Renaissance Canon article mentions early Tarot

OnePotato

foolish said:
The whole point of considering what Bosch had in mind is precisely because most paintings of the Garden of Eden were depictions of Paradise, as described by the Catholic Church. So why would he include images like bugs, monsters and insects in Paradise? Just a simple but legitimate question........
"Perhaps" it would have been seen as heresy to paint a picture of Paradise that looked like an easily comprehensible scene outside your window.
"Perhaps" Mr Bosch sought to suitably baffle the viewer with incomprehensible wonder.
"Perhaps" God made the Medieval world, bugs and all, and devout people did not see them as creepy.

foolish said:
Bingo! That's exactly what's being suggested. Heretical ideas survived throughout the centuries spanning the Cathars of the 13th to the Reformationists of the 16th. Although the names of their groups may have changed, many of their basic beliefs and objections to orthodox Christianity were consistently similar.
Bingo?
So give me an actual example of hiding secret meanings in art for something as large as this.
(Anywhere in the history of the world.)

As another example, perhaps you can show me how all of the printers of tarot cards were "in" on the secret, and that none of the "orthodox establishment" religious people detected this conspiracy, but instead happily went about life obliviously playing with them.

Most ANY human experience or belief system can be fitted to the tarot.
From Egyptians, to Cowboys, to The Simpsons, to Cathars.
That is why one needs some smidgen of evidence to support any claim that something specific is at the root of tarot creation.
It's not just dogmatic scholarship requirements.


foolish said:
The question is, if you were involved in this evolving and often "underground" movement, how would YOU get your information out?
I would not create religious art works for popular "Orthodox" clients.
But even if I DID do something as reckless as that, I would not include "weird" or "heretical" subjects in my work.
(If La Papessa" was intended as heretical, as you have claimed, don't you think someone would have noticed it????)

Anyway, I don't want to discourage you from working your theory.
But I'm afraid you have not convinced me of anything.
 

foolish

OnePotato said:
"Perhaps" it would have been seen as heresy to paint a picture of Paradise that looked like an easily comprehensible scene outside your window.
"Perhaps" Mr Bosch sought to suitably baffle the viewer with incomprehensible wonder.
"Perhaps" God made the Medieval world, bugs and all, and devout people did not see them as creepy.
We can go on with "perhapsisms" all day. But the fact is that all paintings of Paradise shared a general theme. It is the divergence from this theme which brings up some questions about Bosh's works.

So give me an actual example of hiding secret meanings in art for something as large as this.
There are other cases of "hidden" symbols in art. The Templars and the Rosecruscians, for example, used "secret" symbols which can be found today. Tim Wallace-Murphy has written a book which covers many of these things http://www.newagejournal.com/cracking.htm. It would definitely be a huge discovery if such secret information was placed in the tarot. (of course, that's what some people are debating is possible).

I would not create religious art works for popular "Orthodox" clients.
But even if I DID do something as reckless as that, I would not include "weird" or "heretical" subjects in my work.
(If La Papessa" was intended as heretical, as you have claimed, don't you think someone would have noticed it????)
I'm afraid that if you weren't willing to create works for orthodox clients, you would be out of business pretty quickly. Perhaps the only way to suggest any unorthodox ideas would be to try to include them in some "weird" way.

As far as La Papessa is concerned, don't you think that enough people have already noticed and commented on its heretical theme?
 

OnePotato

foolish said:
We can go on with "perhapsisms" all day. But the fact is that all paintings of Paradise shared a general theme. It is the divergence from this theme which brings up some questions about Bosh's works.

Well, with Mr Bosch in mind, I'd say that when an artist strays from convention it doesn't necessarily make him a heretic.
I think more often than not it makes him a genius.




As I said, I don't want to discourage you from working your theory.
I hope you will take some of the points I've made into consideration.
 

foolish

You're right. When an artist "strays" from convention (and medieval art was very conventional in its portrayals) this doesn't in itself make them a heretic - unless we can find things which point to that likelihood. Artists (especially back then) weren't known for their abstract or interpretive art. Usually, there was a reason why certain images were used. It is our job to try to discover what those images meant. In the same way, we ask similar questions when we look at the tarot. In Bosch's case, we see a theme pervading his work which begs the question of what his images really mean. Do we just take it as an artist's fantasy and imagination and ignore other possibilities? Obviously, people are split in their answers to this question.
 

gregory

Why not take it was an artist's invention, and nothing to do with heresy. In modern times, look at someone like Stanley Spencer. DEEPLY religious, but some of his work is WAY non traditional; it horrified many at the time, and got him into no end of trouble with church dignitaries. But he was no heretic. Even the most religious among us can see things differently without being heretics. A Christian minister I knew well, when asked if he believed in god, used to admit that he didn't know. Maybe Bosch was simply exploring other possible sides of religion for himself.

And as for insects etc in heaven - if we believe in god, he made them as well as us - why should they NOT appear in paradise ?

