Visconti: Il Matto

[le pendu]

The Fool from the Visconti Sforza deck:
http://quatramaran.ens.fr/~madore/visconti-tarots/large/arcanum-fool.jpg

I love this image of the fool. Here we are starting back at the basics. A man in rags, no pants, holes so huge his feet are sticking out of his fallen stockings. He wears a crown of feathers and carries a large stick, well, more a club really.

This is not a figure to admire. This is what we may become if we choose the foolish paths in life rather then following the way of wisdom. I dare say I couldn't even claim "innocence" for this character, to me he seems a bit world worn and melancholy.

The figure in this card always reminds me of Giotto's paintings of the virtues and vices (1302-1305. Capella degli Scrovegni, Padua, Italy).The title is "Inconstancy"... and it is the counterpart VICE to the Virtue of Prudence.
http://www.abcgallery.com/G/giotto/giotto94.JPG

Perhaps in the Visconti world view, The Fool was indeed the lowest of the low, a wanderer without home, food, or human love and compassion.

Or is there more going on here? What do you see and sense when you explore this card?

robert

 

[Fulgour]

I've always thought Le Fol had "two left feet"
and looking at this image, it seems very clear.

Oh ~ the second "left foot" is found as a hand.

 

[Huck]

Filippo Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza were two rather different persons. And there is a very deep cut between 1447 (Filippo's death) and 1450 (Sforza conquers Milan), not continuity. The only person, who builds a bridge, is Bianca Maria Visconti, but she left home years ago, and spend most of her youth outside of Milan.
3 years of war, experiments with a new political system, the Ambrosian republic, which didn't work. Additionally a big pestilence in 1450, perhaps 30.000 dead people. A lot of people were "replaced". The Visconti castle completely destroyed, Sforza builded a new one, but never lived in it. This was a "new world".

Merging both persons by calling the deck a Visconti-Sforza production has eroneous aspects, somehow it means not to know history. So when you title the thread "Visconti: The Fool" ... or "Let's Visconti" I simply have trouble to think of the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo deck. I would think of Cary-Yale - that seems to be Filippo Visconti. Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo is Francesco Sforza.

Unluckily we don't know the complete Cary-Yale. But what we, tells us, that this was deck with not much humor. So was this man, Filippo Maria Visconti.

In the contrary we've somehow funny, colourful persons in the 14 Bembo-cards:

Fool
Magician
(Papessa)
unusual Iustitia
Hermit
Hanged Man

In contrary to Filippo Maria, who more or less was of a family of a--holes, in which the family members murdered each other, Francesco Sforza was part of a great farmer community, which by personal and collective energy ascended as group from nothing to all. Muzio Attendolo had lots of brothers and sisters and Francesco also, they had to develop humor, functional communicative habits and they every time had enough partners to play cards with. This was different with Filippo Maria Visconti. So the decks of both are rather different.

Filippo Maria Visconti had:

Fama (aka "World")
3 theological virtues
probably 4 cardinal figures

No humor.

Probably no Fool.

 

[Fulgour]

I like the feathers. It's a nice touch.

 

[Ross G Caldwell]

Hi Robert,

The Fool from the Visconti Sforza deck:
http://quatramaran.ens.fr/~madore/visconti-tarots/large/arcanum-fool.jpg

I love this image of the fool.

I think it's a great idea to discuss the iconography and history of the Visconti and Visconti-Sforza decks.

I will join in when I have more time. But I have a suggestion - can we title the cards with Italian names? That way the threads will be distinguished more clearly from the equivalent discussions about the TdM and more general ones. Also, there are times when the Italian title is crucial to understanding the image, in my opinion.

So this thread would be "Il Matto", for instance. Not too pedantic a suggestion I hope

 

[Huck]

Perhaps in the Visconti world view, The Fool was indeed the lowest of the low, a wanderer without home, food, or human love and compassion.

Or is there more going on here? What do you see and sense when you explore this card?

robert

In the consideration of the Fool in the 14 Bembo cards I never heard a comparition to the "Wild Man". Although ... some of these "wild men" are rather similar.

They are usually half-naked. They've a baton - very similar to the Bembo-Fool. They often have a sort of crown, often leaves, perhaps even feathers. They've usually a beard. They're often used on playing cards, although in such cases mostly an attribute is used, which doesn't appear at the Bembo-card: Hairs at the whole body.

But:They're an iconographical standard typus of 15th century, probably caused by the imagination and real experience of "wild men" from very foreign countries.

Unluckily there seem to be not much pictures of this type in Internet. Actually it seems, that they were more spread in Germany than in Italy.

 

[le pendu]

Here is a link to the Cary-Yale version of Il Matto:
http://tarot.com/images/decks/cary_yale_visconti/full_size/0.jpg

Although this is a recreation of the missing card, created by Luigi Scapini, I see no reason not to discuss the iconography, or anything else that you wish to discuss. All ideas, thoughts and impressions are welcome and encouraged.


Note: As per Ross' very good suggestion, I've asked the moderator to change the title of this thread to "Visconti: Il Matto", reflecting the Italian name for the card.

robert

 

[jmd]

In the Visconti/Sforza type decks, there does indeed appear to be a reflection of other non-Tarot decks that really do depict the various estates and its assumed hierarchy (such as the Mantegna).

