Andrea del Sarto's "Hanged Man" sketches

kwaw

Rosanne said:
What is symbolic about the 'one foot' bit?


Don't know. Boiado in his tarot poem uses a 'foot' idiom in reference to Laura who 'never put a foot wrong', that is, everything she did was perfect, she did everything right. Our hanged man however, appears to have got off on the wrong foot with someone, or been planted on the wrong foot (plante sur le pied gauche) or taken a wrong foot and strayed from the path of righteousness.

Perhaps the hanged man as traitor, seeking to keep a foot in both camps, has been found out and 'pulled up' by one of them. He has lost everything, certainly he no longer has 'the world at his feet'. Whatever plans he had they appear to have been scuppered, the rug has been pulled from beneath his feet. He is likely to die soon, or as we say, has one foot in the grave. He is certainly between the foot and square (in the height of affliction, the middle of danger, entre le pied & le carreau).

A prudent man treads carefully, our hanged man seems to have been imprudent; or as Gebelin would have it, is actually prudent (and putting his best foot forward and treading carefully with aforethought) but been turned upside down by mistake. And there are some examples of him being upright, though generally it is these that are considered to have been turned in error.

Ironically for someone hung up by the foot and unable to go anywhere we have the saying ‘to have one foot raised, or one foot in the air’, meaning always ready to go, depart, move on; or always ready with an off the cuff remark, able to make an extempore, improvisional speech, a witty retort. Someone dangerous, a stirrer, an agitator who stirs things up then leaves (it could be dangerous, after all, for the agitator to 'hang around' after stirring things up).

(Avoir un pied en l'air, un pied levé, un pied qui remue. Être prêt à partir, à se déplacer. .. Mais tu n'as pas, comme moi, un pied qui remue, et toujours prêt à partir… Il serait dangereux de laisser trop longuement à tout ce monde-là le pied en l'air.)

Also a foot is by definition an inferior part that supports a thing; the traitors foot is raised, the inferior part no longer supports him just as the treacherous 'inferior' failed to support his superiors.
 

DoctorArcanus

Michael, thank you for the wonderful images.

The drawings by Andrea del Sarto are quite noticeable for their beauty and accuracy. They are terrible images: making evident the pain hanged people are going through. They make me think of the frescos in the San Petronio church in Bologna, were the damned in hell are represented as hanged men.

I don't have the same impression nor from the Scheltbrief / Schandbild German images, nor from the Visconti-Sforza tarot card. Those images seem to me to refer to punishment in a more symbolic and less painful way.

Marco
 

kwaw

Of idiomatic sayings there is also to ‘Make feet’ (Faire les pieds) meaning to give someone a lesson, to make someone suffer in order to teach them a lesson,to put them in their place; to ‘make the feet’; Ça lui fera les pieds! Bring him to his feet, serve as a lesson.

For his feet (c’est pour ses pieds) meaning, that will teach him, to return (put) someone to their place, remind them of their proper position; as we may say in English, that will teach him to step out of line.

Also, in reference perhaps also to dogs also being hung alongside, the command brought to foot, made to obey one’s master, under control, to be brought to heel, forced to obey. Au pied ~ se placer à ses pieds.

Also ‘Mettre à pied’ meaning put on foot is synonymous with ‘suspendre’, to suspend, to lay off temporarily; ...exiler le maître, mettre à pied les hommes . (...exile the master, suspend (put on foot) the men). We have also ‘pieds et poings liés’ ~ feet tied, bound.

Al these type of ‘foot’ expression relate to concepts expressive of inferiority, downgrading, devalueing. Ideas relating to making someone suffer to teach them a lesson, remind them of their place, to shame them and bring them back into line, not necessarily kill them (not denying of course, that people were executed and horribly so by being left hung by the foot/feet).

The foot and heel are a part of the body used idiomatically to express the whole, for example, a person who treats others unfairly may be called 'a heel'.

Our hanged man is 'under the heel' (of oppression, under the complete control of something or someone, perhaps head over heels in unreciprocated love).

He has been left 'to cool his heels' (forced to wait (hang around) until he calms down, sees sense or becomes agreeable).

DoctorArcanus said:
I don't have the same impression nor from the Scheltbrief / Schandbild German images, nor from the Visconti-Sforza tarot card. Those images seem to me to refer to punishment in a more symbolic and less painful way.

Marco

Perhaps we differences of images showing actual executions in all its goriness and symobic images relating to shaming and bringing back into step?
 

