Hi, Huck,

Huck wrote:

mjhurst wrote:Given your obsession with phantom 5x14 decks and Chess and so on, you ask a question like that? Okay. I'll explain my right to draw conclusions with which you may disagree: It's the same right that you rely on to draw conclusions with which I disagree. Fair enough?

Hm. I call the 5x14-theorie a 5x14-theory, not a fact.... You claim definitely, that the Ur-Tarot hadn't Fame (and this is stated, as if it is not a theory), and I'm interested to know, how you could do so.

So... you are objecting to a conclusion without an explicit disclaimer? I need to announce that it was a conclusion based on evidence and argument rather than an observation of objective fact? Okay: It is a mere conclusion based on my imperfect knowledge and understanding of the minuscule amount of fragmentary evidence that exists, yada-yada blah-blah-blah.

I could point out that this is a silly, disingenuous complaint, given the fact that virtually everything asserted in this forum would require the same disclaimer, over and over. I could point out that you make all manner of claims without including that sort of disclaimer. For example, you seem to state as fact that every Tarot writer who has discussed the C-Y trumps has been mistaken about the World card being a "World" card.

I could point out that in the very paragraph from which you cut that snippet, I began with facts, and explained my reasoning. That is, evidence and argument were presented before that conclusion, making it obvious that it was a conclusion based on those facts and reasoning. Unfortunately, taking things out of context and distorting them is one of your special skills, so naturally you ignored the main points of the paragraph, including that which contextualizes the parenthetical clause you quoted. Here is the quote, in context.

Michael wrote:Let me add that it would not have been unusual for the World to be conflated with Fame, even though that is not apparent in the Cary-Yale deck. If we look at different decks we can find various cards conflated with Fame, including Temperance and Judgment, and perhaps other cards as well. This is an inherently Petrarchian conflation, and illustrates both a key difference between Petrarch's allegorical cycle and Tarot's (the Ur Tarot did not have a Fame card) as well as the pervasive influence of Petrarch's scheme. Both Fame and Prudence were clearly missing from the original design, which is why they were sometimes added as secondary allusions. But the Cary-Yale World card, showing at its center a heavenly crown and following the Last Resurrection, is something which puts worldly Fama to shame as a worthless vanity.

The italicized sentence is the logic of the argument. When you ignored my argument and challenged my conclusion, I restated it in the passage you quoted above -- explicitly in terms of conclusions, not facts. Do you think I'm claiming divine revelation or something?

The facts and argument explain the conclusion. Why is that a mystery to you?

Huck wrote:I know all 14 trumps, and the definition, why I take just these 14 trumps, is not done by me, but by a majority of researchers, who claim, that these all are were painted by one painter in contrast to 6 other cards of anther painter in the PMB. The cards are all given, and one can see them.

Ah, the 14 original Visconti-Sforza trumps. Okay, one more time. We have a deck, usually called the Visconti-Sforza Tarot, in which only 14 of the original set of trumps survive, although most of the suit cards are extant. These appear to have been painted by a member of the Bembo family, probably Bonifacio. It is worth noting that numerous copies of the Visconti-Sforza style were made over the years, and the probability is that they came from a single Bembo-family workshop in Cremona. This is consistent with Dummett's observations, and the suggestions of his source, Winifred Terni de Gregory, (Bianca Maria Visconti, duchessa di Milano, 1940).

Dummett wrote:From a letter of 1451 from Bianca Maria Visconti to her husband Francesco Sforza, asking him to send to Sigismondo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, a pack of Tarot cards of the kind made in Cremona, which he had asked for the previous autumn, we may infer that Cremona was especially renowned for hand-painted playing cards of this kind.

It is worth noting that this request was about the same time period when the Visconti-Sforza deck is thought to have been made, so Gismondo's deck would probably have looked rather like the V-S deck, except for the likelihood that some heraldry would have been changed.

