Re: A Palermo Empress for the "Alessandro Sforza"?

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Huck wrote:I think, that 1478 is too late ... the Florentines were not in the mood to produce Trionfi decks. They even stopped the Giovanni-the-Baptist festivities.

And Alessandro Sforza was dead then.
All weak arguments.

I happen to agree with the thoughts above about Scheggia and tarot but that he also created the ur-tarot, c. 1440 (in 1435 he was working on the wood designs of the duomo's sacristy but was free by 1440 to do something else). Forgetting opening the can of worms of the ur-tarot for the moment, if Scheggia produced tarot over a long period of time would that not suggest a certain stability to the Florentine deck? And given the close relationship between the Houses of Medici and Sforza, is it surprising that decks pop up from relations of either family that resemble one another, even over time (given said artist stability)? Given Alessandro was outside of Milan, the use of the Florentine model has a greater probability; he simply modified the standard Florentine deck with his own arms and innovated the odd variation (e.g., the stag), perhaps due to his own humanist.

As for the "mood" of 1478 and the ensuing war - there were both textual (particularly Poliziano) and artistic responses to the Pazzi Conspiracy (Verocchio made at least 3 ex voto effigies of Lorenzo for distribution in churches; Bertoldo di Giovanni made medals of both Lorenzo and his slain brother: http://italianrenaissanceresources.com/ ... 1712-1.jpg). Lorenzo's Florence was very much in the mood to create art that was a response to the mortal threat of Medici rule.

Could tarot also be part of the propaganda response to the Pazzi Conspiracy? Of course. Was it? It's plausible, as there is no convincing dating for the CVI. What we do know is what I stated above - switching the Chastity-like figure on the Chariot to an armored male is an innovation for tarot, and the earliest deck where this occurs appears to be the CVI. Why was this change made? I would hazard a specific event occasioned the change, and obviously I feel that event was the threat to Medici rule in 1478 when the pope himself wanted Lorenzo to step aside. Moreover, specific elements - per above (the vine scroll cloth motif and halberd) can also be tied to a painting with the same motifs by an artist whose primary patron was Lorenzo Medici. You pointed out yourself the hair color was significant - something else that can be attributed to Lorenzo (instead of the standard idealized golden hair that even Sforza is given, in the case of the CVI it's as if a more specific likeness - an effigy if you will - was sought after here).

What Florentine alternatives do you have? Or do you think the CVI deck is not Florentine?

BTW: The pope in the CVI Death card looks nothing like the Pope trump - and it may as well be Sixtus IV:
Image
Image

Re: A Palermo Empress for the "Alessandro Sforza"?

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Phaeded wrote: All weak arguments.
I don't think, they are weak. 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.
I happen to agree with the thoughts above about Scheggia and tarot but that he also created the ur-tarot, c. 1440 (in 1435 he was working on the wood designs of the duomo's sacristy but was free by 1440 to do something else). Forgetting opening the can of worms of the ur-tarot for the moment, if Scheggia produced tarot over a long period of time would that not suggest a certain stability to the Florentine deck?
We have meanwhile a lot of cardmakers from Florence, and a good part of them appear as Trionfi card producers.

What Florentine alternatives do you have? Or do you think the CVI deck is not Florentine?
I think, it's from c. 1463, around Lorenzo's 14. birthday, in Florence, and this for various arguments.

Scheggia ...
http://www.wga.hu/bio_m/s/scheggia/biograph.html
talian painter, original name Giovanni di ser Giovanni Guidi. The son of a notary and younger brother of Masaccio, he spent some time as a mercenary soldier. From December 1420 and through the following year Giovanni is recorded in Florence in the workshop of Bicci di Lorenzo. In 1426 he is mentioned in the estimo and in 1427 in the catasto (land registry declaration) written by his brother. Documents suggest that he was in close collaboration with Masaccio's workshop. In 1429 Giovanni paid a three soldi tax based on his own professional activity. In 1430 he enrolled in the Compagnia di S Luca, where he appears as Scheggia ('Splinter'), a nickname given in Tuscany to individuals of slight stature or who are somehow connected with wood. On 23 October 1433 Giovanni matriculated in the Arte dei Medici e Speziali.