Rosanne

Thanks Kwaw. The Dog analogy rings something military in my mind- I will seek further. When punishing a working dog for running the wrong way to a whistle, you stick the front foot paw of the direction not to be taken in his collar- so if he runs that way he stumbles. I have looked for some biblical explanation- but none really that would make sense. Except in the sense of explaining reality. I have a thought. These shame paintings were punishment in absentia Neh? You did it originally for financial shame- then it became political shame, I thought. But mostly they were not real hangings -they were like a mug shot. They had to make the criminal recognisable I believe, right down to his clothes- like a Madame Tussard waxwork. Maybe the one foot explained the fact this was not the reality at this stage- this was a fake hanging. The Visconti looks like a shame painting of a possible outcome- not a real punishment. The Charles V1 Hanged man looks like a real punishment for financial shame- one hour or one day- because he is flailing around- not to kill him. In those bags were probably stones. Double bind now poor sod- let them go you will break your pelvis, struggle to hold the weight to gain some balance.
The punishments always seem to have an cruel option about them. Dignity till you die or indignity and you might live.

Edited to add -like this explanation
Also ‘Mettre à pied’ meaning put on foot is synonymous with ‘suspendre’, to suspend, to lay off temporarily;
 

Rosanne

It seems at if this right foot hanging (though the illustrations shown here some are left footed) was the implication of the despised foot soldiers who on low pay (24 florins a year) had looting rites. The right foot had military connotations- not biblical. Often they would not get home after they had looted (funny that- like the loser in the pallio with his pig) and the one foot was a derision about the foot soldier. Apparently they were in the main mercenary- so double despised. The shame paintings were indeed for people they did not have in custody- so shamed in absentia- rarely, though sometimes actually carried out. It was decided after a while the shame paintings bought disrepute on the town rather than the criminal for visiting dignitaries- so it faded out.
~Rosanne
 

kwaw

He's been hung out to dry and hangs his head in shame.
 

kwaw

Like his penis, his tongue defies gravity.

The tongue, the penis, recalls to my mind the passage on the covenant in SY 1.3:

Ten sephiroth of nothingness
like the number of fingers
five opposite five
with a singluar covenant
precisely in the middle
in the word of the tongue
CinqFaceCinq.jpg

and the circumcision of the flesh.
LangueGland.jpg

Sefer ha-Yetzira 1:3

The penis, the tongue defy gravity;as if to show their covenant with the one above.

With one foot being free 'to kick' and the noblet figure showing his penis or 'prick' I am also reminded of the ancient expression 'to kick against the prick'. An ancient idiom of latin and greek meaning it is hard to fight against the will of god widely disseminated through its use in the bible:

Acts 26:14 And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? [it is] hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
King James Version 1611

"Yet it is right to respect also the country where I was born, since this is the divine law, and to obey all her commands and not oppose them, or as the proverb says kick against the pricks. For inexorable, as the saying goes, is the yoke of necessity."
Emperor Julian Orations 246B

The word translated 'prick' is a greek word meaning sting, prick, (ox) goad:

"And, when we were all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? [it is] hard for thee to kick against goads."
(Darby translation)

"We all fell down, and I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic*, `Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to fight against my will.*'
NLT translation Footnote:
*a) Or Hebrew.
*b) Greek ~ It is hard for you to kick against the oxgoads.

Elsewhere in classical literature we can find it for example in Eurpides:

Pentheus: Do not instruct me, but be content in your escape from prison. Or shall I bring punishment upon you again?
Dionysus: I would sacrifice to the god rather than kick against his spurs in anger, a mortal against a god.

(Bacchae 792-796)

Pindar:

[81] A crafty citizen is unable to speak a compelling word among noble men; and yet he fawns on everyone, weaving complete destruction.3 I do not share his boldness. Let me be a friend to my friend; but I will be an enemy to my enemy, and pounce on him like a wolf, [85] treading every crooked path. Under every type of law the man who speaks straightforwardly prospers: in a tyranny, and where the raucous masses oversee the state, and where men of skill do. One must not fight against a god, [89] who raises up some men's fortunes at one time, and at another gives great glory to others. But even this [90] does not comfort the minds of the envious; they pull the line too tight and plant a painful wound in their own heart before they get what they are scheming for. It is best to take the yoke on one's neck and bear it lightly; kicking against the goad [95] makes the path treacherous. I hope that I may associate with noble men and please them.
(Pythian 2, translated by T. K. Hubbard)

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0162&layout=&loc=P.+2.94

Emperor Julian c.350 ad:
"Yet it is right to respect also the country where I was born, since this is the divine law, and to obey all her commands and not oppose them, or as the proverb says kick against the pricks. For inexorable, as the saying goes, is the yoke of necessity."
(Orations 246B)

The shape of the hanged man brings to mind the letter lamed (LMD), a pictogram, it is said, of an ox goad reiterating the idiomatic associations (and called in the tongue of the hebrews for those interested in the concept of the tarot images as an alphabetic masquerade 'Malmed' (MLMD).

