Re: "3rd Rosenwald Sheet", Pratesi 6/16, 12/16, now 1/17
Posted: 08 Jan 2017, 07:34
I have a few comments on Franco's latest note (above).
First, on the question of whether the woodblock for the 3rd Rosenwald sheet could be used as one of four blocks fora minchiate deck, there is the question of the 4th queen, as there is no room for her on the blocks as they now appear as long as the Empress remains with its Roman numeral III. If that III is something added after the printing from the block is done, then there is less of a problem, since a minchiate deck only has three crowned figures as "papi". This would have to apply to all the numbers, because minchiate numbers are necessarily (once one of the "papi" is made into a queen) all different from those we see in the Rosenwald except for number one and the unnumbered last five. That the numerals were not part of the woodblock has not been established, as far as I know.
Even if this problem can be resolved, there remains a problem, as the minchiate Queen of Batons doesn't have the ball in her hand of the Rosenwald Empress, an important Imperial attribute. See e.g. http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/c ... 9&partId=1. This is surmountable. The player just learns to ignore the ball.
A similar issue is that of the papal attributes on two of the remaining Rosenwald "papi", which are not present in minchiate. See, besides the above link, http://a.trionfi.eu/WWPCM/decks07/d05114/d05114.htm compared to http://trionfi.com/rosenwald-tarocchi-sheet. But perhaps in the early days of minchiate this issue is not important.
The rest of what I have to say pertains to the table that Franco drew up:
Here are my complaints.
(1) We can't be sure that the "tarocchi" interlude was part of the play as performed in Sansepolcro. It might have been added at the request of the publisher, to advertise his wares, and the title adjusted to make sure no one missed it. If so, the deck would correspond to what was known in Perugia. That relates mainly to (2) below.
(2) Franco's table doesn't include the Cardinal. In fact Perugia is not far from wherever the Anonymous Discourse was written (Central Italy), and that writer mentions the "highest dignitaries" as "in the spiritual, Cardinal and Pope, in the temporal, King and Emperor". Anonymous also says that there are two "Papi". This suggests that one of the "Papi" was called, informally, the Cardinal. It seems to me justified to put, tentatively of course, the Cardinal as one of the cards, probably below the Emperor. (There remains the issue of whether in minchiate the "papi" ever were given such names, as opposed to just "papa 1" etc. It must be assumed that we are dealing with a proto-minchiate, but one slightly more advanced than the Rosenwald, in that one of the spiritual dignitaries has by now lost his tiara.) I know that we should have only four cards in this deal. But there is one that seems to me unjustifiably there, for which see (3) below.
[Added later: see a later post where I examine the text. Franco seems to be closer to the truth.]
(3) Franco includes "Bagatella" and "Matto" as two separate cards. Two such cards are not mentioned in the play, at least as Franco presents it (and I checked his 1987 piece as well), only one, called Matto. This is an excellent argument for the non-existence of one of these cards in the deck being referred to. But there is no justification from the play for listing two such cards. To make a quartet, we have the Cardinal. [Added later: see later post examining the text of the play. They are clearly two cards, as Franco says.]
From Franco's description, I assume that the cards are being dealt four at a time. So the first four are Cardinal, Emperor, Pope, and Fool. If Fool=Bagat, these could be prototypes of the "four Papi" of minchiate, in which Love is called the "papa five".
(4) There is the question of where this Fool card should go. It seems to me that they are meant to be putting the cards in this quartet in the order they thinking they should go, not how they standardly go. They think that the Fool should be after the others mentioned. Perhaps they are thinking of professional Fools, who not only make their employers laugh but also teach them things, as well as the "natural fools", who even surpass most rulers (as a cynical joke). But this does not mean that in the standard order the Fool is in that place. Probably it is where the Bagat is in minchiate. So we have 1?Fool, 2Cardinal?, 3Emperor, 4Pope. [See later post: Emperor is before Pope; it remains unclear where the Fool goes, even though it is presented after Emperor and Pope.]
(5) There is the question of what numbers the next group should get. It seems to me that Notturno has either forgotten about or is deliberately ignoring the Love card, which is always present at this point in the hierarchy. Perhaps if he included it, then some witticism would be expected, and he didn't feel like having to think of one, that the scene was long enough already. So I think the numbers on the next four cards should be one higher than Franco gives them. So the 8th card would really be Justice and not Chariot, regardless of what Notturno's characters say. Then 4 more cards are dealt. Three of them are discussed, but they don't really want to deal with the Hanged Man, that's too close to home.
We really cannot take what is in the play strictly literally. He is not instructing the audience as to the standard order, he is simply entertaining with something part of the audience will recognize, and perhaps trying to make the game look interesting so they rest of the audience will buy it. [This last is sustained by an examination of the text. The issue of the previous paragraph is not addressed in the text, but the paragraph still seems to me appropriate reasoning.]
The net result is that Notturno's first 11 triumphs ares closer to those of a 96 card Minchiate (in the manner of the Rosenwald) than it might appear. [This conclusion is not justified, since the Bagat and the Fool are two separate cards.]
.
(6) it would be very helpful if Franco would post photocopies or transcriptions of the relevant pages of the text, not only for the explicit part on the tarocchi but also for the parts he thinks are implicitly referring to the special minchiate images. Then we could discuss these things further. [Added later: Franco says he had made photocopy of the Notturno and looked for it recently but couldn't find it, and that finding the microfilm now is hardly possible. I forget that it was 1987 when he had it. Added still later: part of the text is reproduced on trionfi.com, as Huck says later.]
