Re: The three Zodiac cards in Noblet, and the Gemini in books of hours

I am not satisfied with any explanation for the two sticks: they are my worst sticking point. My only thought is that since there are two of them, it makes most sense to see them as related. If the lower one is a sort of garden border, then the upper one may be part of the same thing. There are lots of these trellis things in the garden pictures, and especially in the Gemini pictures. It can be such a trellis that serves as a fig-leaf for the couple:
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Hours of Claude Molé France, Paris, ca. 1500 / Morgan MS M.356 fol. 3r

My idea is they are standing in front of such a fence, rather than behind it. I don't want either person to be holding up either stick: they have better things to do with their hands. The idea that the upper stick might go behind the man, is that he is standing in front of something, not that he is holding it up behind his back. The sticks are part of a structure connected to the ground. I don't want either of the sticks to be a banner providing the flapping cloth: I want only the two cloaks to do that. Concerning the cloaks I noticed that the figure on Viéville's XXI has a cloak like the ones that perhaps these figures have on the Cary sheet Sun card, with that pectoral fob.
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Jacques Viéville (1650), Paris BnF


Here is the idea of some sort of garden trellis that the lovers stand in front of. I plan to draw in the lovers and then as much of the trellis as their bodies don't cover, and hope you can still tell it is meant to be a trellis.
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The worst problem is that the upper stick seems to come along and stop, which fits a banner butt better than it does the rail of a trellis. It is possible the foliage is supposed to go in front of the trellis at that point. Still, it is a weakness.


Here is my reconstruction as good as it will probably get, until drawn by a better artist:
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This is based on two concepts, 1) that the two sticks are part of a trellis structure that the lovers stand in front of, and 2) that the artist wished to be less explicit than the most explicit of the books of hours (really only one is what you might call X-rated), and therefore wanted something that would cover their genitals, and chose that it would be the tails of their cloaks. Only some cloak tails that are not covering anything, but are part of the overall picture, are seen by us in the extant part of the card. A better artist could make better cloaks and a better trellis than I have.

I have found that unless I resize images to less than 600 pixels on a side, they do not appear on the forum pages. But perhaps a link to them will, Here is the above in the scanned resolution. It is not much higher, but you always lose something when you resize:
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(337.28 KiB) Not downloaded yet
Here is the central figure from Vieville's trump XXI, where he appears surrounded by the tetramorph
Tetramorph RH.jpg
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In all the illuminations I've looked at, only Jesus Christ, or the Agnus Dei (which amounts to the same thing) is ever surrounded by the tetramorph. (angel, eagle, lion, ox). But this post is not about that, but about what he is wearing. The cloak has a pectoral fob similar to the one that the lovers are wearing in the above reconstruction.

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