cups and Coins as we would expect, only Visconti.

Also, why would Galeazzo use an old set of suit cards with Visconti coins on the Coin cards, as opposed to new ones with Sforza coins? Galeazzo was never known for cutting corners when it came to his own image.

 Dummett says these coins are slightly bigger than the actual coins but otherwise identical; but if so, no one to my knowledge ever produced images of the corresponding coins, as Marco showed; the coins usually presented are not replicas, even slightly larger, as the ways the inscriptions are put around the rearing horse image do not correspond(viewtopic.php?f=11&t=917&p=13798&hilit=rearing#p13807.

In a third try at identifying of the lovers, Kaplan argued for that the wedding commemorated was that of Bianca Maria and Francesco Sforza (Encylopedia of Tarot, Vol. 1, p. 107):

In the sixty-seven card Cary-Yale pack, the costumes in the suit of swords are decorated with a Sforza quince or a branch bearing leaves and flowers. A large fountain, also thought to be an early Sforza device, is used in the suit of staves. The remaining suits bear Visconti-devices--crowns with branches or fronds in the suit of cups and pelicans or doves in the suit of coins. Thus, two suits int he Cary-Yale pack contain Visconti devices and two contain Sforza devices, leading one to speculate that the deck was prepared about the time of the wedding in 1441 of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti, each family equally represented by two suits. Furthermore, The Lovers card depicts what may be the marriage scene and the aged figure depicted on the king of cups may represent the bride's father, Filippo Visconti. 

Whether or no it is a Marriage scene, the handshake signifies the contract and the bed that some see behind them its consummation.

However if it is a marriage scene, the pairs of banners,alternating on the tent should, like the suits, represent both families, the groom's heraldry paired with bride's. If the couple are Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Sforza, what are we to make of the banners? The Visconti viper is undoubtedly Visconti; if so, how is the white cross on a red field to be associated with the groom, Sforza? It is sometimes said that the white cross and red field was also the heraldry of the city of Pavia, and that the heir-apparent of the Visconti dynasty was always made Count of Pavia. As the husband of Filippo's son, this mantle would fall upon Francesco. The problem is that it didn't, not until Francesco took control of Pavia in 1450. Filippo did not intend that his son-in-law, a mere commoner, be the next duke, even if a will forged by Francesco said as much. His real will ceded the duchy to Naples. It is possible that in  putting the heraldry of Pavia on a card destined to be a marriage gift to the couple, Filippo wanted to suggest that Francesco would be so designated, so as to control him better at below his worth in wages. After all, Filippo did make Francesco a Viscount (as can be seen on a medal). But Filippo seems to  have been too strong a supporter of class barriers to have even hinted that a commoner could be is heir. Another possibility is that the deck's heraldry was determined  by Francesco himself, after he took Pavia, in a way that would make it appear that he was Filippo's heir. If he can forge a will, he can forge a tarot deck, in the sense of having it done in an archaic style that suggests its commission by the previous duke. 

Another explanation might be that except for the fountain, it is a generic deck that Filippo had used on other occasions, adding heraldics depending on the occasion. The Brera-Brambilla is another example, albeit one with 14 cards per regular suit rather than 16. There only Visconti heraldics are used, and those sparingly. n that case it might only indirectly refer to Filippo Maria and Maria of Savoy, but directly signify the houses of  Filippo Maria's grandparents, Galeazzo II and Bianca of Savoy, in the same way that his father's funeral oration reflected the symbolism of the suit-signs as emblems of the four cardinal virtues, around which the Cary-Yale is oriented. Such decks would have been made on various occasions during Filippo Maris's reign  and not have had the fountain and other Sforza emblems anywhere in the deck. But not being as symbolically momentous as the Cary-Yale, such decks were not saved.

5. The blindfold could signify that love is both above and below the intellect, depending on whether it is heavenly love or earthly love. Then there is Shakespeare, disagreeing with both (Midsummer night's dream):

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

6. As to the prominence of the virtues, what is important is what was prominent in the tarot cities before 1440 (or 1450, for the PMB). Phaeded has shown how the 7 virtues were prominent in Florence; they were also a subject for at least one pre-1440 cassone there. In 1442 they were on a float in a triumphal parade for Alfonso in Naples, in which Florence took part. In Visconti Milan, there was the Song of the Virtues and Liberal Arts, part of the property of Luciano Visconti that was seized by the Milan Viscontis in the 14th century, later property of the archbishop. The 7 or 4 were standard illuminations and church reliefs; the four cardinals were often put in the corners of manuscript illuminations. In the Sforza Castle Museum there is a nice Visconti-era relief of the four cardinal virtues (I have photo somewhere). For Borso d'Este in Ferrara, Justice was pre-eminent. He had a statue of himself done with Justice's attributes.

7 Cnidus is where a famous statue of the nude Aphrodite was said to have been, attracting numerous visitors in ancient times. I am not sure how to translate the line from the song: perhaps "Now here our Cupid / no less than the God of Cnidus" (literally, not less of the God of Cnidus).

8. The Marseille deck's lady with a lion in fact corresponds to the way Fortitude was depicted on the earlier Cary-Yale deck. But a club does make the virtue correspond to Staves, and Hercules is eminently suitable to put on a triumphal chariot of Love as one of the captives. He made it through the 12 labors and then was killed by his bride's tricks. Strong men are inevitable objects of satire, even if the ribald Harlequin is not descended from Hercules (although he does usually carry a stick, like Hercules' club). Women (as with Samson) or clever men (like Othello's Iago, in the Italian story) always lay strong men low. Moakley mentions Hercules on the Force card of a modern Swiss deck (it is the Muller). An earlier example, it seems to me, might be that of the "Grand-Pretre" deck of post-de Gebelin France. (Kaplan vol 1 p. 164 vol. 2, p. 337; Hargrave, pp. 34-37). If not Hercules, it is a very masculine-looking lady.

Moakley's association of the PMB's Fortitude with Staves is supported by the Beinecke Library's assignment of the Cary-Yale cataloguers' (of unknown date, but by the 1980s) of that virtue to the same suit (http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3432602). As to whether the cataloguer could have been influenced by Moakley (1966), I will wait until the end of the book to discuss.

9. the Kings' crossed legs in Staves and Coins. That gold is in feces was a saying in alchemy, perhaps also in metallurgy, as the acids made from sulfur had quite a stink. I am not familiar with the letter Chi/X being associated with gold in that context, or any context. Europeans didn't know Greek in the Middle Ages. It was associated with Christ, but that happened during the Roman Empire when people did know Greek. But neither has to do with crossed legs on some of the kings. It was associated with judges. Panofsky, in his book on Durer, discussing an engraving of Christ holding the scales of justice, says

This attitude, denoting a calm and superior state of mind, was actually prescribed to judges in ancient German law-books.

The king of Staves is pictured with a scepter of authority. He passes judgment. As for why it's on the King of Coins, well, perhaps dealing with money was thought to require a calm mind. What might be slightly ribald on the Staves court cards, I think, are the green sleeves and gloves. See Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensleeves), particularly its reference to the Italian form of composition in the song "Greensleeves", a form that arrived in England in Elizabethan times. The Queen of Cups, Empress and Charioteer also have such sleeves/gloves. Wikipedia suggests that it connotes a promiscuous woman, based on a similar expression "green gown", from the grass stains that would be on a lady's dress if she were lying down.  It seems to me that it might simply have been a conventional symbol of fertility.