Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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Well, yes a person with Fama has to have virtue, in fact all four of the virtues, not just prudence. Prudence is an intellectual virtue, absolutely necessary but so are the moral virtues. But this card, near the end of the sequence, is about the result of all that, not the means. Fama is the result.

I do see the viper now; it's not easy to make out. I am not convinced that the Visconti viper would signify Prudence even if it took up half the page. Not all snakes represent prudence. Show me another context in which the viper clearly represents prudence. In the Love card, it represents the Visconti, of course.

The CVI card has at least one important attribute of Fama: the world, as where glory spreads and shines. This is in Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione, VI.64-75), Hollander translation:

Et entro l'altre cose ch'ivi scorte
allora furon da me 'ntorno a questa
eccelsa donnam, nimica di morte
nel magnanimo petto, fu ch'a sesta
un cerchio si moveva alto e ritondo,
da' pie passando a lei sovra la testa.
Ne credo che sia cosa in tutto 'I mondo,
villa, paese, dimestico o strano,
che non paresse dentro di quel tondo.
Era sovra costei, in areo piano,
un verso scritto che dicea leggendo:
"Io son la Gloria del popol mondano".

(And among other things which I noticed there
around about this supreme
lady in her magnanimous breast
the enemy of death, was a perfect circle
rotating lofty and round,
from beneath her feet and over her head.
I do not believe there can be anything
in the whole world, town or country, domestic or foreign,
which would not appear in that circle.
Over the lady, in pure gold, there was
a verse which said when one read it:
"I am the Glory of the worldly folk.")

Nearly all the post-1440 Florentine Triumphs of Fame illustrations in Petrarch Trionfi manuscripts and cassone have that circle, probably a two-dimensional description of a globe. See viewtopic.php?f=11&t=858&start=60#p13820 Boccaccio calls it a circle because, in the poem, he is looking at a fresco, perhaps even Giotto's lost fresco in Milan, some have speculated. Usually the illustrations do not put in mountains, etc. probably originallty because they would get in the way of the figure. Usually, if a circle, it is around the figure. Lorenzo's birth tray puts a globe underneath the figure. See also Ross's post at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=404#p5314. For a good world-like circle, there is the Costa Triumph of Fame, http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5e7P4Y3Wo3w/S ... amaCOL.jpg

There is also a similarity (not in Costa, but the others) in what she is holding, not a scepter and a small globe but usually a sword and a book, for the two main types of fame. Fama is also given the peculiar octagonal halo in some illustrations. But the main similarity is the globe or circle, meaning the world, deriving from Boccaccio. I grant that without the trumpet she is not as clear a symbol of Fama as the CY's. Hence the title: "Mondo".

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

42
mikeh wrote: There is also a similarity (not in Costa, but the others) in what she is holding, not a scepter and a small globe but usually a sword and a book, for the two main types of fame.
.... .-) ... I think, the most common Fame is with sword and with a small bow-shooter figure in the left. But to get some clarity in such a question, one should attempt to bring all available Fame depictions together and the start to count. Michael had done a good work with his wikipedia contributions.

Recently I fought with wikipedia to get all Petrarca Trionfi pictures from it ...
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=345&start=280#p17682
Michael J. Hurst has once done a great work to collect pictures of the Petrarca Trionfi at wikipedia.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Petrarch%27s_triumphs

This makes it easy to look for anything, which connects Fame to Justice (or, what makes Fame look like Justice). It's there, but it's not one of the common motifs. Which doesn't mean much, as there were a lot of variations for Fame.

Image


... it's taken from this:

Image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Petr ... 1465-2.jpg
... with the comment
"Triumphs of Fame, Time, and Eternity
Attributed to Domenico di Zanobi. - Scanned from Virtù d'amore. Pittura nuziale nel Quattrocento fiorentino."

A second "Justice as Fame":

Image


... it's taken from this:

Image

Full picture:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... orence.jpg
... with the comment:
"Illustration of Petrarch's Triumph of Fame, oddly depicted as Justice with sword and scales.
The artist is unknown. - Scanned from Von Bartsch: The Illustrated Bartsch, v.24."

