What's so great about the Jacques Vieville Tarot?

The Vieville being the earliest of these decks must surely stand alone in what it portrays. The Noblet seems to have it's numbering more uniform and so the foliage may have proved a problem, although the attention to detail that the deck usually has would cause me to hesitate over this a little.

Having said that, doesn't the Vieville strike you as a more primitive deck than the others, particularly the Svizzera? In fact, I find that many Italian decks squeeze in more detail than decks of a similar period.

I think we have to remember the time difference between the Vieville and the Svizzera... 150 years- ish? My feeling is that numbering was less important in the Vieville era, perhaps numbers meant nothing to those that used the deck.

le pendu said:

We're talking over 350 years ago, and we can still purchase this deck. Look how different (and similar!) things were.

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hehehe
In 1650 they were just developing Japanese Noh drama and centuries later it's still putting audiences to sleep.

Moonbow* said:

Having said that, doesn't the Vieville strike you as a more primitive deck than the others....

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In many ways it is a very primitive looking deck. Especially the floral decorative bits on the pips seem as if they were slapped on in a drunken (but inspired) moment. It all looks so.... spontaneous. But presumably the black lines were made by woodcut? Surely there is no true spontaneity there- everything that seems spontaneous seems so because they *wanted* it to seem so (don't you think? seems so to me).

Some of the detail in the deck is astounding. Clearly there was at least one really skilled hand involved with the creation of this deck.

Couldn't it be that the crude touches are there on purpose?

thinbuddha said:

Couldn't it be that the crude touches are there on purpose?

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But why? What could be the reason? To conceil the fact that knowledge is transferred by the cards?

without trying to make the arguement that they are crude on purpose, I'll make the arguement that they could be.

The foundation for this arguement lies in the fact that there was at least one person involved with making these cards that was capable of creating woodcuts that were more finely detailed than the pips. Several cards in this deck do a fine job of demonstrating this- some examples include XIII, XVI, XVII, XIX, the Page and Knight of Swords, the Knight of Wands. There are others, but a quick look at these shows a hand that is certainly capable of creating more finely detailed woodcuts than those found on most (OK, all) of the pips.

So why aren't the pips rendered with more care? I can see a couple possible reasons:

- The pips were created by a less skilled artist.
- The pips were created with less care by the same artist to save time.
- Do the pips really show "less skill"? Doesn't creating spontanious looking images in such a tedius medium show great skill? I don't know the answer to this as I am not a woodcutter, but it seeems to me that it could be.
- The pips were thought to look better with less detail.

Frankly, I think that either of the first two options are more likely, but the third & fourth are possible.

thinbuddha said:

In many ways it is a very primitive looking deck. Especially the floral decorative bits on the pips seem as if they were slapped on in a drunken (but inspired) moment. It all looks so.... spontaneous. But presumably the black lines were made by woodcut? Surely there is no true spontaneity there- everything that seems spontaneous seems so because they *wanted* it to seem so (don't you think? seems so to me).

Some of the detail in the deck is astounding. Clearly there was at least one really skilled hand involved with the creation of this deck.

Couldn't it be that the crude touches are there on purpose?

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Hello thinbuddha.

There are several people involved in commercial woodblock printing of the time.

An artist does a line drawing, usually in ink on paper. The drawing is then traced onto the woodblock.

An engraver (craftsman) actually cuts the block. He carefully follows the transfered drawing, and cuts very precisely around the inked lines. Whatever spontaneity is in the original drawing, comes through, (somewhat,) in the final print.

To complicate things further, the apprenticeship system was also probably employed, in both the artist and engraver roles. I think it's a pretty fair guess that an apprentice may have drawn these pip cards. There are a number of noticeable differences in drawing quality. For example, compare the cups held in the hands of the courts to those in the pips. Aside from the greater detail, note the differences in overall form. For another example, note the coarser line density in the hatched shading on the leaves of the pips, as compared to the much finer hatching on any of the majors. It's almost certainly by two different hands.

I think these pips were very possibly done by a fifteen year old kid.
I think that's utterly fabulous.

Best,
OnePotato
(Who's been known to cut a block or two...)

I just noticed that Vieville (or all the other TdM's ) turned around VII (le chariot) and VIII (la justice). Even the Vandenborre tarot had le chariot at VII and la justice at VIII.

Edited to add: He did the same with l'hermite and la force!

And why does he write the number 9 as IX, whereas all other decks write it as VIIII?

There is some thought that this deck was a copy of other designs, and that the artist(s) coppied the mirror image. In other words, what was IX would become XI (because of the mirror image effect.

Take a look- many of the cards seem to be flipped- characters facing the wrong way, strangeness with the numbering....

Also, see this here

tarot-history.com said:

I realised that the engraver for Viéville "copied" this tarot in reverse, using the "right" side of an old printed sheet as model. All specialists are aware that almost all the Viéville images are "backwards". Incredible amounts of speculation and theories have been produced to explain the esoteric meaning of these inversions. The fact is that the harsh commercial reality for Viéville made it necessary, if he wanted to salvage a tarot production without an old master-engraver at hand, to confer the project of re-engraving on a worker with no particular competence and no traditional knowledge of the tarot. Once printed, his direct copy of a "positive" sheet of course came out backwards! This did not, however, particularly trouble or disorient card players at that time.

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Thank you Thinbuddha!

The flipping would explain the positions of l'hermite and la force, but not le chariot and la justice.

It's odd how the Vieville has some cards flipped (sometimes matching the Noblet) and some not.

P.S.: Le Pendu: In the Vieville chariot, what happened to the right hand, face on the right shoulder and the wheels? How sloppy to lose al these details! And we can't even blame it on the numbers.

Minervasaltar said:

In the Vieville chariot, what happened to the right hand, face on the right shoulder and the wheels? How sloppy to lose al these details! And we can't even blame it on the numbers.

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(tear), ah, my little grasshopper has snatched the pebble from my hand! (tear)

Yup, now your getting it.. sloppy sloppy sloppy, the bunch of them! Take a look at Noblet's shoulders too! Thank goodness we have several versions to look at to begin to guess at what "should" be there.