1440
Florence – Record: 1 pack of tarot cards (naibi a trionfi) - commissioned by Giusti Giusto for Sigismondo Malatesta

1442
Ferrara – Record: 4 packs of tarot cards (chartexele da trionffy) - painted by Jacomo Sagromoro for Leonello d'Este

Ferrara – Record: 1 pack of tarot cards (carte da trionfi) - bought by Este servant Jacomo from Marchione Burdochio for Este princes Ercole and Sigismondo (aged 10 and 8)

1443-1445
Lombardy - Deck: approximate date of Brambilla tarot

Lombardy - Deck: approximate date of Cary-Yale tarot (also known as Visconti di Modrone)

1445
Florence - Record: 1 tarot pack (trionfi di charta grandi) - Martino di Giovanni

1448
Lombardy - Record: Marcello receives 1 standard tarot pack ([ludus] quem triumphum apellant) - as a gift while in the environs of Milan

1449
Florence - Record: 6 tarot packs - painted by Giovanni di Domenico

Tentative - 1440s
Lombardy - Iconography: frescoes of wealthy card-players, traditionally considered tarocchi, in Palazzo Borromeo in Milan, and the Sala dei Svaghi of the castle in Masnago. (although in truth no Triumph cards can be seen (or were even seen in an old photo from before the bombing))
1450
Florence - Record: 3 tarot packs - Giovanni di Domenico

Florence - Record: 2 tarot packs - bought by Bernardo d'Uguccione

Florence - Record: permission of four card games, including triumphum

Lombardy - Record: Sforza writing a letter asking for his secretary to buy some packs of triumphs, which he appears to have received two days later

Ferrara – Record: payments for carte da trionfi

1450-1455
Ferrara – Deck: only an existing Chariot card, Issy-les-Moulineaux, school of Ferrara (other cards from this pack are in the Warsaw museum)

1451
Florence - Record: 2 tarot packs - Antonio Di Dino

Florence - Record: 2 tarot packs - made my Antonio di Simone, bought by Leonardo di Tomaso

Ferrara – Record: 1 tarot pack

1452
Florence - Record: 30 tarot packs (naibi di trionfi) - Antonio Di Dino

Florence - Record: 6 tarot packs - Giovanni di Domenico

Florence - Record: 12 tarot packs - Various Supplier

Lombardy - Record: Sigismondo Malatesta writing to the Duchess, Bianca Maria Visconti-Sforza, to commission for him some packs of triumphs

Siena – Record : importation of triumph cards from Florence (reported by Zdekauer, without transcription of original (hence the description “unconfirmed”))

1453
Florence - Record: 12 tarot packs - Giovanni di Domenico

Florence - Record: 4 tarot packs - Manetto d'Agnlolo merciai

Florence - Record: 24 tarot packs - Various Suppliers

Florence - Record: 9 tarot packs - Matteo Ballerini

Rome - Record: 8 tarot packs - Giovanni da Pistoia

1454
Florence - Record: 14 tarot packs - Manetto d'Agnlolo merciai

Florence - Record: 6 tarot packs - bought by Piero Antonio di Ser Bernaba

Florence - Record: 2 tarot packs - Matteo Ballerini

Ferrara – Record: payments for various packs of triumphs

1455
Florence - Record: 3 tarot packs - Matteo Ballerini

Florence - Record: 6 tarot packs - Manetto d'Agnlolo merciai

Padua - Record: sermon of Roberto da Lecce Caracciolo, mentions triumph cards with popes and cardinals

Lombardy - Deck: plausible date for the Visconti-Sforza pack (Dummett has recently argued for a date in the early 1460s)

1456
Florence - Record: 2 tarot packs - Matteo Ballerini

Ferrara – Record: Ugo Trotti recommends triumphs as a very good game

1457
Ferrara – Record of payments for packs of triumphs

1459
Ferrara – Record: printing block for triumph cards noted

Bologna – Record: stolen pack of triumphs recovered

Tentative - 1450s
Florence - Decks: painted cards, including “Charles VI”, Catania (Castello Ursino), Rothschild (attribution to Florence for these cards is a recent theory)
1460
Florence - Record: 4 tarot packs - Matteo Ballerini

Padua - Record: approximate time of Valerio Marcello having played triumphs with his father’s friends in Monselice (he lived from 1452-1461, so I place it towards the end of his short life)

Ferrara – Record: payments for various packs of triumphs

1461
Ferrara – Record: payment for triumphs

1463
Ferrara – Record: payment for triumphs

Florence - Record: repetition of law permitting triumph to be played (with two additional games)

1466
Florence - Record: Minchiate being mentioned, presumably a card game (but there is no way to determine, and no consensus, that this is the same as the card pack and game that would be later known as Minchiate and Germini)

1468
Lombardy - Record: Galeazzo Maria Sforza commissioning Bonifacio Bembo to paint a cycle of frescoes in the castle in Pavia, including one of “Ladies Bona and Isabeta (…) and her maids playing triumphs in the garden” (the explicit mention of “triumphs” gives weight to the impression that other contemporary “games frescoes” in Borromeo, Masnago and perhaps the Roccabianca card-scene are also intended to represent the playing of triumphs, although no tarot trumps can be seen in them).