Found at ...
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... f_Petrarch#/
... I found also the other 5 pictures of the series.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... orence.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... orence.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... orence.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... orence.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... orence.jpg

Further I found this collection of "Fame" ... 50 pictures
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... ph_of_Fame#

Love ... 43 pictures
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... ph_of_Love#

Chastity ... 36 pictures
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... f_chastity

Death ... 32 pictures
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... h_of_Death#

Time ... 35 pictures
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... ph_of_Time#

Eternity ... 26 pictures
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... f_Eternity#

I don't know, if this all goes back to Michael J. Hurst, anyway I observed earlier, that he was working on this. Maybe he found some followers, and that's very good.
But I think, that this is not complete.

Subforum "Bianca's garden" would be a good place for such collection.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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Yes, there is also Fama with the cupid. No, none of these lists is complete, not even the one with 50. The links viewtopic.php?f=23&t=404#p5314
and viewtopic.php?f=11&t=858&start=60#p13820. and surrounding posts have others, not included there, of which the one by Lo Scheggia is by a card maker.

When Fama holds a scales, Is it a conflation of Justice and Fama, or Fama through the desire for Justice? When Fama holds a cupid, it is just Fama, not Desire/Amor (desire of fame), not even a conflation with Amor. When Fama holds a book, it is not Prudence or Wisdom, it is still just Fama, but earned, as one alternative, through writing. When she sits on a lion, is it a conflation of Fama and Fortitude, or Fama through Fortitude? Well, the lion is also a symbol of other things, like royalty. When Fama holds a mirror, is it a conflation of Fama and Prudence, or Fama through Prudence? The title at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... 4-fame.jpg says just "BonneRenomee" , as she stands over the Fates, i.e. Death.

The case of the CVI is more difficult. Fama's most common attribute, the trumpet, is missing. She holds symbols of authority, scepter and globe. These are not normal attributes of Fama, although sometimes she sits on a globe divided into three parts, just as an Emperor's globe in his hand is sometimes so divided, and sometimes the book looks similar to a globe: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... 4-fame.jpg. A scepter and globe suggest imperial status. Is she the Empress of the World? If so, who is that? The Glory of the World? We make do with a mystery and a nondescript title, World. Such a world, or globe, with calipers, is also an attribute of Wisdom, even Prudence. But of the alternatives, I'd say she was derived from Fama plus Emperor more than Prudence. (Added later: but see also next post.)
Last edited by mikeh on 18 Nov 2016, 23:12, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

44
But the other alternative is also appealing, perhaps more so. Who is the Empress of the World? I am reminded of Isis in The Golden Ass (http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITB ... c353982290):
I, mother of all Nature and mistress of the elements, first-born of the ages and greatest of powers divine...Cybele, ... Paphian Venus ... Dictynna Diana ... Stygian Proserpina ... ancient Ceres ... Juno to some, to others Bellona, Hecate, Rhamnusia, while the races of both Ethiopias, first to be lit at dawn by the risen Sun’s divine rays, and the Egyptians too, deep in arcane lore, worship me with my own rites, and call me by my true name, royal Isis. ... With my aid, your day of salvation is at hand.
And to the Hebrews Hochmah, Sophia, the Wisdom of God, and the agent of God's Providence, the hidden workings of God in the world despite disasters (see for example in Wisdom 10, http://www.drbo.org/chapter/25010.htm). So the Prudence of God. In the way that Justice, when next to the Angel, is God's Justice, so also Prudence. Without the calipers it is not Sophia's creation of the world, but her working in it, toward the highest good. In Christianity it is also the masculine figure of the Logos, Christ as God's Wisdom. So in Bologna, we have the figure of Mercury over the four elements, the divine messenger of God the Father and conveyor of souls to judgment and heaven and hell. It in that way is part of the triumph of Eternity, while Fama is the Tower (of "let us make a name for ourselves", in Gen. 11:4) and the Star (of Bethlehem).