The Virgin and Child with SS John the Baptist, Anthony Abbot, Julian and James (private collection), which recalls the style of Masaccio, is datable to the 1430s or 1440s. It shows close similarities with Giovanni's only signed work, the fragmentary fresco dated December 1457 depicting the Martyrdom of St Sebastian in S Lorenzo, San Giovanni Valdarno. The frescoes of the adjoining bay depicting scenes from the Life of St Anthony Abbot are also stylistically similar to the work of 1457. The same hand was recognized in the signed fresco and in works previously attributed to the anonymous painter designated the Master of the Adimari Cassone, also known as the Master of Fucecchio. The former name refers to a spalliera depicting a wedding scene (Florence, Accademy), while the second derives from the altarpiece from the collegiate church of Fucecchio, near Empoli, depicting the Virgin and Child in Glory with SS Sebastian, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene and Martha (Fucecchio, Museo Civico). The panel depicting a game of 'civettino' (a kind of boxing; Florence, Palazzo Davanzati), perhaps originally part of a forziere (nuptial chest) or spalliera, has been assigned to the Master of the Adimari Cassone.

Scheggia's known works primarily consist of colmi (little tabernacles) depicting the Virgin and Child intended for private devotion, birth salvers and paintings for furniture, including panelling and forzieri decorated with single figures on the inside of the lid or depicting a narrative scene. Between 1436 and 1440 Scheggia collaborated on the intarsia designs for the cupboards on the south wall of the Sagrestia delle Messe (new sacristy) in Florence Cathedral. The testimony of Brunelleschi's biographer Antonio Manneti indicates that Scheggia was on close terms with the architect. For the birth of Lorenzo de' Medici on 1 January 1449, Scheggia was commissioned to paint a birth salver depicting the Triumph of Fame (New York, New York Historical Society). 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.
It's interesting, that Scheggia appeared as painter at the birth tray, and at Lorenzo's introduction as a young ruler in 1469, both very personal moments. A deck for his 14th birthday (another very personal moment for Lorenzo) would have some logic in this series.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: A Palermo Empress for the "Alessandro Sforza"?

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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:
Image

(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.")

Re: A Palermo Empress for the "Alessandro Sforza"?

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Phaeded wrote:
Huck wrote:If the Alessandro Sforza really was for Alessandro Sforza, who died 1473, 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.
There is specific Sforza deck type, which I date to 1512 (young Massimiliano Sforza introduced by Isabella d'Este as new Sforza duke of Milan). This type has variants. This is an own group, and a new deck type, although it partly had copied the PMB.
There is the PMB-Type and remakes of it (including 6 added cards). Another deck type, which possibly went to Polonia. Another to the Kestner Museum in Germany. And the Cary-Yale and the Brera and the Michelino with Filippo Maria Visconti as commissioner.

But I don't understand, what you wish to say to the situation of the Charles VI and the Alessandro Sforza? Either the Alessandro Sforza deck type wasn't for Alessandro Sforza, then we could speak of 1478 in the context, but if it was made for him, it must be from "before 1473" (sorry, I wrote 1471 before, but he died 1473).

Checking the life of him at http://www.condottieridiventura.it/inde ... dro-sforza I find, that Alessandro Sforza isn't mentioned in Toscana or Florence in his late years, but the summary at the end has "E' ricordato da Luigi Pulci in "La giostra"." This would mean, that he possibly was in Florence. Perhaps one should check this passage.

He's mentioned in August 1468 and then again in June 1469, so enough time to take a trip to Florence. The tounament was February 7 1469, in June Lorenzo married and in December the father Piero died, btw, still alive at the time of Giostra. But possibly the family saw the death coming, he was sick a long time. So Lorenzo got his Giostra before marriage (last time an not married man) and before death arrived for Piero to give him a solid position soon. Florentines married late usually, Lorenzo already with 20.

I don't find the note ...
https://archive.org/stream/lagiostradil ... 9/mode/2up
https://books.google.de/books?id=YONoAA ... ro&f=false

...
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?
I just found the note of 1469, when requesting "medici scheggia". Other results were only the case of 1449.

Scheggia is in the discussion, cause the woman on the cassone looks like the Temperance woman in the Alessandro Sforza cards and cause he once made playing cards ... and perhaps cause his brother arranged the picture of Adam and Eve, which in a similar form became a Minchiate motif for the Tower card. Well, and cause the birth tray of 1449.

The date of 1463 has many reasons.

The first half part of the Morgante was written till 1463 ... on the suggestion of mother Lucrezia (that was 1460). That is a knights story. Lucrezia needed educators for her sons. The Pulci had a mill in the Mugello and the Medici a villa. The distance was about 5 km. Lucretia was also a poet, and sponsored poets and desired, that their boys would become also able to make some poetry. Lorenzo was 11 till 14 then. Boys love knight stories. All 3 elder Medici were sick. Boys need a father for specific adventurous actions, which the older Medici couldn't do. Pulci filled this part of the father. Lorenzo and Pulci became close friends about this development, one of them 17 years older than the other.
What's wrong with a halberd for a 14 years old boy?