Tentative - 1460s
Lombardy - Iconography: fresco of card game between two players (male and female) in Roccabianca (now housed in Castello Sforzesco, Milan)
1471
Florence - Record: playing minchiate in Cortono (a city belonging to Florence)

1473
Ferrara – Deck: earliest possible date for Ercole d’Este tarot

1474
Lombardy - Record: two letters of GM Sforza requesting packs of triumphs

1474-1478
Florence - Record: Florentine cards imported in Rome

1477
Bologna – Record: Riminese man commissions a Bolognese cardmaker for several hundred packs of cards, including an unspecified number of triumph packs

Florence - Record: Minchiate appears in a list of permitted games (but I cannot determine if trionfi is also listed, which might indicate that Minchiate was a distinct pack as well as game)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The above list of early tarot evidence based on the list originally assembled by Ross here:
http://ludustriumphorum.blogspot.co.uk/ ... ntion.html

With the new notes on Florence from here:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=815&start=

And recommendations from additional posts below...

Many thanks- that is clear and I understand the timeline now.
~Lorredan

... :-) ... it's nice, that someone else starts to count:

**************

Here you overlook a greater group:

A [3]. Estranei 264, c. 226, left side
Bartolommeo di Paholo Seragli de’ dare...
E adì 10 di marzo [1452/53] f. otto, per lui a Pipo di Marcho portò contanti, sono per uno paio di trionfi richi ebe da lui. f. 8.

B [5] Estranei 264, c. 241, left side
Bartolomeo di Pagholo Seragli de’ dare...
E adì 21 di marzo f. uno largo, per lui a Filipo di Marcho dipintore, portò contanti, sono per parte di lavoro gli à fato. f.1 s.4.

C [6]. Estranei 265, c. 27, left side
Bartolomeo di Pagholo Serragli de’ dare…
E adì 31 di marzo [1453] f. 5 larghi, per lui a Filippo di Marcho dipintore, portò e’ detto contanti, sono per resto di 2 paia di trio[n]fi fatogli, come dise Ghaspare da Ghiaceto. f. 5 s. 18 d. 4.

D [13]. Estranei 267, c. 35, left side
1455
Bartolomeo di Pagholo Seragli de’ dare…
E adì 29 di marzo f. quatro, portò e’ detto, sono per paghare a Filipo di Marcho, per 3 paia di trionfi e 2 paia di charte. f. 4

E [15]. Estranei 267, c. 98, left side
1455
Bartolomeo di Pagholo Seragli de’ dare…
E adì 6 di settembre f. due, per lui a Pipo dipintore, portò Giovanni di Domenicho contanti, per trionfi. f. 2.
….
E adì 20 detto f. uno, per lui a Pipo dipintore, portò Giovanni di Domenicho contanti, per trionfi. f. 1.
…
E adì 27 detto f. dua larghi, per lui a Pipo di Marcho dipintore, portò Giovanni di Domenicho contanti. f.2 s.6 d.7.
E adì 10 d’otobre f. uno largho, per lui a Filipo di Marcho dipintore, portò contanti, per un paio di trionfi operati. f.2 s.6 d.7.
….
E adì 21 detto, L. trenta, per lui a Filipo di Marcho dipintore, portò contanti: sono per resto di trionfi auti da lui insino a questo dì. f. 7 s.- d.8.

F [17] Estranei 267, c. 206
Bartolomeo di Pagolo Seragli de’ dare…
E adì 17 detto [April 1456] L. sedici piccioli, per lui a Filippo di Marcho dipintore, portò chontanti, e quali dise gli prestava per trionfi gli deve fare. f.3 s.20 d.6.
…
E adì 30 detto f. quatro larghi, per lui a Filippo di Marcho dipintore, portò contanti, dise per parte di trionfi gl’àne a fare. f.4 s.26 d.7.
…
E adì 15 detto [May] L. dieci, per lui a Filippo di Marcho dipintore, portò contanti, dise èrono per trionfi che da lui. f.2 s.9 d.8.