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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mikeh wrote:Well, yes a person with Fama has to have virtue, in fact all four of the virtues, not just prudence. Prudence is an intellectual virtue, absolutely necessary but so are the moral virtues. But this card, near the end of the sequence, is about the result of all that, not the means. Fama is the result.
You continue to ignore the hierarchal re-establishment of Prudence to the top in relation to the other virtues, that occurred in the first half of the quattrocento:
In civic life, then, prudence alone is the master over all the rest of the moral virtues. Prudence alone moderates and rules these.
(a 1427 letter translated in Diana Robin, Filelfo in Milan: Writings 1451-1477, 1991: 54)
.
Prudence, as the master/ruler of the virtues, could stand for all of the virtues and even the virtù of a ruler-general, or in the case of the CY, also be placed as the highest card with the other virtues below it. There is not mere fame in the CY, but the fame of an individual. Why is he deserving of this fame? His collective virtue, to be sure, but principally his prudence, as that is the active virtue par excellence for rulers.

If my theory is right, that Filelfo was behind the CY and PMB, there are not going to be any precedents for the Visconti viper as prudence. I’ve already shown they had a strong tradition for depicting Prudence with books (which I’ve argued shows up in Sforza’s medal), and later with the compass in the Visconti Hours’ depiction of the virtues. But if the ur-tarot was Florentine then the CY is necessarily an adaptation, possibly just a year later (from Anghiari to the Bianca wedding and Treaty of Cavriana, confirming Sforza in his right to Cremona). And if Florentine, prudence-with-snake, which means someone who knew Florence well - Filelfo. A prudence-with-snake would not have been unknown in Milan, it's just that city had its own pronounced, regional tradition. A possible Visconti monument, however, that Filelfo could have had in mind in the viper-as-virtue of the ruler, in a explicitly virtue context, is the equestrian statue of Bernado Visconti:
Image
cms_kla05733.broBernabò Visconti, Lord of Milan (1354 -1385) An equestrian statue of Bernabo.jpg cms_kla05733.broBernabò Visconti, Lord of Milan (1354 -1385) An equestrian statue of Bernabo.jpg Viewed 16769 times 24.3 KiB
The large Visconti viper is embossed on the front and back of Bernardo’s cuirass, while down below, flanking his mount - just as Filelfo might have imagined Prudence ruling over the other virtues – are a small Justice with scales and Fortitude with lion (who knows why Temperance was dispensed with). In fact one of Bernardo’s court poets, Braccio Bracci, had already made the identification of Bernardo-as-prudence:
Bernabò … Non perde mai tempo
visita sue castella e sua città
giusti decreti fa …
Egli è signor prudente oltre misura [He is the prince [who is] prudent beyond measure]
I’m not sure if trecento viewers read this statue as prudence, but given the monument as well as the text, it is certainly suggestive to someone who made his living via texts and still ingratiating himself to his newish employer in 1441 – Filelfo (arrived in Milan in 1439).

Sforza was allied with Florence before the Visconti lure of Bianca, thus the CY can be be read as a rebuttal to Florence, after Visconti stole away her most important mercenary general (also relevant to allied Venice, but it was Florence that invented the ur-tarot). At all events the trumps and their order were not invented in Milan by Filelfo – the CY is just a Visconti/Sforza-centric version. And Bruni had the exact same views of Prudence as the highest virtue as Filelfo, so no reason not to think of the ur-tarot as not culminating in some ‘Fame of Prudent Florence,’ in a manner that need to deviate from the CY but for civic symbols/imprese.

And need I point out that all of the references to Fama’s spheres/circles in regard to the ‘World’ are pointless since the only example with a definite attribute of Fama, the winged trumpet, is the CY which does not have the circle/world – it has a triumphal arch over what looks like a specific landscape, such as in Florence’s S. Maria Novello fresco of the Church Militant.

As for the other discussion pertaining to a “conflation” of Justice and Fama (unrelated to any ‘World’ trump, but pertinent to an understanding Fama), justice can be regarded as winnowing out process of Fama: Just heroes receive fama, others with renown for dubious reasons receive mala fama or infamy. And fama/infamy had a quasi-legal standing in the Renaissance (discussed in numerous instances in Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. Thelma S. Fenster, Daniel Lord Smail, 2003). That is another reason Fama is shown with an attribute of Justice – she has juridical ramifications (to “conflate” Justice with Fama unnecessarily clouds the matter at hand – the figure is simply Fama).

