Card Divination Poll

[Huck]

No date for the painting Huck?
The lady is handing to or taking a rose branch from the the man- which indicates to me this is a question of Love. Cartomancy not card playing I would imagine.
~Rosanne

Lucas van Leyden was born 1494 and started to become active early 12 years old. The chess picture is given to 1508 - and it is seen as painted in "his early style" (the somewhat similar fortuneteller picture is also seen as "his early style").

Margarete of Austria is said to have arrived back in the Netherlands in 1504 (or 1507) ... after her second husbands (Filiberto) death. Leyden is a city in the Netherlands.
Anyway ... the picture can't be made during the time of the real marriage, if the birthdate of Lucas van Leyden is noted correctly with 1494. Perhaps it was a later glamourization of this event.

In this earlier mentioned specific opinion (of a Allen Rosenbaum in Ausst.-Kat. Washington 1979-1981: Old Master Paintings from the Collection of Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza (National Gallery), S. 114 f.; the opinion was later adapted by a historian of Leyden, Wim Blokmans) the cardplayer picture of Lucas van Leyden located now in Madrid (I couldn't identify this with security, but I assume it is this (.... WRONG ... ... please see my correction next post )

http://germany.intofineart.com/upload1/file-admin/images/Lucas van Leyden1.jpg

..., is related to a specific political situation, in which 3 great persons are united at a card table, that is the mentioned Margarethe, her nephew, the young Emperor Charles V. (who is at this picture NOT in his usual outfit) and the English cardinal Thomas Wolsey ...

..., in the year 1521 a rather important man in England. Wolsey changed sides from the French King Francois to the German Emperor Charles and the mediator of this political change was nobody else but Margarethe then.

One has to remember, that Pope Leo died in 1521 and that we had then for a short while a Dutch Pope in Rome - surely a good opportunity for a highstanding Dutch Lady to have an important role in European politic.

The result of the negotiations 1521 became a new war in the Milanese region later, leading finally to the battle of Pavia and the Sacco di Roma.

When we compare the portrait of Margaretha ....

... with the centralised female person at the cardplayers picture, then we observe similarities in the outfit, especially when we know, that Margarethe since the end of her second marriage prefered generally the widow's dress.

So far it looks like an interesting hypothesis.
The author of the article mentions other heraldic reasons, which contribute to the idea, that this might be a correct identification: Margarethe might be the centralised person on both or one of the both pictures.

There are other contemporary examples, in which cardplaying was used as allegory for political negotiation.

 

[Huck]

Hm,

there is an interesting detail ... the portrait person has an unusual thin black ring at the finger nearest to the thumb.
It might be, that the centralised person on the card table picture has also something like a ring on the same finger (though not at the same hand). Tough ... this hand is rather strange, somehow it looks crippled. Strange ...

.... well, I finally detected the true van Leyden cardplayer picture from Madrid

http://www.wga.hu/html/l/leyden/1/3cardpla.html

... So you've to forget my speculations about the other picture

 

[Rosanne]

Thank you Huck- good to see you here and Happy New Year!

So what have we got here?
Christian Lady (cross around neck) has three piles of cards that are not like the French suited ones in other card painting. The Flower is a rose Stem, you can see the thorns. The Man has taken his Hat off- could be Cardinal Wolsey and a Rosa Gallica- the Rose of Lancaster- Wosley's rose. There is a jug on the table indicating it is her table- place-domain. If it is Margaret and it was painted in 1508 there a'bouts -she is 28 years and that is the year that Cardinal Wolsey went to Flanders? You think it has political overtones like the chess game?

Hmmm my heart is downcast- seems you are right it is not cartomancy- it is politics. (But then again politics is fortune casting after all?)

~Rosanne

 

[Huck]

... the author thinks of a carnation ... I think from that, what I can identify under the given bad conditions, that the flower looks similar to those on the table cloth, maybe artificial magherites. Wolsey came 1521, this part belongs only to the Madrid picture.

Well, happy new year to you ..

... other parts of the story are moderated

 

[Rosanne]

Carnation! I be braver than you....

However, the virginal aspect of the carnation is dubious and seems to have given way to a more carnal meaning. The carnation was later considered a symbol of marital love, fertility, and fidelity and was found in many marriage paintings during the Middle Ages. In fact, there is a story of Maximilian of Austria who was told by the bishop of Treves to seek under his bride's dress for a carnation hidden there. Apparently, Maximilian was unsure of how to proceed at the beginning of the search but soon became quite fervent about his endeavor. Oddly, no one seems to know whether he found what he was seeking.