G [22]. Estranei 268, c. 217, left side
1457
Bartolomeo di Pagholo Seragli de’ dare…
E adì 17 detto [April 1, 1458] L. quatordici s. X piccioli, per lui a Filippo di Marcho dipintore, portò contanti, sono per 2 paia di trionfi. f. 3 s.10 d.6.

Bartolomeo di Pagholo Seragli is the art trader.
Filippo di Marcho and Pipo are the same persons, the painter
Giovanni di Domenicho is possibly the painter of the decks 1449-1453 in the Silver trader list ... his role in this document is not clear to me.

You overlook also the recent articles:

http;//trionfi.om/es44
1451 - (?) Gambassa on Florentine Territory. allowance (repeating text of Florence)
1451, March - Asinalunga on Sienese territory (repeating text of Florence)

http;//trionfi.com/es01
1453 Giovanni di Pistoia

and the discussion
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=743

http;//trionfi.com/es16
You miss three entries in the earlier Silk-dealer article, one you got (1445)

Progress in Tarot History Research

In c. 2003 the perspective of Tarot origin research could be described with the following graphic:



Black and red points stood for documents, which contained the word "Trionfi" or similar in relation to playing card notes. Black stood for "document from Ferrara" and red stood for "document from elsewhere".
The numbers indicated the years 1442-1465. The whole had been mainly based on the text "The Prince and the Playing Cards" (1996) published by Gerardo Ortalli based to great parts on the researches of Adriano Franceschini, which had been then a great improvement against the earlier works of Dummett and Stuart Kaplan, which had been of great value for the increasing English discussion of Tarot History.

A recent attempt to produce a similar graphic for the research state of 2013 gives a new picture. I've to excuse, that it might contain still errors and also it contains some critical documents, which are interpreted by some as Trionfi documents, but not by others. And the counting system against the presentation attempt of 2003 has changed a little bit.

Beside these weak points there is naturally the good side effect, that one gets a global impression, how much has happened in the meantime.



Considered are the years 1440-1465. The final number of each row gives the number of documents to the connected years.
The table uses colors and the colors have meaning. The meaning is explained by this table:



The colors lead to specific developments in the researcher time, and indicate the articles, by which the entries became known in the Tarot History researcher world.

For "dark grey" and "before 2003" we've mostly the already mentioned "The Prince and the Playing Cards. For light grey we've the time, when Trionfi.com had started and organized a collection of the documents. The improvements of the lists were rare events till Franco Pratesi started to become again engaged in Playing Card History. This happened in November 2011 in context of the detection of a new Arnold Esch report in 2007, who had noted some Trionfi card documents in a custom register in Rome.
Franco made then his own researches in Florence and detected all the documents, which are indicated in green and yellow.

Dark green: Filippo di Marco productions (13 new documents; December 2011)

Strong yellow: Silk dealer sell decks (4 new documents; March 2012)
http://trionfi.com/naibi-silk-dealers

Light yellow: Silk dealer acquire decks (37 documents; April 2012)
http://trionfi.com/naibi-aquired

Light green: All other detections
Satutes Asinalunga and Gambassi (2 documents; April 2012)
http://trionfi.com/trionfi-siena
Lapini family report (5 documents)
http://trionfi.com/lapini-playing-cards
Cambini export
http://trionfi.com/cambino-trade-venice (1 document; August 2012)
Bandini deck (1 document; September 2012)
http://trionfi.com/notary-ser-giovanni-bandini

This had been really a great time. The number of documents had been increased by c. 200 % then. The attention in research, mostly used to focus on Milan, Ferrara and Bologna, had turned then to Florence.

Dark blue: Additionally to Franco Pratesi's successes Thierry Depaulis had detected a Trionfi card note in a work of Nerida Newbigin about the diaries of Giusto Giusti. This was from September 1440, the deck was from Florence and the note that the new "oldest appearance" of the word Trionfi in playing card context. Franco wrote a report:
http://trionfi.com/giusto-giusti

Light blue: Prof. Dr. Arnold Esch, not a playing card researcher, but for some time responsible for a custom register in Rome, had observed, how much excitement his few remarks about playing card imports to Rome had caused on our web page. So his plan was born to take a second view especially for items of our interest. The result became a 13-pages article, written together with Doris Esch, which was published in the Gutenberg Jahrbuch 2013. With this the number of known Trionfi documents was more than doubled again.
A webpage in preparation:
http://trionfi.com/arnold-esch-playing-card-reports

... for the moment it's not much there, but it likely will develop soon. Esch's impact on our presentation of the early Trionfi card document can be seen here:

http://trionfi.com/et94

Further the Esch report is discussed here:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=967