How Fama actually functioned, as opposed to over-analyzing miniatures of Petrarch, is critical to understanding what is going on in the CY ‘World.’
As defined by Thomas de Piperata, a late thirteenth century jurist of very little fama himself, ‘Fama is said to be what the people of a city, village, castle, or hamlet, or any district commonly express and think or feel, asserting it by words or brief expression, yet they do not have it as certain and true or manifest….' It is of course in relation to personal status that fama acquired a legal status or condition (Thomas Kuehn, “Fama as a Legal Status in Renaissance Florence”, ibid, 30).
So two things we can extract from the above: 1) Fama was initially thought of as tied to a district or dominion; 2) fama, as it became attached to the law (and was depicted as such with the scales), was associated with the individual. Given that an individual is singled out on the Chariot, the World need not fulfill both functions, particularly in the CY and PMB where clearly the woman shown on the chariot was not a ruler (given what we know about Milan at the time). Subsequent decks are fundamentally different from the Milanese decks because of the gender change made to the charioteer, but I digress (the ur-tarot was no doubt simply an abstract Florentia).

Given a Republic like Florence, outside of extremely unusual circumstances (such as I have argued for in the CVI and Pazzi conspiracy) no one would have been elevated to being the only person on either the Chariot nor the highest tarot ‘World’ card, not even Cosimo, unless officially symbolic of the entire city. Perhaps a triumphal arch featuring the Gonfaloniere of Justice or Parte Guelph was shown on the Florentine ur-tarot 'World' / Fame of Prudent Florence. It was the sitting Gonfaloniere of Justice who was knighted at the 1436 consecration of the Florentine Duomo. As for the Parte Guelph, see Dati’s c. 1420 relevant description of the St. John’s procession (which occurred right before Anghiari in 1440), after the ritual submission of Florence’s subject cities (an annual feature):
The first offering, that is made in the morning, is by the Captains of the Parte Guelfa with all the knights; and if there are foreign gentlemen and ambassadors and knights they go with them, and a great number of the most honourable citizens of the city; and with the processional gonfalone of the Parte Guelfa, carried by one of their pages on a big palfrey, dressed in a brocade tunic, and with the horse caparisoned to the ground in white brocade with the emblem of the Parte Guelfa. (tr. Newbiggin: http://www-personal.usyd.edu.au/~nnew41 ... rence.html
In the CY we have the context of a ducal tyrant pawning his daughter off to a condottiero to manage Cremona as a bulwark against Venice, and thus Sforza instead of the processional gonfalone (whether of the Gonfaloniere of Justice or Parte Guelfa). Naturally it is Sforza’s virtue, not the virtue of a city (Florence) that draws Fama. If not the right to bear the viper and have the viper double as his virtue (how else to tidily cram that notion into this miniature?) what else allows him fame in this highest trump? And the fame is shared and promulgated with that of a district/domain: Cremona (just as the ur-tarot was necessarily of Florence or her greater contado).

So, how was a prudence-with-snake combined with an arch and processional gonfalone in a Florentine ur-tarot...to convey a victorious 'fame of prudent Florence' ? There would be no ducal crown for Florence, of course, and if the lilies were on the gonfalone/banner carried by the page on the caparisoned horse, perhaps the ducal crown was replaced by something along the lines of the trefoil prudence found on Loggia dei Lanzi (itself a series of arches), with the same Marian-like bust of Fama above, with winged trumpet and a laurel?

Oddly enough, I just came across a description of a prudence crowning an arch in Florence - an Arch of Virtu Civile bearing the legend PRUDENTIAE DVCIS OPTIME ('to the prudence of our most excellent duke') - from the next century, when Florence under Duke Cosimo I came to resemble the one-man rule of Milan...yet still spoke in the Republican language of the quattrocento:
The arch was devoted not to the Duke himself, but to his Prudenza, whose statue was seated on top. This virtue summed up all the other virtues depicted on the arch [embedded as statues]. Remarkably, the statue represented not Prudenza tout court, but the Prudenza or virtu’ civile. …A brief explanation is difficult, Mellini writes, but it has to do with a ruler’s ability to ensure the welfare, peace, and happiness of his people, and that they abide by the law. In other words, Prudenza Civile signified a prince’s capacity to achieve social harmony and thus welfare – his subjects’ expectations, which he is bound to meet. Because the concept had nothing to do with the divine aspects of rulership, it was associated with the traditional republican ideal buon governo….

