Huck wrote:If the Alessandro Sforza really was for Alessandro Sforza, who died 1471, and one can really state, that Charles IV was the original and the Alessandro Sforza a variation of it (what seems plausible), then 1478 wouldn't be possible.
There are several fragments of "PMB"-type decks, some with non-standard-PMB variants, which more than likely means that deck was produced over a number of years. One can just as easily assume the same for a standard Florentine deck, with variants per the patron they were made for.
Huck wrote:
We have meanwhile a lot of cardmakers from Florence, and a good part of them appear as Trionfi card producers.
And the PMB "standard" deck involved more than one artist. A standardized tarot deck is not much different than a copybook used by artists for various motifs. There are regional variations of tarot, but within a given region a certain standardization is expected.
Huck wrote:I think, it's from c. 1463, around Lorenzo's 14. birthday, in Florence, and this for various arguments. Scheggia ... Among the chests with wall panelling inventoried in 1492 in the Medici town house on the Via Larga, Florence (all untraced), was a spalliera, recorded as by Scheggia, that depicted a famous joust of Lorenzo's in 1469. In 1469 Scheggia declared to the tax officials that he was infirm. His last report is dated 1480....
You made no argument for 1463 (but sort of for 1469). And why would 14 be a special birthday?
A halberd's significance is
guardianship...as in "of the state" (perhaps most famously with the Swiss guards of the Vatican). 1469 is interesting in this regard, but not because of a joust - a halberd wouldn't be used in one. 1469 is interesting because Lorenzo's father, Piero, died, making Lorenzo the de facto ruler of Florence. But to advertise Lorenzo as such - in full armor no less, as some Signor
condottiero (and again, see the very similar Florentine Mars image above to the CVI charioteer) - would have been beyond the pale in ostensibly Republican Florence. The Medici preferred to be low key in this regard, assuming more of a "first among equals" approach, behind the scenes.
So you agree that the CVI was most likely made for Lorenzo but provided no rationale for 1463 and a joust in 1469 would be completely irrelevant for an armored charioteer holding a halberd and wearing the scarlet beretta cap - clearly indicating a ruler (although "charioteer" is clearly a misnomer here - that is simply a parade wagon, typically used for
edifici).
In 1478 everything had changed. Lorenzo was wounded and his brother killed in the duomo in an outright coup for Florence by Sixtus IV and his family members. Showing Lorenzo as the guardian of the state, armored and ready to protect it, was a now a legitimate and natural response to the extreme circumstances.
A final note in regard to Sixtus IV, Eugene VI and the CVI. You and Mike identified Eugene on the Pope card, but he was dead (1447) even before your earliest dating (1463). But Eugene had lived in Florence under the Medici and could be recycled as a symbol of the papacy on good terms with Florence; most importantly in this context, in 1435 Eugene consecrated the very duomo Lorenzo was almost assassinated in by a later pope. After the Pazzi Conspiracy, Sixtus placed Florence under interdiction and pursued two years of war against the city. In order to resolve the hostilities this interesting papal request had to happen:
In 1480 Pope Sixtus refused to make peace with the Florentines until they removed the defamatory paintings of the Pazzi. He said he was afraid that images of his friends and relatives were among them; what he meant was that if it stayed in place, men could continue to defame him through his friends. (R. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 1980: 124)
So let's turn to the CVI Death trump - could Sixtus be defamed in this card, as he most certainly was in the poetry of Poliziano, and as his relations were on the walls of Florence? This particular trump is odd to begin with, for why would a pro-papal city depict clergy being cut down (yes, Visconti did this in the CY but he was often at war with the Papacy, definitely in c. 1440, per the battle of Anghiari), when the Florentines could have used the PMB version of Death without clergy, just as they later did with
minchiate.
But there is a curious detail no one has previously discussed in regard to the CVI Death card: Why is the pope's hand punctured with the stigmata? It is unprecedented before or since, and you will find no other depiction of a pope with the stigmata. But if it were meant to depict Sixtus, there would have to be a taunting reason by the Florentines, and indeed there is:
In his bull ‘Spectat ad Romani Pontificis providentiam’ (6 September 1472), Sixtus relates how some clerics in regions north of the Alps and elsewhere were painting images or preaching about certain female saints with the stigmata, especially Catherine [of Siena]. These images and sermons were produced without the consent and approval of the Apostolic See; but what was most objectionable was that such depictions put these saints on a par with Francis [Sixtus was a Franciscan]. (C. Muessig, “The Stigmata Debate in Theology and Art” in ed. C. Brusati, The Authority of the Word, 2011: 497).
To wit: they portrayed Sixtus in a manner in which he violates his own bull. Actually kind of funny.
The Florentine context of 1478 explains both of the idiosyncratic trumps of Death and the Chariot in the CVI.
Phaeded
PS Botticelli's
Pallas and the Centaur, in which Pallas is covered in the three-ring device of the Medici and prominently holds a halberd, was painted just 2 years after the conclusion of the Pazzi War in 1482 and clearly celebrates Lorenzo's wisdom for resolving that war:
(see, for example, Hugh Ross Williamson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, 1974, 196:
"Botticelli memorialised the event in a masterpiece which is more unintelligible than usual without a knowledge of events - Pallas and the Centaur. The Centaur, symbolising crime and war, typifies the iniquitous Pazzi conspiracy and the unrighteous war brought on Florence as a result of it.")