Kwaw
 

mjhurst

The OTHER Hanged Man in Renaissance art

Hi, Ross,

Great post with quotes from Moakley, Ortalli, Betts, and especially the Carlo Morbio passage.

So there is a lot of information (relatively speaking) on shame paintings, and they have been the most widely discussed historical referent. They are also the most interesting subject for art historians, because they were associated with a number of famous artists. However, the only reason they have any meaning is because hanging by one foot was an actual method of execution. This actual punishment was what gave the hanging in effigy its meaning, which is why Betts point is so important. The two areas where the depiction became a conventional form of public defamation were places were it was also used over a long period of time to execute people -- in Italy and Germany.

Ortalli notes that in 1393 shame paintings were banned in Milan, but Betts and Morbio observes that in 1393 traitors were still to be executed in that manner, and this punishment was still on the books in 1422. Clearly shame paintings were considered in a different light than the actual punishment, at least by Gian-boy. The significance of hanging by one foot being a real punishment for despised criminals, one of the more horrible and degrading forms of killing people, is crucial to breaking the spell of modern occult interpretations, and that reality check is necessary to get a genuine historical sense of the card's meaning. And that actual punishment for betrayal is what is reflected in our best contemporaneous explanation of the symbolism, Fanti's use of it.

As a depiction of a real execution, hanging by one foot can be compared with hanging by the neck. We have examples (including Fanti) where both are shown together. And just as famous artists were recorded (or, in Sarto's case, exemplified) as having depicted hanging by one foot, they also depicted hanging by the neck. This will lead to another symbolic use of such pictures, but first another example. The most famous of all the Renaissance artists, at least since The Da Vinci Code, is Leonardo.

leonardo-hanged-man.jpg

Bernardino di Bandino Baroncelli
Cap of tan color, doublet of black satin, black lined gown,
turquoise jacked lined with fox and the collar of the jacket
lined with black and red velvet, Bernardo Bandini Baroncigli.
Black stockings.
(Leonardo's notes)​

Now VASARI, in the life of Andrea del Castagno, tells us that in 1478 this painter was commissioned by order of the Signoria to represent the members of the Pazzi conspiracy as traitors, on the facade of the Palazzo del Podesta -- the Bargello. This statement is obviously founded on a mistake, for Andrea del Castagno was already dead in 1457. He had however been commissioned to paint Rinaldo degli Albizzi, when declared a rebel and exiled in 1434, and his adherents, as hanging head downwards; and in consequence he had acquired the nickname of Andrea degl' Impiccati. On the 21st July 1478 the Council of Eight came to the following resolution: "item servatis etc. deliberaverunt et santiaverunt Sandro Botticelli pro ejus labore in pingendo proditores flor. quadraginta largos" (see G. MILANESI, Arch. star. VI (1862) p.5 note.)

As has been told, Giuliano de' Medici was murdered on the 26th of April 1478, and we see by this that only three months later Botticelli was paid for his painting of the "proditores". We can hardly suppose that all the members of the conspiracy were depicted by him in fresco on the facade of the palace, since no fewer than eighty had been condemned to death. We have no means of knowing whether, besides Botticelli, any other painters, perhaps Leonardo, was commissioned, when the criminals had been hanged in person out of the windows of the Palazzo del Podesta to represent them there afterwards in effigy in memory of their disgrace. Nor do we know whether the assassin who had escaped may at first not have been provisionally represented as hanged in effigy. Now, when we try to connect the historical facts with this drawing by Leonardo reproduced on Pl. LXII, No. I, and the full description of the conspirator's dress and its colour on the same sheet, there seems to be no reasonable doubt that Bernardo Bandini is here represented as he was actually hanged on December 29th, 1479, after his capture at Constantinople. The dress is certainly not that in which he committed the murder. A long furred coat might very well be worn at Constantinople or at Florence in December, but hardly in April. The doubt remains whether Leonardo described Bernardo's dress so fully because it struck him as remarkable, or whether we may not rather suppose that this sketch was actually made from nature with the intention of using it as a study for a wall painting to be executed. It cannot be denied that the drawing has all the appearance of having been made for this purpose. Be this as it may, the sketch under discussion proves, at any rate, that Leonardo was in Florence in December 1479, and the note that accompanies it is valuable as adding one more characteristic specimen to the very small number of his MSS. that can be proved to have been written between 1470 and 1480.
(The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci)
In other words, the drawing depicts the actual execution, in the clothes worn at that time rather than those worn when the crime was committed. Public paintings of hangings, both by the neck and by the foot, were an advertisement that this city takes its law and order seriously. When Gian Galeazzo banned shame paintings while continuing the practice of executing people in the manner depicted, it may have been because the use of shame paintings to defame people who were not actually going to be executed seemed to diminish the perceived threat. The following picture illustrates how that threat was supposed to be perceived.