Sometimes I think we go too far overboard looking for symbols in things.
 

Pen

gregory said:
Why not take it was an artist's invention, and nothing to do with heresy. In modern times, look at someone like Stanley Spencer. DEEPLY religious, but some of his work is WAY non traditional; it horrified many at the time, and got him into no end of trouble with church dignitaries. But he was no heretic. Even the most religious among us can see things differently without being heretics.

Maybe Bosch was simply exploring other possible sides of religion for himself.

And as for insects etc in heaven - if we believe in god, he made them as well as us - why should they NOT appear in paradise ?

Sometimes I think we go too far overboard looking for symbols in things.

This is so true. And don't forget that Bosch was a visionary artist. Visions share similarities with dreams in that they originate - at least in some part, depending on your belief - in the brain. And the brain is a strange organ, capable of producing images that we could never imagine in our waking hours. Bosch may simply have been painting what he saw within the framework of the subject.

I had a email from a buyer of The Mystic Rubaiyat a year or so ago asking if I'd incorporated Masonic symbolism into the cards, as someone to whom she'd shown them insisted that it was there, perfectly plain to see. I replied that I knew little or nothing of Masonic symbolism, and certainly hadn't deliberately placed anything like it in the paintings.

And it's odd, that as a work progresses things suggest themselves, and one incorporates them if they improve the composition or add something indefinable - there doesn't always have to be a deliberate meaning, although later a meaning will often present itself.

Pen
 

gregory

goldenweb said:
This is so true. And don't forget that Bosch was a visionary artist. Visions share similarities with dreams, in that they originate (at least in some part, depending on your belief), in the brain. And the brain is a strange organ, capable of producing images that we could never imagine in our waking hours. Bosch may simply have been painting what he saw within the framework of the subject.
YES. That was part of what I would have said if I had found the words !

there doesn't always have to be a deliberate meaning, although later a meaning will often present itself.
This is what I mean when I say we can go overboard on symbolism. A symbol is as much what the viewer sees as what the artist put in there, IMHO. I won't be seeing masonic symbols a whole lot, because I don't have that vocabulary. Those who have will see it where it was not intended and perhaps even where it does not exist. I hear fugues and strettos and thematic inversions in music, because of my training; others have no idea what I am talking about. Symbolism, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.
 

Laura Borealis

Bosch was an extraordinary and visionary painter, but he didn't come up with the images he used in a vacuum. Grotesques and drolleries were already part of artistic and religious tradition. Look at gargoyles, chimera, and other sculptural details in architecture, and the humorous, half-human half-animal figures in the margins of illuminated manuscripts (created by, yes, monks of the Catholic Church). I don't think his paintings would have been seen as unusually surreal to his contemporaries.

Connecting Bosch with the Cathars is, from what I understand, a relatively recent idea and one that is not taken seriously by art historians afaik.

I do think it's easy to ascribe such motives to artists. They do, after all, frequently produce subversive and/or political works. Pieter Bruegal, who was influenced by Bosch, sometimes used painting as a form of social protest or as commentary on the religious conflicts of his time -- and he is just one example.
 

foolish

Ascribing intention to an artist can be a futile exercise, as we can see. However, this task was much easier in the Middle Ages than it is today. This is because the predominant feature of art in those days was that it was allegorical. Certain images had specific meanings, and certain personalities and scenes (especially religious) were presented in an universally accepted way. Different animals, for example, represented agreed upon characteristics in life. A dove symbolized Jesus or the Holy Spirit; bugs and insects represented a revulsion of life. The Garden of Eden was presented in its "pure" form, without the tainting of allegorical images which would have corrupted its image - unless, of course, the artist had another intention in mind.

In the beginning of the 16th century, Bosch would have still been a part of this culture of art. Even though he may have been somewhat of a "mystic" in some eyes, he most likely would have used the allegorical language of the times to present his visionary ideas. We should not make the mistake of comparing him and his work to that of modern artists who may take liberties of the imagination not practiced back then.

So, we can either accept the idea that Bosch, even with his mystical bent, was still a product of his culture, or present the idea that he was singularly excempt from that culture and played by different rules.

However, the problem remained that it would have been seen as "heresy" to use images which blatantly contradicted the conventional orthodox views normally found in art at the time. So, IF someone intended to present an alternative view, it would have to have been at least somewhat concealed within the standard allegorical images used back then.

Another way of looking at this is that the fact that we can still say things like, "why can't the bugs just be this" or "why can't this just be that" may be the very reason that such a method of concealment could be considered effectively done - there was still enough of a conventional way of interpretion there. If there wasn't room for such an interpretation, then Bosch probably would have been ostracized during his lifetime and it would have been the end of his career as a painter.
 

Bernice

I would like to remind you all that the Cannon article is not about what was or wasn't concealed or hidden in renaissance art. It only mentions tarot images (once) as part & parcel of the wide scope of art at that time.


Bernice.