It is with sadness that I report here the death of tarot historian Girolamo Zorli, age 76, whose funeral was on August 28. I asked Andrea Vitali to write up something on his contributions to the field. With a few particulars added by Huck (on the Wayback Machine links) and myself (on his appearances in The Playing Card), I present it in English here.
Girolamo Zorlì attended the Galvani Liceo Classico in Bologna and graduated in law from the university of that city. A passionate lover of Italian card games, he was an active member of the Bolognese Tarocchino Academy from its foundation. He wrote two books on the Bolognese tarocchino, Il Tarocchino Bolognese, Forni, Sala Bolognese, Bologna 1992, and Il Tarocchino bolognese, Storia e regole del gioco, Pendragon, Bologna 2020, as well as the more general Tarocchi e Carte nel Rinascimento - Racconti, (Forni, Sala Bolognese, Bologna 2013).
His "convincing" (per Thierry Depaulis, The Playing Card, 38:1, p. 11) analysis of Lollio's ca. 1550 Invective in terms of a three-handed tarocchi game with 62 cards was used by Dummett and McLeod as their basis for describing the game in their A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack: The Game of Triumphs, Supplement (2009). He wrote a summary in English of why 62 and why three-handed in The Playing Card Vol. 36, no. 2 (Oct.-Dec. 2007), p. 84. In the same issue, John McLeod wrote about Zorli's taking him around Bologna to play the game at local working-men's clubs, mentioning "shortcuts for counting up the values of the combinations" that the players used in the game of Occocento (pp. 157-8). Previously in that journal (26:3, Nov.-Dec. 1997, p. 89) Zorli had written, again in English, "Bolognese Tarocchino: 'Sequenza' Cards,'" about the scoring of sequences in relation to the numbers on the trumps (I have just posted that essay at viewtopic.php?p=26170#p26170). Another print essay on the game of tarocchino still available, in Italian, is in the catalog Antichi giochi e Tarocchi a Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, 2014, pp. 33-43.
On the internet, he created the site www.tretre.it, which he expanded over time with numerous essays on 15th-18th-century texts about tarot and other games. Among many others will be found essays on the Venetian game of Trappola as described in 1525, Francesco Berni's account of Primiera in 1528, and Girolamo Cardano's of the same game in 1540, as well as a full analysis of the Lollio-Imperiali exchange.
This site tre.tre.it, active until 2017, is still accessible via the "Wayback Machine," at https://web.archive.org/web/20170129145 ... tretre.it/. The section on playing cards is at https://web.archive.org/web/20170130110 ... -di-carte/.
As an aside: I only met Girolamo once, visiting Faenza in 2014, for dinner on a night when the only place open anywhere near us served only pizza. Unfortunately, I was much in the dark about tarocchino at the time (and still am, I fear). I credit him with introducing my wife and me to the real deal, very simple but fantastic with the proper ingredients and preparation (which Italians take for granted); the kind he selected ("Margherita," which we then had never heard of and sounded very bland) became a staple for us elsewhere in Italy.
Anyone else with additions about Zorli (or pizza), or corrections, or reminiscences, please feel free to post.
Re: RIP Girolamo Zorli
2That is very sad news to wake up to. Thanks for informing us, Mike.
Girolamo was a member here, and posted occasionally.
I had the the good fortune to meet him at the IPCS convention in Ravenna in 2007. In our email correspondence I had expressed interest in his book Il tarocchino bolognese (Forni, 1992), and we arranged to meet at the conference. We didn't know one anothers' appearances, so it would just be guesswork. Arriving in the lobby, I saw a tall, distinguished gentleman scanning the room just as I was, suspecting for some reason it was him, and he, overhearing me speaking English, came over. "Ross Caldwell?" he asked, extending his hand. "I expected someone older!" He said. He produced a copy of his book from his jacket pocket, already signed: "All'amico Ross Caldwell, con ammirazione. Girolamo." His handwriting is more of a cryptic scrawl than my own, and, noting my puzzled scrutiny of the inscription, he told me what he had written.
Somehow we got onto the subject of Italy, and he remarked, with a sigh, "There's no 'Italy'." "But", I quickly retorted, "Marcello told Isabelle that he hoped she would enjoy "this new ITALIAN invention" when he wrote her, so he had a concept of the Italian nation." Girolamo laughed, probably at my incomprehension of the depth of what he really meant.