lorenzettiDetailL.jpg

Allegory of Securitas
Lorenzetti's Good Government in the Countryside

Lorenzetti was saying quite directly that Good Government included killing people -- know this and beware! This is a state-sponsored killing, not a defamation of your good name. Another example comes from Pisanello's St. George and the Princess of Trebizond. He depicted criminals (traitors?) hanging outside Verona as a kind of billboard, advertising that the city endorsed serious Justice and Security.

pisanelloStGeorgeL.jpg

Detail of St. George and the Princess

stgeorg.jpg

St. George and the Princess

St George and the Princess of Trebizond (WGA)
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/p/pisanell/stgeorg.html

The Web Gallery of Art text accompanying Pisanello's sketches explains:

Pisanello drew these figures of hanged men as preparatory studies for his fresco of St George in Verona. Carefully observed and detailed, they depict one of the grimmer aspects of life in medieval and Renaissance Europe, where the executions of criminals were public events and where bodies or parts of bodies were left on view in the landscape or in designated parts of the city as warnings to the population at large against breaking the law.
hanged.jpg

Hanged Men and Two Portraits​

Another Pisanello sketch, clearly related to the ones above:

pisanelloSketche.jpg

Hanged Man Sketch​

So the threat of execution by hanging was a real one, depicted by such illustrations. This is exactly what Fanti referred to in using the Hanged Man motif as a warning to those who would betray their masters, as well as a symbol of Betrayal itself, warning those who might find themselves betrayed.

Best regards,
Michael
 

mjhurst

Hi, Ross,

You quoted Ortalli as follows regarding the prohibition of shame paintings.

Between 1390 and 1396, at the time of Gian Galeazzo, when the legislation of the two towns was reorganized and updated with the promulgation of new collections of statutes, there appeared, in both places, a chapter entitled: “Concerning the pictures on the walls of the palaces being removed, and the names of the defamed being registered.” These clauses were inserted at almost the same date. The text from Lodi, dated to 1390, is contemporary with that of Milan, of which the redaction, finished in 1396, had been started in 1389. In reality, the common source of these texts is found in an earlier redaction of the Milanese statutes, which was begun in 1348 by Luchino Visconti and was finished in 1351 by his brother and successor, Archbishop Giovanni. Thus at Lodi and Milan, in practically identical terms it was thereafter forbidden to paint the images of those condemned to infamy on the walls of the communal palaces, and it was ordained at the same time to erase any existing images because they in fact dishonored the cities themselves.
That reason, "they in fact dishonored the cities themselves", made little sense to me, so I tried to think of another rationale. However, going back to another book that I recently read gave a more detailed explanation, one that even I can understand. Here is a passage on shame paintings from Evelyn Welch's Art in Renaissance Italy 1350-1500 (1997).

The close connection, which we have already seen in religious and allegorical imagery, between the person or concept being painted and the person or concept itself could also be used by governments to punish their enemies. When the criminal was absent he was executed (the pun is intended) in paint. These public images, known as immagini infamanti, depicted such unfortunates hanging upside down by one foot. In fourteenth-century Bologna these were painted in the main square, and on bordellos as a symbol of disgrace.(3) Although effective, such imagery was ambiguous, as it potentially shamed the city as well as the individual. In 1396 Milan's city statutes banned depictions on the town hall:

Since certain images are painted on the walls of the Palazzo Nuovo of the commune of Milan, representing false witnesses and corrupt notaries, merchant, and money changers, and although they seem to be made for the purpose of confounding and defaming frauds, yet they disgrace and defame not only the authors of the deceits themselves, but also the whole city in the eyes of visitors and foreigners; for when the latter see these images, they imagine and are almost convinced that the majority of citizens can barely be trusted, and are involved in great falsehoods; and so it is decreed that all these pictures be removed, and that no one should be painted in the future.(4)
By the mid-fifteenth century, Milan had shifted from illustrating financial shame to illustrating political shame, but the immagini infamanti were still in use. In 1458 Francesco Sforza threatened one preacher, Roberto da Lecce, that unless he returned to the city as promised to carry out his religious obligations, 'we will whitewash one side of our great hall and have you painted with your head hanging upside down... and [if] you arrive we will have you painted with your head up as a man of worth'.(5) His son, Lodovico Maria Sforza, was still using the formula in the late 1490s, when he placed immagini infamanti of his ex-military leader and enemy Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, then working for the French king, throughout Milan. The Florentines, too, continued to use this method of punishment in absentia during the quattrocento; Andrea del Castagno got the name Andrea degli Impiccati, 'Andrea of the Hanged Men', after painting the losing faction of the Albizzi family and their supporters in July 1440.

