O'Neill Robert V. Iconology of Tarot

Unknown, 2000. — 186 p.Introduction by Dr. Robert O'Neill"The first function of history is to open our minds to the infinite wealth of possibleworlds and to help us to understand that our own view, whatever it may be, is precarious,limited, and open to sudden and radical change."(Russell 1984 p.12). The primary purpose of this seriesof essaysis to provide evidence that the Tarot originated in northern Italy in the 15th century. This was the intellectual, cultural, and religious milieu within which the Tarot was invented. The fundamental evidence offered here is the images themselves.No earlier period and no other geographic venue can claim the wealth of visual evidence rhat is presentedhere. We do not know what the first Tarot deck looked like. Given that simple fact, there is no rationale for giving special weight to one or another of the surviving hand.painted and woodblock printed decks. So for presenr purposes we will consider all of the oldest decks that are available through the efforts of Stuart Kaplan (1978, 1986). will look for contemporary imagery that resembles all or most of the surviving Tarot cards.
We do not know the original ordering of the Tarot cards. Dummett (1980) argues that the surviving decks and contemporary documents fall into three major types. For present purposes we will follow the Type B ordering. This ordering, which differs from the familiar Tarot de Marseille numbering, appearsto have the best documentary credentials for being the oldest arrangement. As we examine the individual cards, we will find that the Type B ordering is also recommended by the iconology of the Tarot symbols themselves.
The primary source of the imagery appearsto be the religious art that surrounded the card-playerin every church, public building, and ptazza.Much of religious art was deliberately allegorical and symbolic providing visual reinforcement for the Church's moral message. Davidson (1989) shows this visual education carried over into costumes and charactersin the 15th century morality plays. There can be little doubt that the card-playerswere inundated with this imagery and its significance. In addition to the general religious and secular art of the period, there appear ro be four parallel artistic traditions that were drawn upon as sourcesfor the Tarot imagery.The relationship betweenthe early Tarot and illustrations of Dante's Divine Comedyis consideredin a separate article. Moakley (1966) suggesteda second source in the epic poem "I Trionfi" by Petrarch.\7e will deal with the details of Moakley'shypothesis in a separatearticle but the artistic tradition will be considered here. The triumphal tradition actually begins with Prudentius' "Psychomachia"in the 5th century which was preservedin a number of illustrated manuscript from the 9th to the 13th centuries (Katzenellenbogen 1939). Sticca (1990) points out that there were a number of other works based on the triumphal theme that preceded Petrarch. But Petrarch's popular poem was the immediate stimulus for the artistic tradition in the 14th and 15th centuries (Dodge 1990, Charney 1990, Eisenbichlerand Iannucci 1990. Paoletti and Radke 1997). The basic outline of Petrarch's poem portrays the moral and spiritual development of a person as a seriesof trumphal chariots carried past the reader. Each chariot bears an allegorical figure such as Love, Time, or Eternity together with an entourage of historic and mythic figures. The poetic imagery inspired many artists to illustrate the allegories.There are literally thousands of examples preservedin the museumsof Europe (Carnelli 1971). The triumphal tradition produced images that resemble the early Tarot cards. However, the triumphal tradition is not a complete explanation of the Tarot symbols. Petrarch'ssymbols appear in a different order. There are Taror symbols that do not appear in the poem or the artistic tradition (e.g.,the Hangedman). There are images in the triumphal tradition that are not included in the Tarot. For example,the triumph of Fame is usually depicted as a winged woman atop a globed chariot (Welch 1997) drawn by elephants and doesn't resemble anything in the early Tarot. There are also examplesof the triumphal artistic tradition that fit neither the Tarot nor even Petrarch'spoem, e.g.,the triumph of Venus (Meiss 1970) and the triumph of Truth (Nyhoom 1990). The third artistic influence that we will consider is the Dance of Death tradition which appears to be related to the first few Tarot symbols. The Dance of Death originated as poetry that captured the medieval obsession with death and judgment. Each stanza of the poetry records the final conversation of an individual as each is carried off by the figure of death. The sequence of individuals follows the medieval social hierarchy from beggar to Pope and includes both males and females (Duby 1980, Gurevich 19BB). The poetry inspired an artistic tradition that often appeared in public places to convey the obvious moral lesson.