I've only slow connection with a stick and I run it mostly without pictures, so I'm very limited and it's not much fun. Filezilla works not very properly, many errors. This morning I fought with an error for an half hour, when the stick said, it would be connected ... but it didn't get pages.

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btw. Bronzino wrote about Germini ... maybe you remember:
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.ph ... t=bronzino

He wrote about the hero "Moskito" in it, well, somehow as Alberti had written about the "Fly" following Lucian.

Reading a little bit about the family of Cosimo I, I detected a case of triple death in Nov/Dec 1562, when the wife of Cosimo and two sons died of Malaria during a journey to Pisa (a Malaria epidemic).
Bronzino seems to have had worked a lot for the wife. His poem was made 7 years before the tragical death. A strange context.
Bronzino had identified the highest Germini trump "Fame with wings" as a Moskito.

Other strange cases of death in the family were the double murder of two women at the court within a few days, both "cause of adultery", 14 years later.

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Did you read Franco's new articles? http://trionfi.com/ev00
There's a long row with production statistic from 1775-87 ... Minchiate has a good percentage of 5-10% market participation. No word about Tarocchi from Toscana.
Toscana was then reigned by Austrian rulers, who at home in this time had a Tarock fever. The Medici were finished in 1737. The current ruler was Leopold, who became Emperor (1790-92) later. In this period (1791) the Zauberflöte started.
I wondered, if the German/Austrian Tarock fashion, which more or less exploded around 1750-55, had something to do with the new possessions of Austria in Italy. But Toscana had Minchiate, not Tarocchi.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:Thanks for the Bronzino picture, Marco.

I can see its attraction as a vague Tarot trump parallel. Where the trump sequence is read sequentially, "horizontally", this is read from all directions, toward the center.

Below the personfication of Happiness, various vices have been subordinated. I see folly, perhaps gluttony and sloth. Then a "misfortune", perhaps the bald old man is Old Age. Fortune and Opportunity are conflated (as often appears), and is also subordinated.

On either side of Happiness are two cardinal Virtues - Prudence (holding a globe) on her right, Justice on her left. Little Cupid appears harmless enough, and also seems to point to an identification of Happiness with a "good" Venus, Love. Perhaps we can read Charity into it. Happiness is holding the Caduceus, which should mean wisdom, I suppose. In the other the Cornucopia.

She is being crowned with the triumphal wreath, accompanied by an angel trumpeting her glory.

Hello Ross,
thank you for your excellent analysis of this complex allegory.

"Happiness: a history" (p.153-155) by Darrin M. McMahon provides an identification of all the thirteen figures represented in the painting (which by the way is only 40x30 cm). I agree with you that the parallelism with Tarot is only superficial. The Trento fresco is a much better analogue to the second section of the trumps, since it also represents the downturn of fortune, with Love as the high point of the Wheel and Death at the end.

PS: according to the Jstor preview of a paper by Graham Smith, Bronzino's painting was inspired by a Triumph of Happiness (Triompho della Felicità) conceived by Cosimo Bartoli (Ragionamenti Accademici Libro Terzo, p. 53-55). Justice is described as having Severity and Injustice as her captives. Prudence has a globe as her attribute. Happiness "only rejoices in the contemplation of the Creator of everything and raises her eyes to the sky in order to contemplate him" ("Lieta sola nella contemplazione del Fattore del tutto, per contemplare il quale … alza le sue luci al Cielo").

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: The text then says that "saevities" (saevitia; rage, cruelty) and "suspitio" (suspicio) are in front of the King, and that the King is Love himself.

So provisionally, I identified Cupid as the King. Then, the standing woman who appears to be pulling a baby's hair and even biting it must be saevitia. But where is suspicio? The reclining woman with two flaming cornucopiae seems to be sitting in the place of the King... so I went looking for iconography of suspicio, without finding anything.

I re-read the description of the frescoes and I noticed that #15 is an allegory of Suspect, also with a cornucopia.
I could find the complete inscription online:

"cuncta mihi suspecta noto, quacumque dolosam materiam quaero hinc in mea damna sagax"
I note everything with suspect. I always look for deceitful matter, hence I am cunning at my own damage.


I have no idea of the meaning of the cornucopia in this context. Actually, the cornucopia seems to contain flames, so maybe it is meant to represent the fact that jealousy burns? I can't make sense of it. Anyway, the woman in front of cupid, who holds similar cornucopiae, could be "Suspicio" after all. I am puzzled...