Ursino mystery card

Does anyone have a scan or link to the mysterious tarot card from Castello Ursino?

I came across it once and foolishly didn't save it.

For those familiar with it, what are your thoughts as to it's meaning?

It reminded me of Artemis and Actaeon, so possibly an association with The Moon? Perhaps Venus for the Love card?

As far as I know, it is the only hand painted card from the period that doesn't easly fit in to the traditional 22 trumps.

robert

http://www.geocities.com/autorbis/Researchers.html

you must save the picture. It builds the background.

It has a good chance to be simply a German card mixed in the Trionfi cards.
The stag-motif occasionally appears in German decks.

Thanks Huck!!!

I've attached it here as well as this will give a larger view, the other is 150dpi.

http://www.robertmealing.com/tarot/ursino.jpg

Huck, what are the thoughts of the Trionfi group on this card?
-- Edit-- I see you edited your reply while I was composing mine.

Does a German card mixed in with the standard Italian ones make sense?

The other extant Trumps from the set are typical of the 15th Century Italian Decks. This seems to be of the same design, so this trump seems to belong to the same set. Are you suggesting that one of the suits was stags and this is perhaps a queen?

robert

Dummett cites Decker (in the '70s) as suggesting it might be Temperance - she seems to be pouring something.

I don't know what to think about that - it would be a unique Temperance. The Virtues are never nude, that I can think of.

The artist seems (to me) to be the same as the de Gaignières tarot (Charles VI) - and the Chariot and World cards are almost identical between the two decks. But de Gaignières has a Temperance already, and she is fairly standard looking.

Perhaps it was a deck with a suit of stags, but a nude Queen, and no crown either, is still troublesome. Maybe a female "under"?

I think it is very much a mystery - certainly worth exploring.

Ross

I must admit that though this is a card I have at various times come across, I have never paused and paid it much attention.

If I look at the image and not assume it comes from a Tarot deck, but rather let the image speak to me of its own accord, the 'stag' looks as though it could very well be a representation of a giraffe as depicted by a visiting European, and the naked person - whether man or woman is to my eyes unclear - looks more as though they are holding some kind of cornucopia or mixing vessel, and with their right hand stirring something therein.

Even the hair-'dress' seems as though it could come as an African representation, and the full nakedness would certainly have been one way in which some Europeans may have depicted what many would have considered 'primitive'.

The seed (or less likely black-pearl) necklace only adds to the overall indication... but, I am certainly not one to have studied similar depictions, and finding further details would be fascinating. As to whether it formed part of a Tarot-like deck, that, I suspect, may best be left until further similar finds.

Handpainted decks naturally have the condition between commissioner and artist: You paint, what I say, that you paint (although this in a extreme form probably was seldom so), but there was no problem for a rich friend of cardplaying to wish and to get a nude on a stag on his card deck.

This condition is part of the riddle of Tarot and, as far I see it, underestimated.

Tarot is art, and art is free.

The German hunting decks know stags. They also know nudes. Perhaps the commissioner saw one and said to the painter: "That's what I wish", and the painter got his money.

The "standard"-idea, on wish so much people had been rather fixed on, is probably rather wrong, as long it didn't come to mass-production.

Hi jmd,

jmd said:

If I look at the image and not assume it comes from a Tarot deck...As to whether it formed part of a Tarot-like deck, that, I suspect, may best be left until further similar finds.

Click to expand...

this card is one of the 5 cards at the Castello Ursino in Catania, Sicily, discussed in Kaplan I, 109; this card isn't illustrated there, unfortunately. The World, Hermit and Chariot are almost identical to "Charles VI", and there is a King of Swords, which depicts the arms of Alessandro Sforza (half brother of Francesco - also not illustrated in Kaplan) - along with the Nude/Stag card. So sometimes it is called the "Tarocchi of Alessandro Sforza".

So it certainly is part of a Tarot deck, if that is what you are wondering

Ross

Thanks Ross...

I should have been a little more clear in my reflections, and not posted without mentioning the other fourteen extant cards mentioned by Kaplan (of which only four are Major Arcana with undoubted resemblance to Tarocchi decks).

Looking at the card, as I mentioned, and 'not assume it comes from a Tarot deck', I wanted simply to look at the image afresh, wondering, afterwards, if similar images may also be found entirely outside the Tarocchi style deck from which it comes.

Such, then, may be seen to be an aberration from Tarot-like patterns, but may discover the same or similar if we try to look at it, and for it, totally afresh elsewhere.

I had to re-read my post a number of times to see the obvious way it could be read in an entirely different light than intended - especially with that last sentence, where the 'it' referred to the image as 'standardised pattern' rather than the card in question.

I also agree with the substance of Huck's post, in that handpainted decks will depict, to a large extant, the design(s) as preferred (if any are preferred) by the person sponsoring the artist.

As to whether this reflects a (or some) standardised pattern(s) is of course another matter, though one which history seems to point in the direction of diversity, rather than singular convention.

As always, great thread - and my reflections have on this occasion lead more to strayings rather than the loosening of imaginative directions of influence and possible research...

I also tend to think that Huck's post, referring the German hunting decks with stags and nudes, is a valid answer for this question. And even the “African-like representation” and “primitive nakedness” that jmd pointed can add to this theory.

But the first time I saw that card, representing a woman on a stag, I couldn’t help remembering card XI, or Force; it is, after all, the old (medieval) image of a woman taming a wild animal - a lion or a dragon when a virtue is depicted (the virtue of Strength, but also in the representations of several virgin martyrs, shown stepping on monsters and other images of evil), an unicorn or stag in images like the famous “Dame à la Licorne”, whose archetype is the Virgin Mary. These last examples, with a stag or a unicorn, are considered to have a strong underlying sexual meaning, also very much like it happens in card XI.

But the main examples I could call upon this idea are the medieval and renaissance depictions of “wild man and woman”, naked, with long body hair, usually shown in somewhat gallant scenes: in romantic pairs, playing with children, taming wild animals once more. They were very popular as heraldic tenants, and generally represent the natural and good instincts, opposed to bestiality (of course, their interpretation is much more complex than this).

We've animals at the aces of the Parisian Tarot ( Kaplan II. 311). I remember dark to have seen a stag in it somewhere (?)

Compare also:
http://www.geocities.com/tarocchi7/band1.html

Master of the Bandalore (1460 - 1500, northern part of Germany, there is a stag as an ace, a very simple stag. Probably from a stag-suit, compare in our Museum

http://trionfi.com/01/s/

under the old German playing cards, the Ambras game, with 3 animals suits (there are others on other decks, Master of the Playing cards, Master E.S).

It's easily imaginable, that such naked lady with a stag is the Queen of a suit - or the Ace.

There is no security, that not occasionally Italian Trionfi were mixed with imported German suits - when the commissioner prefered it.
Italian suited normal decks were one thing, the Trionfi another. There is no security, that they were produced together - or in any case by the same producer.
Somebody could buy a German deck, and went to a cardmaker and commissioned a trionfi-set of the same size and the same backs. Suddenly you've a German stag in an Italian Trionfi-deck.

As long this were worthful, handpainted , single objects, a lot of scenarios are imaginable, how curious compositions or strange cards shold be explained.