Death as mounted rider with scythe
Timothy Betts makes an interesting observation about the image of death as a skeleton, mounted on a horse, and carrying a scythe. While each of these elements individually may be traced to 14th century, the earliest actuall instance of these coming together in one image we have on record is c.1480.
According to Betts:
quote:
"This convention has come under considerable scrutiny because of its
influence upon Albrecht Durers print 'The Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse' shown earlier*. Art historians believe that the image of
death as a skeleton rider (without the scythe) first appeared in
illustrated Apocalypses from the Low Countries shortly after 1400.
The scythe is even older. In the 1330's Giotte replaced the hand
sickle... with a large scythe in his frescoes for the Peruzzi chapel
of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy...
"As far as is known, the [skeleton] rider and scythe came together
for the first time in a series of German woodcut illustrations in
1478-9, 1483 and 1485, for the Cologne (Quentelle), Nuremberg
(Kolberger) and Stausberg (Gruninger)Bibles...
"The German Bible woodcuts did capture the attention of other
European artists. Historians speculate that Albrecht Durer saw and
was influenced by the Kolberger print in his illustrations of the
Apocalypse published in 1498 and reissued in 1515, where he
substituted a pitchfork for the scythe.
"Similar experiments were tried by other artists in the last decade
of the fifteenth century. The Triumph of Death fresco in the National
Gallery at Palermo painted at this time shows the fourth horsemen
with a bow and arrow. Another, portrayed in the Romance of the Rose
painted for Louise of Savoy...carries a spear.
"By the first quarter of the 16th century, the scythe had won out as
the accepted convention. Not before the mid-fifteenth century, as we
would have to believe, if the skeleton rider with a scythe on the
Visconti-Modrone Death card was painted for Filipo Maria Visconti who
died in 1447."
end quote from 'Tarot and the Millenium' by Timothy Betts, p. 104-107.
Betts includes an illustration from the Strausberg Bible [1485], which along with Death [as fourth horsemen of the apocalypse] as a skeleton rider with Scythe also shows a cluster of figures beneath including a Pope and a King similar to the cluster of figures in the CVI death card.
If Betts is correct then it creates questions about the dating of early painted cards which include this type of figure of death, for example the Visconti-Modrone and the 'Charles VI' [with which we have noted many similarities with our printed sheet]. If Betts is correct then these must be dated far later than is currently supposed [Betts dates them to c.1520-1540]. Similarly with early printed decks/sheets with this figure.
There is however the c.1300 image le pendu posted of "The Triumph of Death", from the Sacro Speco, Subiaco, Italy. Dated late 1300s.
Image:
http://www.philipresheph.com/a424/g...iclib/img43.jpg
Which shows death as rider with sword and scythe, but rare exceptions aside as a convention it does appear to be post 1500. Perhaps in this instance it was the card designers that led convention, rather than followed it. In the 1470's many German printers set up in Italian cities, and with them moved many German engravers, particularly in Venice. It is possible explanation that a German engraver, visiting or resident in Northern Italy for a while, saw either one of these painted cards or a printed version with similar iconography, and took it back to Germany?
Kwaw