With regards to titles, the cards remain without one, and unlike the Marseille or later decks, may perhaps be more easily called by whatever title we wish to choose. Arguments against this are those which point to various historical fragments that either mention the cards by name only, and the ways future decks in Italy have developed the titles suggested we adopt by le_pendu and Ross Caldwell.

Il Matto - to return to the card - certainly seems to suggest the lowest of the low, and yet there is at the same time a Gargantuan element to his depiction: a giant, it seems, and hence more (or at least other) than human roams the earth - even his hands and feet show that its digits are not as should be. Though perhaps no more than a deformed human being, and certainly classed at the times as below even the commoners, folly has close to its state divine wisdom.

 

[Mesara]

Ive read that a rough looking man bearing feathers and a club was a common depiction of madness and foolish behavior in the middle ages. Some relate the figure to "March Madness"- you know, how everything seems crazy in the month of March (weather, people, animals in their mating).

One author, was it Gertrude Moakley? Can't remember, correlates Pierpoint fool with a medieval description of the spirit of Lent, who wore the white simple clothing of repentance and whose seven feathers were torn off as each week of Lent passed.

It's hard to know how the people of the middle ages perceived this card. On one hand, it seems to be a slight to the lower class, the "lowest of the low" as someone above put it, A degrading position. On the other hand, if the correlation with lent has any merit, I could see some positive things here- shedding your worldly posessions in the humble act of repentance. A time of purification.

 

[Ross G Caldwell]

Bembo's depiction of this card has always struck me as melancholy. He seems slightly cross-eyed, a simpleton. We pity the fool.

It is hard to know if the feathers are placed there by mockers, or because he has had to sleep in barns with the chickens, having no place of his own. His stick would be as much to beat the dogs who chase him as to carry his belongings. Every one who walks in the country must carry a stick.

I don't know about the Lent connection - this was indeed Moakley's thesis, at least a working theory that let her tell a story. It depends upon the other part of her theory being true - that the Bagatella depicts a Carnival King. I think most interpreters regard her theory as far-fetched nowadays. But there is an iconographic tradition of portraying Fools like this, as Giotto's famous frescoes show. The same kind of icon for "Stultitia" (foolishness, stupidity) is found in illuminated manuscripts of the Bible in Psalm 53 - "The fool has said in his heart 'There is no God'". So the Visconti icon of foolishness stays close to traditional depictions.

He is the "lowest of the low", but I think another way to look at it is that he actually has *no place* in society. He is an outcast with no fixed address, no fixed position, which is presumably why the game designer choose a Matto - a nut, idiot, fool - to represent the card with no fixed place, that could stand in for any other at least once. So he is nowhere, but he could be anywhere.

It is perhaps impossible to recover the original role of the Matto in the game - whether he is like the "excuse" in French tarot for instance - but I think the imagery gives a clue, that he was played like this - with no fixed place in the order of counting the trumps. Since Il Matto cannot be counted in any position, the deck is never finished - a provisional state of it can only be reached in play.

Like in French to this day, which does not distinguish between "jeu" meaning "game" and "jeu" meaning "deck of cards", the earliest Italian descriptions used the words "gioco da carte" ("zogo" in some dialects) to mean both the deck and the game (now Italian like English distinguishes the game played from the physical object, the deck, with "mazzo"). The deck therefore *is* the game, always unstable because of this card.

In the Visconti-Sforza, Il Matto is also a natural fool - as opposed - stunningly - to the d'Este and Bolognese cards, where he is a professional fool. But in both cases a fool - one a vagrant, as the later TdM would seem to have it, the other an entertainer. Perhaps the two depictions meet in the idea of wandering, with no fixed place, and fools can either choose to entertain, or they can be unwitting entertainment.

We might think the Sforza court was a more serious place than the Este court, given this depiction of the Matto. I don't know if Bianca Maria and Francesco Sforza's court had fewer professional fools than Ferrara, but Sforza's successor, his son Galeazzo Maria, loved them - just as his contemporary in Ferrara, Borso d'Este. Perhaps if this deck had been made for Galeazzo Maria, his Matto would be juggling or doing something else to entertain the crowd, rather than being an outcast from society.

Finally, looking closely, we can see his pubic hair. This allusion to his nudity is shared with the "Charles VI" Matto, where children are trying to pull down his loincloth. Our Matto's nudity brings us close to his weakness, his helplessness, lack of position in society, and his utter dependence on God - or fortune. His rags, nearly revealing his nakedness, allows the madman to be the closest reflection of the true human condition in among the trumps - alone, weak, poor and nearly defenseless, a stranger. "Who told you that you were naked"? says God to Adam and Eve; and the rest of the people in the trumps appear in various sumptuous guises, but (excluding a few cherubs and cupids) we will not see this nudity again until the end of the series, the Judgement, when even the rags will be thrown off.

Even taking into account the difference between ending the series with the Mondo (World) or the Angelo (Angel or Judgement), it is amazing how the TdM preserves the allusion to nudity at the beginning and the end, just as the Bolognese or Eastern order applied to the Visconti-Sforza and Cary-Yale (the latter has a full nude figure); and the Charles VI deck illustrates this correspondence perfectly - the highest card l'Angelo has many nude figures climbing from their graves, unashamed now, perhaps because unaware, of their human frailty. The stultitia of the simpleton, almost perfect but covered in rags, has become glorious wisdom, the fully revealed, knowledge of God.