Margarites are white daisies......
Carnations do not have thorns.....
Lancaster rose has thorns, is Wolsey's flower and he was known as the Butcher of the Rose..........Not sure which Tudor he butchered.....
But because of Maximilian I will accept Carnation

~Rosanne

 

[BrightEye]

There seems to be some discussion of this painting in German at:
digbib.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/volltexte/documents/2573
or search on Doktorarbeit/ Femina Ludens
p. 62ff

Some more information: Although the picture suggests that the woman is a fortune-teller because she has no visible gaming partner, the author of the dissertation states that there is little evidence in written sources that cards were used for fortunetelling prior to the 18th century. Interpretations of the woman as fortune-teller seem to be post-Lenormand, so not taken from its original context but later inferred. Also, she holds only a few cards, apparently not enough to suggest divination.

The Mainzer Kartenlosbuch of the 16th century is the earliest document that mentions divining with playing cards, but during that time, Losbücher were usually consulted to determine the meaning of the cards. Historians seem to agree that the books were more important than the cards in the act of divining. The woman in the painting holds no such book, so the thesis in question agrees that no fortunetelling is going on and the title of the picture is erroneous. The thesis then gives a variety of examples of what the painting actually shows. The political context mentioned by Huck seems to be the main focus.

 

[Nevada]

Searching Shakespeare...

I downloaded a text copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare from Project Gutenberg, here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/100

I've done two searches so far, one for "card" or "cards" -- which only brought up passages about card games.

I did another search for "foretell" -- no mention of cards.

I plan to do more searches as I have time. It's great to be able to find a text version online (I love Project Gutenberg), so I didn't have to reread everything -- and read a lot of it for the first time. Not that I would mind reading everything, and I have a print copy, but there's the time element, and I'm not that fast a reader to begin with.

If anyone else does other searches of this text, maybe they could post them here or in another thread.

 

[prudence]

yes, I do believe things can happen, take place, without having been written down....especially given the political/religious attitudes of the time.....all of the points mentioned in previous posts that people would be too mortally fearful of using cards for divination to me are the very reasons why none of it would have been written down by anyone...until the 18th century when things got more relaxed....

Human nature is human nature....we do (to this day) things that can bring the death penalty down upon us, it is not actually a deterrent now, so why would it have been so much more of one back then? Humans were certainly clever enough to realize that anything written down would be proof/evidence that could be held against them, so to me it is too obvious of a possibility to dismiss it. I understand the workings of historical research but I do find it a frustrating wall to run up against when it is always the same thing, 'the first written reference of blank only occurred in this year, so that shows blank could therefore have never happened until this very mention....' It is almost like using a math formula to predict or describe human nature, which does not work, because human nature is not at all formulaic. We are bizarre, unpredictable, naughty little monkeys....we always have been, even when the Church had a strangle hold over most of the world.

eta: speaking of naughty little monkeys....I wonder when the first written reference to wanking occurred...and do I for one minute believe that it did not occur before that particular time period in which it was mentioned?


No.

 

[prudence]

This whole subject about historical research/evidence has me a bit annoyed....it reminds me so much of a skit from a show called "Little Britain" in which a secretary/receptionist sitting in front of a computer tells a client/patient (sometimes it is in a hospital, sometimes a bank) that "The computer says 'No' " after typing away at the keyboard for a few seconds, regardless of what the client (or patient) is asking....ie patient asks about an appointment he/she has for that day....receptionist types away, then tells patient quite flatly "Computer says 'No'." Sometimes she even informs the patient that the computer says 'you're dead'...even though the person is clearly sitting right in front of her, fully alive. As long as Computer Says It, then it must be true.

To me, this is how the 'entity' of historical research sometimes behaves, almost like it has its own ego issues....I can substitute the words 'historical research/evidence' for 'computer' in the above examples for any given question, regardless of all that we know of human nature and come up with a 'No' answer. Like 'historical evidence says women did not masturbate until the ...let's say 70's....because it was not written about until circa blankety blank...in Cosmopolitan magazine...'

 

[Teheuti]

As long as Computer Says It, then it must be true.

To me, this is how the 'entity' of historical research sometimes behaves

I agree with you completely. However, in the absence of any evidence - even circumstantial - we are open to any story being equally valid. Historical evidence serves to narrow down the possibilities.

I can't see even a hint of evidence that the first decks were used for divination. However they were created with the idea of presenting a range of allegorical subjects that may have had some encyclopedic cosmology in mind. The allegorical qualities were soon used in poetry games for assigning personality characteristics to individuals and the suits were early on related to vices and/or virtues. Still, we've seen from the Egyptians who used wheels on toys but didn't graduate on their own to using them for carts or carriages that there can be a gap between what seems obvious and what actually occurs.

I love the fact that there is still room for questioning and research on this subject.