Thanks again, Ludophone. Reading the Sable Feathers translation, I see that it, too, is incomplete, without saying that it is. It stops with Article V, leaving a rather large amount untranslated, including all the material on cartomancy. Fortunately we have the French and Tyson's translation online,...

Wonderful, Ludophone. It is a very careful translation, very few errors, by far the best. It, too, seems to be done by someone whose native language is French, I would guess Jean-Michele David. It often does not distinguish between "jeu" meaning "game" and the same word meaning "pack"; English uses ...

Thanks, Steve. The translation seems to be by someone whose native language is French: he or she does not recognize when a literal translation is awkward, misleading, the wrong choice (e.g. "Hangman" for "Pendu"), or makes no sense in English. But between it and what Google Translate produces (somet...

Phaeded wrote, There is nothing essentially Florentine about seven virtues with corresponding exempli (the anti-type is a PMB replacement trump), except for replaceable heraldry in the Chariot and "World" trumps (and court cards of course), which I assume to have featured some kind of civic stemma (...

That cassone is really interesting. Can you post close-ups of the other three virtues? It certainly provides a case for the elevation of Prudence at least to the highest of the cardinals, as in Aquinas, if not altogether separate from them, as in Minchiate. Aquinas presented the virtues in the order...

To expand on Ross's last remark: Prof. Arne Jönsson wrote about one of the games presented by John of Rheinfelden ( “Card-playing as a Mirror of Society. On Johannes of Rheinfelden's Ludus cartularum moralisatus,” In O. Ferm & V. Honemann (Eds.), Chess and Allegory in the Middle Ages , Sällskapet Ru...

Phaded. Thanks for the thoughtful reply. And pardon my lateness; this time I really was on vacation. You put quotation marks around "celestials" as though it was a term used by Marziano, I cannot find a passage where Marziano speaks of "celestials". You say that Marcello's calling Marziano's game a ...

Phaeded wrote: Neither 16 chess pieces to a side nor 16 gonfaloni have anything to do with the subjects of Marziano’s trumps. As for the Guidici cardinal virtues, they simply surround Florence as “New Jerusalem” as a rightful and just polity (there is no inherent meaning via “proximity” of a virtue ...

As a result of reading Monica Donato's 2015, essay on the frescoes photographed by Phaeded, I have expanded post 12. section 6, the paragraph beginning "I would have thought that..." by a photo followed by three more paragraphs. For more of Donato's essay, see my post at http://forum.tarothistory.co...

Maria Monica Donato was the principal art historian involved in the restoration of the frescoes. Unfortunately she suffered an untimely death in 2014. An almost final draft was edited by Giulia Ammannati, Monia Manescalchi and Matteo Ferrari. and published as "Gli affreschi del Palazzo dell'Arte de'...