It was not enough to make these images highly realistic; inscriptions were also added in order to fix the name and the crime of the ill-doer in the public eye. In Rome, under the guidance of Pope Pius II, the Curia devised ever more elaborate attacks on a disobedient vassal, the condottiere Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1417-68), which culminated in 1462 with his mock-trial and burning in effigy. It was important, the pope stressed in his memoirs, that the image of Malatesta was recognizable; it had to be made,

so exactly rendering the man's features and dress that it seemed him in person rather than an image. But lest anyone still be misled, an inscription issued from the mouth of the image, reading, "I am Sigismondo Malatesta, son of Pandolfo, king of traitors, dangerous to God and men, condemned to fire by vote of the holy senate."(6)
That the Papacy, the Florentine republic, and the Milanese dukes should have all agreed on very similar ways of expressing punishment and suggesting authority shows how cities with very different forms of government could share common assumptions about morality and the use of images.
(pp. 218-9.)

[Endnotes for this section, p. 317]

3. G. Masi, 'La pittura infamante nella legislatura e nella vita', in A. Rocco (ed.), Studi di diritto commerciale in onore di Cesare Vivante (Rome, 1931), and S.Y. Edgerton, Jr., Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance (Ithaca, NY, 1985).

4. D. Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago, 1989), 252-3.

5. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, fonds ital. 1588, f.202: Francesco Sforza to Roberto da Lecce, 5 Dec. 1458.

6. Freedberg, Power of Images, 246.
As an aside, Welch's emphasis on the necessary mimetic quality of the images almost suggests that "image magic" (e.g., voodoo dolls) might be an underlying sensibility.
 

mjhurst

Executed Criminals as Low-lifes

Fanti uses the inverted hanging motif to illustrate warnings to both the would-be traitors (low-lifes) and their potential victims (nobles). As is usually the case, a figure taken out of context is going to be inherently ambiguous, and the assorted cognates which have been collected for various Tarot subjects demonstrate this dramatically.

In the present case, as suggested in the post on the other "Hanged Man" in renaissance art, pictures of execution may be used to symbolize Justice and Security (i.e., "law and order") as their primary meaning, in addition to their obvious subject matter, executed criminals. On the other hand, they might be used primarily to signify low-lifes themselves. In this miniature from a Milanese copy (c.1450s) of De Sphaera we see some of the Children of Saturn, including not only woodsmen and peasants, but criminals.

sphaeraVisconti1450.jpg

Visconti-Sforza De Sphaera

Prior to the late-15th century, when the Neoplatonists elevated Saturn's status, the planet's influence was considered almost entirely negative, and his "children" were thus among the dregs of society. Here are some details from the image.

sphaeraViscontiHanging.jpg

Low-lifes on the wheel and gallows

sphaeraViscontiBeheading.jpg

A more honorable execution -- beheading
Confraternity members holding a tavolette
illustrating the Crucifixion​

A tavolette was an inspirational religious image on a wooden panel, displayed for the condemned so that he might think good thoughts at the moment of execution. Here's a late-16th century example from Ravenna. The cheery image shows a saint being tortured, having his hand cut off... happy thoughts!

tavoletteL.jpg

The Torture of St. Hadrian

However, executed criminals (or those subject to lesser punishment, like the man in stocks at the lower left of the image) imply someone administering justice. Given that inevitable association, the artist in this case embellished the Children of the Planets subject matter with a flattering overlay, saluting the justice-givers. Shown along with the low-lifes -- who are the primary subject of the image -- are Milanese nobility overseeing the manner in which punishment is meted out.

sphaeraViscontiNobles.jpg

Milanese nobles (note the Visconti heraldry)
overseeing the execution of Justice​

It would be silly to suggest that this means the nobles are Children of Saturn, being equated with the peasants and criminals. They are, however, a profound fact of life for those who break the law. Each figure needs to be understood in the overall context.

Best regards,
Michael