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).


No, I didn't. I said, that this is NOT a pope with a threefold tiara. I could imagine, that it is a pope from a much earlier time, a man close to Florence ... if there was any. It's astonishing, that there was never a pope from Florence ... till the Medici pope.
The current pope was from Siena and the Florentines didn't love him especially, Pius II.
Last edited by Huck on 30 Sep 2016, 10:35, edited 1 time in total.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: A Palermo Empress for the "Alessandro Sforza"?

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Huck wrote:But I don't understand, what you wish to say to the situation of the Charles VI and the Alessandro Sforza? Either the Alessandro Sforza deck type wasn't for Alessandro Sforza, then we could speak of 1478 in the context, but if it was made for him, it must be from "before 1473" (sorry, I wrote 1471 before, but he died 1473).
My point is simple: Both the CVI and Alessandro decks are variants of a standardized Florentine deck, which likely went back for decades. I have no issue with a 1460s dating of Alessandro's deck, but that doesn't preclude the Florentines from continuing to make similar types of decks. There is nothing that insists the decks must have been made in the same year, or even that close in time to one another.

I actually have little interest in the Alessandro deck but am fascinated by the CVI deck in regard to the possibility that it sheds light on the ur-deck.

Back to the proposed 1478-1480 dating of the CVI deck - I also find it interesting that the surviving court card of the sword suit wears a floral-decorated white tunic dress that is extremely consistent with dress depicted in Botticelli's paintings in the late 1470s and early 1480s, meant to depict specifically Florentine allegorical figures (Adrian Randolph in Engaging Symbols [2002: 222] calls the theme "Pallas Medicea", where mythical Florence, wisdom and the Medici merge under one rubric):
Image

And compare the scallop design on the CVI Page's tunic with the same embossed on the armor of the bust of Lorenzo's brother, Guiliano, by Verrocchio (c. 1475-78):
Image


Everything in the CVI points to c. 1478, not before. And you haven't addressed why the pope in the CVI Death trump has the stigmata. I think that clinches the argument for the Pazzi conspiracy period.

Phaeded

PS I would like to point out that Kate did previously point out the stigmata (above I incorrectly say no one has pointed this out) but I had forgotten that and have just come across her observation again when searching for something else. I also had not come across Sixtus' stigmata bull at that time, which explains why its appearance in the CVI Death card would be "anti-papal" in 1478 (or anytime after the 1472 bull). Kate's original 2014 post:

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&p=15073&hilit= ... eld#p15073

"But one element in particular, which I would draw your attention to (i.e., as found in the Death trump) is the mark of the stigmata, which appears on the dorsum of the pope’s right hand in reference to the Via Crucis. I simply do not see how this fits with your antipapal theory."

Re: A Palermo Empress for the "Alessandro Sforza"?

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I had an inspiration ... :-) ... which possibly explains something.

Alessandro Sforza died 1473, april 3. This created the problem, that Costanzo Sforza, the heir, had to marry. His choice was Camilla of Aragon, naturally connected to the kingdom of Naples.
Now we have the accident (or the connected action), that we have 2 Trionfi documents for Naples, from 1473 and 1474 and these are the first we know of. The court of Ferrante was anyway close to Alessandro and so to his son, cause Alessandro had helped Ferrante in the conflict with Anjou around 1463-64. In a relative short action 3 girls of Naples marry: Leonore to Ferrara (June? 1473), Beatrix to Hungary (December 1476) and Camilla to Costanzo (May 1475).

Somehow we have the problem, that the Alessandro Sforza Tarot came to Sicily. Camilla might be the answer. Sicily didn't belong to Naples, but anyway, the rulers were relatives.

"Lope III Ximénez de Urrea y de Bardaixi conte di Aranda e signore di Mislata (... – ...) fu Viceré di Sicilia dal 1443 al 1459 e dal 1465 al 1475."

Ximinez was governor of Sicily for Alfonso of Aragon, when Naples ruled Sicily. Alfonso died 1458 and Sicily became part of the Spanish Aragon. Ximinez lost his job (1459), perhaps cause the Spanish side didn't trust him (and Alfonso's Naples follower Ferrante). He got it back in 1465 ... one may assume, that the Sicily-Naples relations were good till 1475.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: A Palermo Empress for the "Alessandro Sforza"?

