Sandy wrote, Sixth wheel of Fortune, and a second wheel of the ages of man: These are on facing pages of a manuscript dating about 1180. I'm told this manuscript was once in the Visconti library in Pavia. It's in Paris now. (I wonder how it got there). It would have gotten there via Louis XII's plun...

This is the continuation of what I wrote at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=20726#p20726. Thanks, Phaeded. The only thing I have problems with is inferring the make-up an "ur-tarot" card (Love) from a card that is at least around 1460, plus a selected set of images showing bunches of l...

So what could be the connection of Marziano to the later tarot of Florence 1440, the CY and so forth? I want to advance a hypothesis. By rights this should be in the Unicorn Terrace section of the Forum, but it follows directly from what has been discussed on this thread, so I will put it here. Part...

Tower cards with globes falling down (indicating hail or, if colored red or yellow, fire) are clearly apocalyptic in theme, which would also include prefigurations of the Apocalypse, such as God's destruction of the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the falling of the idols as recounted in the...

What I wanted to know was whether the 12 Olympians, whether by that name or not, and whether including Vesta or Bacchus, were treated as a group in medieval literature or art before Marziano. I am not aware of any. You've shown nicely that they could have been, since Livy and Apuleius were available...

Thus, by analogy, VIII Imperatori might refer to a game where there were eight counting cards. The name "VIII Imperadori" is in 1423, rather early for "counting cards" unless you know of one. And yes, when in the 1440s and 1450s there are notes for "imperatori cards" simpliciter, we don't know whet...

Sorry, I should have included the whole scan. Mercury: https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qOIxbSMJYUM/XEwfWYSRFtI/AAAAAAAAMp0/ZIiMo3tmZuMrcpA0GRL16kD7-mcGImflQCLcBGAs/s1600/LiebschutzFulgentius-page-076.jpg Perseus: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GLFShOw13vw/XEwfcAXHfYI/AAAAAAAAMp4/tB7XIO-ol9MAfl3MV9HwUIFM8n1LY...

Thanks for bringing up this subject, Sandy. I haven't thought about it much, except when doing translations from Italian or French, and I've had no one to bounce ideas off of, except occasionally Andrea. So here is what I think. But I am not an expert in either language. The French surely knew the n...

On the web I found a better image of the Mercury in Seznec fig. 70, on a site called "Anne McLaughlin Poster". She says it's in an "Ovidius Moralizatus" by Pierre Bersuire/Petrus Berchorius. I see only one snake, unlike in Marziano's description, but he was following Boaccaccio on this point. As to ...

Ludophone wrote, The theme of the four empires has its roots in the translatio imperii theory popular since the middle ages. I doubt it is a tradition within card games but rather a result of writers independently trying to interpret the suits using translatio imperii to explain decks' fourfold divi...