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Lazzarelli used in his De Gentilium Deorum Imaginibus (ca. 1471) 27 figures, first the Spheres group (Mantegna Tarocchi Nos 50 - 41), which is followed by Musica (Mantegna Tarocchi No 26) and then the first book ends. The second book starts with Poetry (Mantegna Tarocchi No 27), and then the Muses+Apollo-series starts (Mantegna Tarocchi Nos 20 - 11). The both series ("Lazzarelli 1-11 = Spheres plus Musica" AND Lazzarelli 12-22 "Poetry plus Apollo + 9 Muses") seem to mirror each other. Then 5 gods are added : Athena (which is later used as Philosophia, Mantegna Tarocchi No. 28), Juno, Pluto, Neptun and Victoria (4 figures, which are unknown to the Mantegna Tarocchi). As a mathematical composition Lazzarelli seem to see a group of 11 (or 10+1) elements paired with a second group with also 11 (or 10 + 1) elements, and an additional group with 5. The idea to combine Musica with the group of the 10 spheres seem to have been inspired by Pythagorean ideas, in which spheres also are connected to music. Poetry - in Lazzarelli's interpretation - seem to reign the world of Apollo and the 9 Muses. As Lazzarelli must be considered surely as a poet and, perhaps, also as a singer, his representation shows till this point inner logic.
Lazzarelli uses the same row of Muses as the Mantegna Tarocchi, although his short chapters to each figure follow, slightly variated, only the descending order 20-11. During our studies we became aware of 2 other different contemporary orders of Muses, one of Franchino Gaffurio (1494) and another of Marsilio Ficino (1469 or little later) and we started to explore, if we could find the origin of these orders. John Meador was successful and could identify 2 of them: the Lazzarelli/Mantegna order as from Fulgentius (see below) and the Gaffurio order as from Martianus Capella (see at this page). It was not possible to find an earlier source for the Muses order of Marsilio Ficino, who combined a series of forms of Bacchus to his order, but Taylor, one of our sources, assumed, that Marsilio took his order from Proklus (see this page for details). In three rows in comparition:
Row of the Muses after FulgentiusMariken Teeuwen in Harmony and Music of the Spheres: The Ars Musica in Ninth-Century Commentaries On Martianus Capella, 2002 finds to the following:
It's easy to verify, this this order is different from the Cappella-Ramis-Gaffurio version, and also it's possible to identify this row from Fulgentius with the identical rows of Lazzarelli and of the Mantegna-Tarocchi. "The Mitologiae in particular served as a basic compendium of mythology, influential both in its own right and through its absorption into the work of the so-called Third Vatican Mythographer, now generally identified as a certain Master Alberic of London.", so informs this internet page to Fulgentius. Fulgentius row is very similar to the row of Muses in the English translation of Hesiod's Theogony, surely the oldest known text to the Muses: 5 positions are identical, No 16 with No 17 and No 13 with No 15 are exchanged, perhaps the difference goes back to a simple writing (or translation) error.
(autorbis in cooperation with John Meador) |
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