Characteristically, Prudenza or Virtu’ Civile was cast as a virtue the Florentine had always practiced, also in the days of the Republic: ‘However much, to the glory and fame [of Florence], this virtue was displayed by many of her sons in the past’ – as shown by the [accompanying] Arch of Florence – ‘nowadays the city’s excellent rulers are themselves the most recent, truest and undoubtedly most brilliant examples that there have ever been.’ (Henk Th. van Veen, Cosimo I De' Medici and His Self-Representation in Florentine Art and Culture, 2006: 96)
Something a little less Baroque (a sketch of the arch is shown on p. 95) is precisely what I imagine Cosimo I's forebears did in 1440.

Phaeded

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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Phaeded wrote:
mikeh wrote:Well, yes a person with Fama has to have virtue, in fact all four of the virtues, not just prudence. Prudence is an intellectual virtue, absolutely necessary but so are the moral virtues. But this card, near the end of the sequence, is about the result of all that, not the means. Fama is the result.
You continue to ignore the hierarchal re-establishment of Prudence to the top in relation to the other virtues, that occurred in the first half of the quattrocento:
In civic life, then, prudence alone is the master over all the rest of the moral virtues. Prudence alone moderates and rules these.
(a 1427 letter translated in Diana Robin, Filelfo in Milan: Writings 1451-1477, 1991: 54)
.
Prudence, as the master/ruler of the virtues, could stand for all of the virtues and even the virtù of a ruler-general, or in the case of the CY, also be placed as the highest card with the other virtues below it. There is not mere fame in the CY, but the fame of an individual. Why is he deserving of this fame? His collective virtue, to be sure, but principally his prudence, as that is the active virtue par excellence for rulers.
Surely some had the opinion, that Prudence was the highest virtue. That doesn't mean, that everybody had the same opinion, neither in 15th century nor in the discussion group forum.tarothistory.com. Filelfo naturally could talk, what he wanted, but there is no need, that we take him as the only thinker of the relevant time.

We observe different Fama representation, I personally think (since recently), that Fame in the 14-cards-group of PMB-1 was presented as a Justice figure.
I remember, that you thought, that Filelfo once influenced this deck. So there appears a contradiction.

Mantegna Tarocchi has Justice as the highest cardinal virtue (No. 37), and Prudentia appears even as No. 35 after Fortitudo (No. 36). The lowest virtue is Temperance (No. 34).

In the thread Fama's riddle we observed a relation between Fame (= Angel) and Temperance, it seemed of importance for some Tarot designers to connect these both. But we can't say, that every card designer had the same idea.

For this reason it seems necessary to study and sort the different Fama pictures ... in a neutral manner and not according prejudices and own favor.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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Phaeded wrote
You continue to ignore the hierarchal re-establishment of Prudence to the top in relation to the other virtues, that occurred in the first half of the quattrocento:

In civic life, then, prudence alone is the master over all the rest of the moral virtues. Prudence alone moderates and rules these.
(a 1427 letter translated in Diana Robin, Filelfo in Milan: Writings 1451-1477, 1991: 54)
Prudence, as the master/ruler of the virtues, could stand for all of the virtues and even the virtù of a ruler-general, or in the case of the CY, also be placed as the highest card with the other virtues below it.
I fail to see how it follows that if Prudence is ruler of the virtues and moderates the virtues, then it can stand for all the virtues. It is just the highest, not all of them.

I don't see how the statue of Bernabo is relevant. The viper just identifies him as a Visconti.

Calling a man prudent is not the same as identifying him with Prudence, the virtue, much less associating the viper with Prudence. Yes, Fame for the Visconti is earned through prudence. As I have set out the CY according to the Beinecke suit assignments, the World card is in the section governed by the intellectual virtue of Prudence (along with Time and Angel), the highest section of the four.

I see no reason to assume that the CY structure is modeled on anything like what we see later in Florence, even if the cards are much the same. It's a possibility, but not something to argue on the basis of, without assuming what you want to show.

