TARONOMICON: The Triumph of Death, The Tarot, and The Fourth Horseman

Gertrude Moakley, in her book The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo (1966) presents the theses that Renaissance Carnival processions depicting "Triumphs" of morality and specific virtues, concepts also embodied in the text and various illustrations to Petrarch's I Trionfi, provide the symbolic basis of the Tarot, which originates from the same basic milieu - a fusion of three traditions: the Roman triumphs, the religious processionals, and the knightly tournament processions of the Middle Ages. These ideas have an interesting history and visual legacy in Western art.

Below is an example of The Triumph of Death, from Bernard Quarich's edition of Works of The Italian Engravers of the Fifteenth Century:

Below: The Triumph of Death from the Predica dell'Arte del ben morire , Florence c1500.

And more familiar versions:

And various incarnations in the history of the Tarot:

Charles VI (or Gringonneur) Deck; Le tarot dit de Charles VI

The Cary-Yale Visconti-Sforza tarot trumps

A.E. Waite & Pamela Coleman Smith Tarot Deck (Rider/Waite)

Of course, in addition to the Roman traditions of triumphal processions, much of this symbolism is also derived from Revelation 6: 7-8: "When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, "Come!" I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hell was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth."