B2 - B5: Imperatrice, Imperatore, Papesse, Papa

B2. Imperatrice.

The card we know as the Empress was always the Imperatrice in Italy. In the early lists from Northeastern Italy she follows the Bagatella. On the early cards (e.g. the Cary Sheet, c. 1500), she holds the shield of Empire, symbol of the succession, on her lap, like a Madonna and Child. More to the point, she is like Isis with the infant Horus, as seen on Roman coins, e.g. at left below. All the nobles collected ancient coins, including the Estensi. Roberto Weiss, in The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, p. 171:

It is scarcely surprising in view of the prevailing enthusiasm, that the discovery of a hoard of ancient coins aroused considerable interest. ... It was therefore only natural that having learnt in 1494 that a peasant had unearthed some Roman coins near Reggio Emilia, Matteo Maria Boardo should have hastened to inform  his master, the Duke of Ferrara (footnote: Matteo Maria Boiardo, Opera vulgari, ed. P. V. Mengaldo (Bari 1962), 275).

On the same page Weiss cites a letter from Giorgio da Negroponte May 19 1507 to Isabella d'Este "in which he emphasized the difficulty in securing ancient Roman coins owing to the great demand for them", in Weiss's words.

The drapery behind the Cary Sheet Empress gives her the suggestion of wings, continued in the "Marseille design of the Noblet, where there is even what might be the suggestion, on the lower right of the chair, of a wing.

Isis, in Plutarch Isis and Osiris16, took the form of a swallow. To me the drapery looks more like a vulture's wings. That would identify the Empress with nature, and so indirectly with Isis. Leon Alberti says, in his treatise on architecture (1470 but written earlier), "The Egyptians employed the following sign language: a god was represented by an eye, nature by a vulture..." His source was a text by the Roman general Ammianus. Isis, in turn, was a major personification of nature. This idea has been developed at length by Hadot in his The Veil of isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature (in Google books). Fior one thing, there was the famous statue supposedly of Isis at Sais reported by Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 9, with the motto ""I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised". There was also Apuleius, whose Isis tell this protagonis Lucius, "I come to you - I, natural mother of all life, the mistress of all the elements" (Lindsay trans. p. 237). Later her devotees praise her as "Mother of the Stars, the Producer of the Seasons" (p. 239). There was also the Roman philosopher Macrobius said (Saturnalia I, 20, 18):

Isis is the earth or beneath the sun. This is why the goddess's entire body bristles with a multitude of breasts placed close to one another [as in the case of Artemis of Ephesis], because all things are nourished by earth or by nature.

Finally, both the Hypnerotamachia (Strife of Love in a Dream), of 1499 Venice, and Ripa's Iconologia, of 1603 Rome, associated nature with the vulture. The Hypneromachia has for its second image an altar with 'on its face, the images of an eye and a vulture" (Godwin translation, p. 41). The second phrase of the "translation" of this artfully constructed series reads "...to the god of nature..." Below I have reproduced the first line of the hieroglyphs and put under it the first line of what the novel says is their translation into Latin. The first hieroglyph is translated as "from your labors"; the second is "god of nature" followed by "freely" and "sacrifice" (the urn). The word order, is that of ordinary Latin.

Ripa's image of nature (Nova Iconologia, Padua 1611 edition, image 222) is of a naked woman holding a bird. It is on her left side, like the Empress's shield.

Ripa says, in the first English translation:

She is naked, to denote the Principle of Nature, that is active or Form, and passive or Matter. The turgid Breasts denote the Form, because it maintains created Things; the Vultur, a ravenous Fowl, the Matter; which being alter'd and moved by the Form, destroys all corruptible Bodies. (http://emblem.libraries.psu.edu/Ripa/Images/ripa056a.htm)

In such manner the vulture is associated with nature, and thence to Isis, Hadot hypothesizes, and I agree.

Nature in these presentations, with its "multitude" of "turgid breasts", is a divine mother. It is perhaps worth noting that around the time of the Cary Sheet, Leonardo da Vinci dreamed of a "nibbio", a small vulture, which Freud analyzed as a mother-figure.

An example of how the madonna and child image becomes detached from its Christian use is shown by another such mother and child in the Hypnerotomachia, there a representation of Venus as the goddess of a female cult of Venus, in this case Venus suckling the infant Cupid.

For another such identification, we may turn again to Apuleius in The Golden Ass: along with everything else, Isis tells the protagonist Lucius and tells him, "The Cyprians in their island home call me Paphian Venus" (Lindsay trans. p. 237). Correspondingly, the picture in the Hypnerotomachia could just as well be of a cult of Isis; the imagery is the same as on the Roman coin shown above, or any Christian Madonna and Child.

Other candidates for the Empress are Dionysus's mothers, any of them: Semele, Persephone, Demeter--or the Libyan maiden Amaltheia (Diodorus sect. 68), whom in the Libyan myth his father Ammon made queen of that area after siring Dionysus from her. In Semele's case the shield on the lap would connote Dionysus in her womb, as she died before she could give birth.

B3. Imperatore

With the Emperor, there is again the shield, symbolizing the continuity of the Empire as represented by his fertility. He could be Osiris, husband of Isis and father of Horus. He could also be Dionysus as statesman, in his bearded persona. Daimonax has pointed out how the Emperor's helmet corresponds to Dionysus's hair on one Roman relief :

As I have already said, the date for the card in the middle above might be 1672, based on the date on the Two of Coins, together with the name "Chosson"; but since that particular cardmaker wasn't in business then, it might well be early 18th century; or the design was initiated by someone else.

The Emperor could also be any of Dionysus's fathers, as listed by Cicero and Diodorus (except those with rams' heads, of course), but especially Zeus. Beanu on Aeclectic once pointed out the resemblance of the c. 1650 Noblet to a particular Zeus, that of his colossal statue at Olympia as described by Pausanias. This text was available in Greek in the 15th century. It is also mentioned in Plutarch's Lives, life of Aemilius Paulus, which was available in Latin. Except for the lack of a helmet, the 16th century rendering below  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Zeus_at_Olympia) is much like the "Marseille" image of the card:

This would be an example of the card's imagery changing to fit the Dionysian myth. The body of water on the lower right of the card might be the Nile, corresponding to Osiris, or the river on which the "Olympian Zeus" in Athens stood, as Plato recounts at the beginning of the Phaedrus (http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/classics/jvsickle/mpPhaed.htm).

B4.  Papessa

The Popess corresponds to the High Priestess of the Maenads or female Bacchantes. Negatively, she is the deluded Agive, Queen of Thebes, in Euripides' Bacchae, who eats raw flesh including that of her own son, thinking it that of a wild animal. Positively there is Dionysus's wife Ariadne. In another myth, available in Latin in Ovid's Metamorphoses (http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses8.html, paragraph 169),she knew the secret of the Cretan Labyrinth; as such, and as the daughter of the king, she would have been a High Priestess. On Roman-era Dionysian reliefs, there is sometimes a female initiation leader, e.g.:

In this relief there is a book behind a curtain, a book of secrets; the Popess is always portrayed with a book, and by Noblet c. 1650 (at right above) with a curtain behind her (image and observations are from Daimonax at http://www.bacchos.org/tarothtm/5pape1.html).

In the Osiris myth, the Popess corresponds again to Isis, who would have been taught magic by her father "Hermes" (Plutarch sec. 12). On sculptures of her, e.g. in the Villa Adriana, there were the crossed straps of the later Popess (seen also on "Pope Joan" and also depictions of the popes); the illustrations to Cartari (at right below) popularized this image of Isis:

Robert O'Neill has pointed out the resemblance between the Cary Sheet Popess and the figure of Isis in the Borgia apartments at the Vatican, done around the same time. When the image is reversed, to make it as it was for the carver, the resemblance is close.

(I would explain the acolyte as a reference to Pope Joan's lover, by whom in the legend, as recounted by Boccaccio, De Claris Mulieribus (Praise of Famous Women), she betrayed herself giving birth. Not everything is Egyptian. The bishop's staff is found on several Popess cards, e.g. the Noblet of c. 1650 (http://www.tarot-history.com/Jean-Noblet/pages/le-pape.html).

In the Hypnerotomachia of 1499 Venice, a very Popess-like High Priestess is depicted, there identified as the head of a cult of Venus. Venus was identified by Apuleius with Isis, as I have already remarked:

B5. Papa.

The tarot Pope is again Dionysus, the older, bearded one, now as head of his cult. Or he is Tharopes, to whom Dionysus taught the cult, according to Diodorus. Or Silenus, the older bearded male initiator as seen on sarcophagi (e.g. the one shown above, in connection with the Popess) and elsewhere. Or he is one of the wise priests of the cult of Osiris described in Apuleius Golden Ass  Book 11. I will say more about the later versions of this card, with pictures, in section B19 of this essay.

Renaissance artists had fun depicting the drunk Dionysus or Silenus. Card players would have had fun, too, comparing the Pope to these stock figures. So, I imagine, did the Belgian cardmaker who, probably advised not to depict the Pope in this Catholic stronghold, substituted a depiction of Bacchus.