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Huck,
Would your inspiration allow you to have less of an issue with a 5 year difference between the Alessandro and CVI? ;-)

Some additional info I posted in Bianca's Garden I'll repost here (but supplemented), as it also points to 1478 for the CVI:

Why a halberd? Florence society was obsessed with aping the French, especially Burgundian, courts at this time, with Lorenzo's dad, Piero, even making loans to the Duke of Burgundy (R. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 1980: 442). The year before the Pazzi conspiracy, this happened to the Duke of Burgundy:
...at the Battle of Nancy (5 January 1477). He himself perished in the fight, his naked and disfigured body being discovered some days afterward frozen into the nearby river. Charles' head had been cleft in two by a halberd, lances were lodged in his stomach and loins, and his face had been so badly mutilated by wild animals that only his physician was able to identify him by his long fingernails and the old battle scars on his body. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_the_Bold
So the charioteer was brandishing a weapon associated with the death of a ruler known for his martial prowess. The message was none too subtle.

And this footnote in Trexler draws the connection between the halberd death of Charles the Bold and Florence even tighter - its in regard to the Medici cult of Lady of the Annunziata, especially patronized by Piero, which attracted pilgrimages to the church of the same name in Florence that held the famous icon:
The defeat of Charles the Bold at Nancy...was a miracle of the Annunziata, for in the heat of battle his opponents had vowed to the miraculous painting (to which Charles himself had dedicated a pompous votive statue-evocation)
(Trexler, 1980: 7, footnote 20)
The additional point here is that the death of the Duke of Burgundy (which essentially signaled that duchy's demise) would have been international news, easily reaching Rome, with the Medici-Florence connection underscoring the fact that it had to be well known to Lorenzo and his circle. It was beyond topical. The timing of the halberd death was fresh - just the year before the Pazzi conspiracy. While the CVI created a lasting gender alteration of the Charioteer, the halberd detail was a one off. The timing and manner of the death of Charles the Bold explains it, if the CVI is from 1478 (or during the ensuing two year war).

Phaeded


Image

Re: A Palermo Empress for the "Alessandro Sforza"?

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Phaeded wrote:Huck,
Would your inspiration allow you to have less of an issue with a 5 year difference between the Alessandro and CVI? ;-)
... .-) ... I still favor my own consideration of 1463 as the date of the Charles VI ... but that single motifs might have been exchanged with the time is a possibility I accept. If this is the case with the Charles VI I don't know, but it's plausibly true for the Alessandro Sforza.
With some logic it's also possible for the Charles VI.

I can add some water to your mill with the fact, that an Italian researcher with knowledge about costumes wrote a work, according which the used costumes had different times. If I remember correctly, she assumed, that some motifs were from the 1430s, some of the 1450s and others even from the 1470s (or something similar). I don't know, if this work was published, so I can't say more.

Your observation with the halberd is interesting. Anyway, I can't imagine, that Lorenzo would have been proud to be presented as a little childish figure on a triumphal chariot with a halberd in the proud age of 28/29 years. With 14 this would be another story.

Card playing was more something for the youth and for women ... in the noble society. This might have been changed with the time, but 1470s might be too early. In the 1490s it was surely different. Alright, Trionfi cards were a fashion, and at some point it takes also the grown-ups.

Galeazzo Maria preferred chess and tennis ... playing cards were for women. The room in Pavia with Tarocchi players was the room, where the women took their meals. That was about 1469.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: A Palermo Empress for the "Alessandro Sforza"?

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Huck wrote: Anyway, I can't imagine, that Lorenzo would have been proud to be presented as a little childish figure on a triumphal chariot with a halberd in the proud age of 28/29 years. With 14 this would be another story.
You lost me here - "childish" and "little"? The figure is armored, armed and wearing a beretta - the sign of a leader if not a ruler. As for "little" - the charioteer dwarfs the horses, and considering he's further back, he should be half the size he is. Your comments couldn't be more off base.

Image

Re: A Palermo Empress for the "Alessandro Sforza"?

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Anyway, I can't imagine, that Lorenzo would have been proud to be presented as a little bit childish figure on a triumphal chariot with a halberd in the proud age of 28/29 years. With 14 this would be another story.
... .-) ... I wanted to say this.

Why off the mark? Is "returning to game status" not always a little bit childish? And these cards are for games, aren't they? Grown-up people make them serious, by playing for a lot of money.
Huck
http://trionfi.com
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