We have already referred to the Evangelists and Apostles engraved by the German, Master E. S. of 1466. It is from him that the anonymous Florentine engraver borrowed his figures, in many cases leaving the form of the drapery unchanged but enriching it with elaborate designs in the manner of Finiguerra. The Prophet Ezekiel is thus compounded of St. John and St. Peter, while Amos is copied in reverse from St. Paul. The seated figure of Daniel, in its turn, is derived from Martin Schongauer’s engraving, Christ Before Pilate, but the throne upon which he is seated is strongly reminiscent of the Picture-Chronicle, and likewise recalls Botticelli’s early painting of Fortitude. The Tiburtine Sibyl is derived from St. Matthew, who, in changing his position, has likewise changed his sex. The precedent thus established has been followed by St. John, transformed into the Libyan Sibyl in the Fine Manner, with the addition of a flying veil, to the right, copied from the Woman with the Escutcheon, also by the Master E. S. In the Broad Manner print the figure of this Sibyl gains in dignity by the elimination of much superfluous ornament upon her outer garment, and from the fact that she now sits in a more upright posture, the Fine Manner print still suggesting the crouching attitude of its Northern prototype. It is to the influence, if not to the hand, of Botticelli that such improvement is most likely due.
The twenty-four Prophets and the twelve Sibyls, engraved both in the Fine and in the Broad Manner of the Finiguerra School, are individually and collectively among the most delightful productions of Italian art. It was doubtless as illustrations of mystery plays or pageants in Florence that this series of engravings was designed, and we are able to reconstruct from the Triumphs of Petrarch, and from these prints, a Florentine street pageant at its loveliest.
ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. THE
GENTLEMAN. FROM THE TAROCCHI PRINTS
(E Series)
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. CLIO.
FROM THE TAROCCHI PRINTS (S Series)
Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4 inches
In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
However great their beauty and however strong the fascination which they exert, they have a rival in the series of fifty instructive prints, which, for many years, were miscalled the Tarocchi Cards of Mantegna. Tarocchi cards they are not, and of Mantegna’s influence, direct or indirect, there would seem to be no trace whatsoever. They are of North Italian origin and are the work, in all probability, of some anonymous Venetian engraver, working from Venetian or Ferrarese originals, about 1465—contemporary, therefore, with the Florentine engravings of the Prophets and Sibyls. Forming, apparently, a pictorial cyclopædia of the mediæval universe, with its systematic classification of the various powers of Heaven and Earth, they divide themselves into five groups of ten cards each. First we have the ranks and conditions of men from Beggar to Pope; next Apollo and the nine Muses; then the Liberal Arts, with the addition of Poetry, Philosophy, and Theology, in order to make up the ten; next the Seven Virtues, the set being brought up to the required number by the addition of Chronico, the genius of Time, Cosmico, the genius of the Universe, and Iliaco, the genius of the Sun. The fifth group is based on the Seven Planets, together with the Sphere of the Fixed Stars and the Primum Mobile, which imparts its own revolving motion to all the spheres within it; and enfolding all the Empyrean Sphere, the abode of Heavenly Wisdom.
Much wisdom and many words have been expended upon the still unsolved riddle as to which of the two sets, known respectively as the E series and the S series (from the letters which appear in the lower left-hand corners of the ten cards of the Sorts and Conditions of Men) may claim priority of date. Both series are in the Fine Manner, the outlines clearly defined, the shadings and modelling indicated with delicate burin strokes, crossed and re-crossed so as to give a tonal effect. These delicate strokes soon wore out in printing, and the structural lines of the figures then emerge in all their beauty. It may seem absurd that one should admire impressions from plates obviously worn, but the critic would do well to suspend his condemnation, since the Tarocchi Prints present many and manifold forms of beauty—in the early impressions a delicate and bloom-like quality; in certain somewhat later proofs, a charm of line which recalls the art of the Far East.