Phaeded wrote,
And need I point out that all of the references to Fama’s spheres/circles in regard to the ‘World’ are pointless since the only example with a definite attribute of Fama, the winged trumpet, is the CY which does not have the circle/world – it has a triumphal arch over what looks like a specific landscape, such as in Florence’s S. Maria Novello fresco of the Church Militant.
I mentioned the spheres/circles in relation to the CVI only, and there I conceded, in my second post, that it could be either Fama or God's Wisdom/Prudence, and probably the former, because of the lack of a trumpet and the presence instead of imperial attributes, suggesting an empress. A lady with calipers over a circle with the world inside is not civic prudence. That is in keeping with the other cards in that section of the sequence, of cosmic and spiritual powers.

Regarding the scene on the CY, the landscape is merely consistent with Fama, as determined by the trumpet. It is still a Fama-type picture of castles in a landscape, as in the other Fama illustrations of the period. I do not see a triumphal arch in particular. Triumphal arches show building materials, as in Mantegna's depictions. It is a semi-circle on top of a rectangle. Its geometry does suggest a triumphal arch; but such structures were built to honor fame and protect it for the future. When I look at the arches in Mantegna, or the real ones next to the Coliseum, I do not think I am seeing a representation of Prudence.

If the drawing on p. 95 is relevant to our discussion, please take a photo or scan and upload it. Or describe it in detail. Otherwise it is meaningless to us.

Thanks for pointing out the difference between ancient and modern Fama, Huck. We are concerned with the modern, I think.

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As part of the "modern" concept of fama, there is also the use made of the term by one of the assassins of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who said "Mors acerba, fama perpetua, stabit vetus memoria facti" (Death is bitter, but glory is eternal, the memory of my deed will endure) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galeazzo_Maria_Sforza). His fama is achieved through the satisfaction of justice. It seems also a play on 1 John 2:17, in the Vulgate's version: "And the world passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof: but he that doth the will of God, abideth for ever." While the assassin is indeed executed, Galeazzo's body is hung upside down by the people.

Returning to Florence, I wonder what the symbol on the Cosimo/Florencia medal was meant to signify about Florence and Cosimo. Perhaps "glory", and the achievement of virtue in the highest degree. the word "Florentia" substituting for Boccaccio's circle of the world. Still not Prudence.
Image

Or Wisdom (Minerva), conferring Glory (the broken lance is that of Isabella's husband, brought home from his military victory), and to whom the four cardinal virtues look for guidance, as in Corregio's "allegory of the virtues", c. 1530 (http://mini-site.louvre.fr/mantegna/acc ... n_8_6.html), detail below):
Image
.
The lower figure has the snake, lion skin, scepter, and bridle.

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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mikeh wrote: according to the Beinecke suit assignments..."
By a librarian looking to do what they do best - classify/catalogue; this person had no understanding of tarot.
mikeh wrote:I see no reason to assume that the CY structure is modeled on anything like what we see later in Florence, even if the cards are much the same.
No reason...except that the CY comes 13 months after Giusti's deck. A major innovation to an innovation is a bit much to allow for in the late medieval period in such a short period of time. A pre-Giusti tarot still lacks an iota of proof; there isn't even a jot of acknowledgement of Marziano's deck outside of Milan.
mikeh wrote: Regarding the scene on the CY, the landscape is merely consistent with Fama, as determined by the trumpet. It is still a Fama-type picture of castles in a landscape, as in the other Fama illustrations of the period. I do not see a triumphal arch in particular.
The trumpet identifies the female bust as Fama, but does not clarify the landscape at all - a landscape that differs significantly from typical round 'World's. The landscape is not dotted with generic tiny town symbols but is more of a landscape painting, angled at the horizon, featuring a river being crossed and a coast line - not the encircling Oceanus. Just as this is not a generalized Fama with a clamoring crowd of history's heroes (again, there is a singular hero), this is arguably a specific landscape (again, arguably Cremona, the Po River and the view to the Adriatic into which it flows). But this is not the ur-tarot that provided the precedent.

Is there anything specifically in Florence connecting one of the allied victors at Anghiari with a triumphal arch, to which the CY then is a variant?

