From Touchstone TarotTM by Kat Black
Three of Swords
Meanings
Heartbreak. Grief, loss and betrayal. Knowledge can bring great sadness – but would you have preferred to remain ignorant? Take heart, time will ease the pain and you will emerge wiser and stronger.
Reversed (?)
Grief denied. A betrayal or the loss of a loved one. If you resist accepting the pain, you could become cold and joyless. Acknowledge the hurt, mourn and then you can begin to recover and let go.
Description
A woman in black clothes holds three swords to her body. Her eyes show fear or perhaps shock. Beside her is a book with an engraving of Henry VIII on which a white butterfly is resting, and an hourglass. Behind her is a golden curtain and a stormy sky.
This portrait was formerly thought to be that of Catherine Howard, the unfortunate fifth wife of Henry VIII who started off as his "rose without a thorn" but who ended up, like her cousin Anne Boleyn, being executed after accusations of infidelity. Since the figure has now been identified as wearing the mourning clothes of a widow, and the back of the painting notes the sitter as twenty-one years of age, by which age Catherine was in the Tower awaiting her execution, the identity of the sitter is now the subject of conjecture.
I think of her as a "young Tudor widow" and all that would entail, even though we don't really know who she was.
The terrified eyes are from Caravaggio's Medusa, who appears frozen with fear at the moment of her death, as her many victims had been.
Artwork
- Sword hilt, blade: GENTILESCHI, Artemisia, Judith Beheading Holofernes, 1612-21, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
- Sword grip: VOUET, Simon, Magdalene, 1614-15, Palazzo del Quirinale, Rome.
- Stormy sky: POUSSIN, Nicolas, Hagar and the Angel, c.1660, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome.
- Room, book: CLOUET, François, Pierre Quthe, 1562, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
- Woman: HOLBEIN, Hans the Younger, Unknown woman, formerly known as Catherine Howard, 1540-41, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio.
- Eyes: CARAVAGGIO, Medusa, 1598-99, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
- Hourglass: CHAMPAIGNE, Philippe de, Still Life with a Skull, 1600s, Musée de Tessé, Le Mans.
- Engraving of Henry VIII in book: VERTUE, George, The Heads of the Kings of England, 1700s.
- White butterfly: KESSELL, Jan van, Insects and Fruit, c.1636-79, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
The hourglass is gone (loved that) and there's something new on the book page....can't make it out! The moth is gone too : (