First, on the question of whether the woodblock for the 3rd Rosenwald sheet could be used as one of four blocks fora minchiate deck, there is the question of the 4th queen, as there is no room for her on the blocks as they now appear as long as the Empress remains with its Roman numeral III. If that III is something added after the printing from the block is done, then there is less of a problem, since a minchiate deck only has three crowned figures as "papi". This would have to apply to all the numbers, because minchiate numbers are necessarily (once one of the "papi" is made into a queen) all different from those we see in the Rosenwald except for number one and the unnumbered last five. That the numerals were not part of the woodblock has not been established, as far as I know.
Even if this problem can be resolved, there remains a problem, as the minchiate Queen of Batons doesn't have the ball in her hand of the Rosenwald Empress, an important Imperial attribute. See e.g. http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/c ... 9&partId=1. This is surmountable. The player just learns to ignore the ball.
A similar issue is that of the papal attributes on two of the remaining Rosenwald "papi", which are not present in minchiate. See, besides the above link, http://a.trionfi.eu/WWPCM/decks07/d05114/d05114.htm compared to http://trionfi.com/rosenwald-tarocchi-sheet. But perhaps in the early days of minchiate this issue is not important.
The rest of what I have to say pertains to the table that Franco drew up:
Here are my complaints.
(1) We can't be sure that the "tarocchi" interlude was part of the play as performed in Sansepolcro. It might have been added at the request of the publisher, to advertise his wares, and the title adjusted to make sure no one missed it. If so, the deck would correspond to what was known in Perugia. That relates mainly to (2) below.
(2) Franco's table doesn't include the Cardinal. In fact Perugia is not far from wherever the Anonymous Discourse was written (Central Italy), and that writer mentions the "highest dignitaries" as "in the spiritual, Cardinal and Pope, in the temporal, King and Emperor". Anonymous also says that there are two "Papi". This suggests that one of the "Papi" was called, informally, the Cardinal. It seems to me justified to put, tentatively of course, the Cardinal as one of the cards, probably below the Emperor. (There remains the issue of whether in minchiate the "papi" ever were given such names, as opposed to just "papa 1" etc. It must be assumed that we are dealing with a proto-minchiate, but one slightly more advanced than the Rosenwald, in that one of the spiritual dignitaries has by now lost his tiara.) I know that we should have only four cards in this deal. But there is one that seems to me unjustifiably there, for which see (3) below.
[Added later: see a later post where I examine the text. Franco seems to be closer to the truth.]
(3) Franco includes "Bagatella" and "Matto" as two separate cards. Two such cards are not mentioned in the play, at least as Franco presents it (and I checked his 1987 piece as well), only one, called Matto. This is an excellent argument for the non-existence of one of these cards in the deck being referred to. But there is no justification from the play for listing two such cards. To make a quartet, we have the Cardinal. [Added later: see later post examining the text of the play. They are clearly two cards, as Franco says.]
From Franco's description, I assume that the cards are being dealt four at a time. So the first four are Cardinal, Emperor, Pope, and Fool. If Fool=Bagat, these could be prototypes of the "four Papi" of minchiate, in which Love is called the "papa five".
(4) There is the question of where this Fool card should go. It seems to me that they are meant to be putting the cards in this quartet in the order they thinking they should go, not how they standardly go. They think that the Fool should be after the others mentioned. Perhaps they are thinking of professional Fools, who not only make their employers laugh but also teach them things, as well as the "natural fools", who even surpass most rulers (as a cynical joke). But this does not mean that in the standard order the Fool is in that place. Probably it is where the Bagat is in minchiate. So we have 1?Fool, 2Cardinal?, 3Emperor, 4Pope. [See later post: Emperor is before Pope; it remains unclear where the Fool goes, even though it is presented after Emperor and Pope.]
(5) There is the question of what numbers the next group should get. It seems to me that Notturno has either forgotten about or is deliberately ignoring the Love card, which is always present at this point in the hierarchy. Perhaps if he included it, then some witticism would be expected, and he didn't feel like having to think of one, that the scene was long enough already. So I think the numbers on the next four cards should be one higher than Franco gives them. So the 8th card would really be Justice and not Chariot, regardless of what Notturno's characters say. Then 4 more cards are dealt. Three of them are discussed, but they don't really want to deal with the Hanged Man, that's too close to home.
We really cannot take what is in the play strictly literally. He is not instructing the audience as to the standard order, he is simply entertaining with something part of the audience will recognize, and perhaps trying to make the game look interesting so they rest of the audience will buy it. [This last is sustained by an examination of the text. The issue of the previous paragraph is not addressed in the text, but the paragraph still seems to me appropriate reasoning.]
The net result is that Notturno's first 11 triumphs ares closer to those of a 96 card Minchiate (in the manner of the Rosenwald) than it might appear. [This conclusion is not justified, since the Bagat and the Fool are two separate cards.]
.
(6) it would be very helpful if Franco would post photocopies or transcriptions of the relevant pages of the text, not only for the explicit part on the tarocchi but also for the parts he thinks are implicitly referring to the special minchiate images. Then we could discuss these things further. [Added later: Franco says he had made photocopy of the Notturno and looked for it recently but couldn't find it, and that finding the microfilm now is hardly possible. I forget that it was 1987 when he had it. Added still later: part of the text is reproduced on trionfi.com, as Huck says later.]