LOL -- my first post upon attempting to return here and I've already broken the rules! My apologies to Melancholic for bringing attention and wrath upon thee -- I can understand your choice of nom-de-net. And thanks for the kind comments. The Notebook has, as you appear to know, been abandoned for three years. (That doesn't mean it won't resurface, one of these days.)
Okay, if I'm not already banned, let's try the image thing. It might be useful to learn, even if I am tolerated here only briefly.
Here is (I hope) the Magician card from the anonymous Parisian deck. Andy Pollett notes, "The first trump features a performer of tricks, watched by other figures, i.e. by his public, whose caricatural faces remark the triviality of man's material activities, confirmed by a dog and a small monkey playing beneath the table." This is one of the several factors which make the *really cool* insight by Rosanne so immediately plausible. (I was convinced about the correctness of the identification even before I recognized the face, hand, hat, plume, etc.)
Here is a monkey associated with a fool in a completely different ranks of man design. There are ranks of mankind shown in many Triumph of Death works, and the Dance of Death is built entirely around a ranks of man. The E-Series model book has a ranks of man, and, of course, Tarot has a ranks of man.
The present example, however, shows a ranks of mankind as subject to *Fortune*. (Milanese, circa 1400, reproduced in J.B. Trapp, Studies of Petrarch and His Influence (2003), pages 128-9, 123.) The ten figures flank Petrarch, with the highest ranking being closest to him and the lesser figures further away. From left to right they (and their identifying attributes) are identified as:
Jester (w/monkey, red-beaked black bird, cage of other birds),
Minstrel (playing a lute),
Merchant (w/open chest of money),
Doctor of Law (w/books),
Pope (w/tiara and croizer),
Petrarch (in Gothic cathedra, w/pen and open book showing the incipit of Remediis: Cum res fortunasque),
King (crowned, w/orb, scepter, ermine trimmed robe),
Soldier (w/crossbow),
Gentleman (w/falcon and hounds),
Woman (blond, w/red dress),
Shepherd (w/ragged clothes, sheep, cudgel).
And here's a somewhat bigger image of the jester.