He arranged for a group of people to meet to play Tarocchino in Bologna on Saturday night, I believe, and, because of the difficulty of finding the place, on Via Bellaria, he also arranged for a couple of people who knew where it was to pick up those interested. My wife and I were certain we could find it ourselves, with our long experience of driving in foreign cities and following complicated maps (among other things, I had delivered pizzas in rural areas, where street addresses are not always what they seem, and, also, I had lived over two years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and drove frequently in Boston, where the streets are far from logical). So we set out to Bologna, and found Via Bellaria. This street, broken into sections which nevertheless had continuous numbering, and which veered off into the countryside, proved beyond our collective wisdom to navigate. We spent over two hours driving up and down the length of it, asking for directions a couple of times, of natives who themselves had no idea where it was. Once, I thought we had found the address, but it was a gated dirt driveway that led to a distant house, and, as it was getting dark, we were reluctant to press the buzzer. Perhaps that was it.
Girolamo felt terrible that we had missed it, and blamed himself for not giving better directions. I never did get clarity on whether that distant house was where the game was being played.
We never met in person again, although we had occasional correspondence when something new about Bologna or tarocchino came up. His site Tretre was a rich source of information, and he was always willing to talk about anything there.
Girolamo, I hope your journey to the heavenly partita is not proving as difficult as finding an address on Via Bellaria!
Girolamo was a member here, and posted occasionally.
I had the the good fortune to meet him at the IPCS convention in Ravenna in 2007. In our email correspondence I had expressed interest in his book Il tarocchino bolognese (Forni, 1992), and we arranged to meet at the conference. We didn't know one anothers' appearances, so it would just be guesswork. Arriving in the lobby, I saw a tall, distinguished gentleman scanning the room just as I was, suspecting for some reason it was him, and he, overhearing me speaking English, came over. "Ross Caldwell?" he asked, extending his hand. "I expected someone older!" He said. He produced a copy of his book from his jacket pocket, already signed: "All'amico Ross Caldwell, con ammirazione. Girolamo." His handwriting is more of a cryptic scrawl than my own, and, noting my puzzled scrutiny of the inscription, he told me what he had written.
Somehow we got onto the subject of Italy, and he remarked, with a sigh, "There's no 'Italy'." "But", I quickly retorted, "Marcello told Isabelle that he hoped she would enjoy "this new ITALIAN invention" when he wrote her, so he had a concept of the Italian nation." Girolamo laughed, probably at my incomprehension of the depth of what he really meant.
He arranged for a group of people to meet to play Tarocchino in Bologna on Saturday night, I believe, and, because of the difficulty of finding the place, on Via Bellaria, he also arranged for a couple of people who knew where it was to pick up those interested. My wife and I were certain we could find it ourselves, with our long experience of driving in foreign cities and following complicated maps (among other things, I had delivered pizzas in rural areas, where street addresses are not always what they seem, and, also, I had lived over two years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and drove frequently in Boston, where the streets are far from logical). So we set out to Bologna, and found Via Bellaria. This street, broken into sections which nevertheless had continuous numbering, and which veered off into the countryside, proved beyond our collective wisdom to navigate. We spent over two hours driving up and down the length of it, asking for directions a couple of times, of natives who themselves had no idea where it was. Once, I thought we had found the address, but it was a gated dirt driveway that led to a distant house, and, as it was getting dark, we were reluctant to press the buzzer. Perhaps that was it.
Girolamo felt terrible that we had missed it, and blamed himself for not giving better directions. I never did get clarity on whether that distant house was where the game was being played.
We never met in person again, although we had occasional correspondence when something new about Bologna or tarocchino came up. His site Tretre was a rich source of information, and he was always willing to talk about anything there.
Girolamo, I hope your journey to the heavenly partita is not proving as difficult as finding an address on Via Bellaria!
Re: RIP Girolamo Zorli
3Good stories, both.
Not that I knew him, but I'm sure Zorli would be touched.
Not that I knew him, but I'm sure Zorli would be touched.
Re: RIP Girolamo Zorli
4Very sad news indeed. He did a lot of excellent work, which doesn't always seem to receive as much attention as it deserves. One of the best.
Re: RIP Girolamo Zorli
5Terrible news, I must say. Many people fail to recognize his great contributions, despite the fact that they are many and substantial. Among the top.