The historical circumstances of Florence c. 1440 allowed a merging a civic and eschatological goals: the completed dome allowed the duomo's consecration by the pope at which time Cosimo was allowed to successfully petition for 10 years worth of indulgences for the citizens of Florence (as if he were some interceding Saint Cosmas); four years later the traditional menace of Visconti/Milan is definitively defeated at Anghiari, at which time the herald proclaims:
“O Lord, we praise you, all of us singing, / together with your Mother the glorious Virgin, / and praising all the apostles / and especially the great Baptist /with all the court of heaven / portrayed in the form of a white rose [Dante's vision of heaven in the Paradiso], / since it is the day when he who opens the portals / of Paradise admits the Florentine people, / who were victorious by just Fortune / against the evil Niccolo Piccinino / and his followers…. (translation in Dale V. Kent, Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: the Patron's Oeuvre, 2000: 280).


The victory is couched in providential terms in which the very salvation of Florentine souls has been accomplished. Of course the groundwork for these eschatological associations was laid some four years later with the duomo's consecration and Cosimo's indulgences...the same Cosimo now firmly in control of victorious Florence. And that same pope was not only allied, providing troops under future Cardinal Trevisan, but resident in Florence's Santa Maria Novello...where a virtual prayer painted in fresco adorned the Spanish Chapel there, primarily a pictorial Dominican version of Thomas Aquinas's theology. Note that the domed duomo in this fresco was a "prayer" in that there were no means to actually build it when it was painted in 1367; but now that miraculous feat, in which the prayer had been answered, had actually been completed by Brunelleschi. Above the dome in the fresco is a triumphal arch, and like the heroes receiving wreaths from Fama, the saved receive the same wreaths as they pass through the arch. The arch is the place of transformation. Above the arch Jesus in a circular Gloria Mundi motif, holds out a book in one hand and the keys to heaven in the other; in an ur-tarot its not too hard to see him replaced by a Fama of the Florentine People, winged trumpet in one hand and perhaps lilies (referring to her civic symbol, the Florin and the duomo, S. Maria del Fiore of course) in the other hand, just as Florentia holds on the medal of Cosimo.

If the herald celebrating the Anghiari victory did not have this fresco in mind, they both celebrate a specifically Florentine salvation: the fresco shows not a generic 'World' but the duomo and the Florentine contado in the upper register on the horizon - the arch is between the two. Rather shocking is the herald's poem suggesting a military victory - perhaps relevant for the Church Militant (and again the pope was allied) - "opens the portals / of Paradise admits the Florentine people." The portal in the fresco is unambiguously a triumphal arch.

Given this strong possibility for why the "Fama/World" ur-tarot would be an arch and not circular, let's consider the specifics surrounding Sforza. Sforza still had the Marche of Ancona as his base in 1440/1 (he only abandoned it in 1447), thus the knight coming from the right/south, up the Adriatic, in the CY 'World'. And in Ancona, its medieval port was dominated by the Arch of Trajan, surviving from antiquity. But I posit the CY was made in the ducal court of Milan, not Ancona. So someone in Milan would have had to of been familiar with this arch. This requires the intermediary of the proto-archaeologist, Cyriacus of Ancona. Famous for copying classical inscriptions and drawing monuments from across the Mediterranean, what first made his name was studying this monument in his home town. in 1433 he visited Florence where he was well received by all of the notable humanists - Bruni, Filelfo (who had known him since at least 1427), Niccoli, and even Brunelleschi who gave him a tour of the uncompleted dome (Marina Belozerskaya, To Wake the Dead: A Renaissance Merchant and the Birth of Archaeology, 2009: 156f). What the humanists were most interested in where the copies of the Greek and Latin inscriptions Cyriacus had made, and the first was Trajan's arch in Ancona:
Cyriacus practiced his newly gained Latin skills by reading the inscriptions on the arch in Ancona, learning that it was Trajan who bestowed on the city its 'life-giving port.' Cyriacus also tried to understand the original aspect of the structure by comparing it to ancient coins, and deduced that it must have been crowned with a statue of the emperor flanked by his sister, Marciana, and his wife, Plotina, who were named in the inscriptions." (ibid, 43-44).
The inscription on the arch:
IMP. CAESARI DIVI NERVAE F. NERVAE TRAIANO OPTIMO AVG. GERMANICO DACICO PONT. MAX. TR. POT. XVIIII IMP. IX COS VI P.P. PROVIDENTISSIMO PRINCIPI SENATUS P.Q.R. QVOD ACCESSVM ITALIAE HOC ETIAM ADDITO EX PECVNIA SVA PORTV TVTIOREM NAVIGANTIBVS REDIDERIT
bottom of page in this link: http://blogs.transparent.com/latin/latin-epigraphy-i/
While a theologian such as Aquinas, might point out, going back to Cicero, that Providentia was part of Prudenza ("...it is necessary that the type of the order of things towards their end should pre-exist in the divine mind: and the type of things ordered towards an end is, properly speaking, providence. For it is the chief part of prudence...." Sum. Theol. Question 22); to a humanist, particularly if working in a poetic vein, providence was a synonym for prudence. The mounted statue in the CY becomes the knight in the landscape, a providential/prudent ruler, like Trajan, whose fame is declared aloft. Even if Filelfo had never been to Ancona (he was from that neck of the woods, in Tolentino), he knew of the arch and inscription from his old friend Cyriacus. And what better way to commemorate a ruler of Ancona than with a symbolic reference to its most endearing landmark from antiquity?

To the Florentines, the significance of the arch would have merely confirmed the appropriateness of prudent Florence (citizens of Florence "surpass all other men by a great deal in their natural genius, prudence...", thus Bruni in his Panegyric of Florence/Laudatio florentinae urbis); Florence as a New Rome, but leading to salvation in both the herald's poem and in the fresco (which predates the illustrations of Petrarch, but whose wreaths would have resonated with Fama to quattrocento humansists).

Below: Fame's wreaths bestowed in a Fama/Gloria Mundi, the wreaths bestowed to saved Florentines passing beneath the Spanish Cha[el fresco detail of the triumphal arch, the Arch of Trajan in Ancona, with the same narrow/vertical dimensions (so different from that of the Arch of Titus or other famous arches in Rome).
Image
Phaeded

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

50
Phaeded wrote
mikeh wrote: according to the Beinecke suit assignments..."
By a librarian looking to do what they do best - classify/catalogue; this person had no understanding of tarot.
Sorry for not cross-referencing to my discussion of the Beinecke suit assignments, which was on a different thread:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1092&start=20#p17870
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1092&start=20#p17874

You may not have read the second one.

Otherwise, I can only emphasize that these were not the invention of the Beinecke librarian. He, or his successor, told me so in an email. I would reproduce it here, except that I asked about other things as well, to which he also responded. However I can quote it (email from Timothy Young, Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts, (8/26/2008):
Cataloging information about the cards was received with the collection when it was
given by the Cary family to Yale. The author of the printed catalogue to the Cary Collection
used their descriptions when he created fuller catalog records.
He wrote me a second email (8/28/2008) with this information:
I checked and found that the cataloger's notes about the Visconti and the Este cards are the exact information that appears in the printed catalog.
There is no way any librarian, even a specialist in cards in Italy such as the Visconti di Madrone might have used, would have thought of assigning trumps to suits, even if they did have the temerity to make things up (for which see below). There was no other tarot deck in the world that had such assignments. The only other European card deck I know of that did so is the Marziano, and its suit assignments weren't public knowledge until Pratesi's article in 1989. The only way they could have known about it before then would have been to read the original document (discovered in 1890s Paris), make the connection to the Cary-Yale, and then make up the assignments. That is not likely. Moreover, the assignments are so irregular that even if anyone did think of assigning trumps to suits, they wouldn't have done it in the way it is done. Swords starts out reasonably enough, with Empress and Emperor, Love; then everything is strange-- well, the 3 theologicals being before Chariot, and Chastity in a different suit from the others--until the last, Coins, with World and Judgment, in that order. Even that order is a surprise, for Milan (although to me reasonable enough). Of course I do not expect that "Judgment" was the original name for that card. Somebody had the temerity to add this title, I hope merely as a translation of something else; it might also have been meant as an informed guess. But such an addition would be a commonplace assumption, unlike suit assignments and the order.
cron