An incomplete deck is perfectly normal. The Rosenwald, Cary Sheet, and Rothschild/Beaux Arts printed decks are all incomplete, as are the Charles VI, Este, Leber-Rouen, other Visconti decks, and so on. The distinguishing feature of the V-S deck, in this regard, is that it has six trump card made at a later date in addition to the 14 original ones. Terni de Gregory suggested that the brothers, Benedetto and Bonifazio, may both have been involved in painting the Visconti-Sforza deck -- one for the original commission and the other for the replacement cards some years later. This too is wholly expected, perfectly reasonable.

One of the first mentions of playing cards in Florence, about two decades before Tarot was invented, names Iacobo di Bartolomeo Sagramoro, a painter frequently employed by the Este. He was owed 6 lire for repairing four decks (painting the backs red) and making thirteen replacement cards from scratch, five of them with figures and eight with pips. Ortalli noted, “Since old packs were being repaired in 1422, we can reasonably suppose that the games concerned had already taken root for sometime.” Luxury decks of regular cards were being repaired long before Tarot decks were even invented, so there can be no doubt that they too would have their damaged cards replaced. It is also not surprising that our most nearly complete early deck, i.e., our best maintained early deck, is also one which included replacement cards. This too is wholly expected, perfectly reasonable.

There is no mystery here... never has been.

Is that a "fact"? No.

It is a simple (even obvious) conclusion based on evidence and argument. If this simple conclusion is rejected, then a whole world of otherwise-unnecessary speculation is required to support a very complex and unsubstantiated evolutionary hypothesis. You reject simple explanations (like replacement cards) and then make up unnecessary scenarios to explain what was better explained without them. After a couple decades, you still haven't offered a coherent alternative universe, so we are left with what Ross has dubbed the Standard Model of Tarot history. That is the history laid out in detail by Dummett and elaborated upon by other playing-card historians. It permits parsimonious explanations.

Huck wrote:You claim definitely, that the Ur-Tarot hadn't Fame (and this is stated, as if it is not a theory), and I'm interested to know, how you could do so. With the fixation, that it should contain playing cards you don't tell anything about the motifs. If you don't know the motifs, you can't exclude, that Fame wasn't part of the motifs. When you fix the definition of "Ur-Tarot" on playing cards,

The earliest playing cards were playing cards.

Why is that hard for you?

Huck wrote:then the Michelino deck is there and it's a playing card deck. So the Michelino deck is the one or one of the category "Ur-Tarot" you're speaking of, I should conclude. But I don't remember, that this is part of your assumptions. So I've doubts, that you wanted to say that.

Your beliefs are usually mistaken, so try not to be too surprised by the next sentence.

The 16 Heroes deck IS an Ur Tarot deck (not the Ur Tarot deck) in one specific regard: it has a set of trump cards added to a relatively normal set of suit cards. An augmented deck, created by the addition of a set of permanent trumps to a regular deck, is ONE of the defining characteristics of Tarot. In this extremely limited but important sense, the 16 Heroes deck created by Marziano for Filippo was a precursor of Tarot. Likewise, the Latin-suited regular deck was a necessary precursor of Tarot. Likewise, the Mamluk deck was also a necessary precursor of Tarot. And all of them were used to play trick-taking games. However, there are a great many trick-taking games, and trick-taking games with trumps. Tarot is one large family of such games, but it is not the entire universe of such games, and being a precursor of Tarot is not the same thing as being Tarot.

If our dating of the 16 Heroes deck (c.1420s) and the invention of Tarot (late 1430s) are approximately correct, then we must conclude that the former was a largely failed experiment. Marcello's description makes it sound like a unique novelty.

You claim to pay attention to the "game structure" of the decks, so you are well aware that essentially nothing about the 16 Heroes deck is like the corresponding aspect of Tarot decks. It had a very different set of suit cards, both in suit signs and in the numerical structure of the suits. Regardless whether you consider each suit to include four of the god cards, which appears to have been the intended idea, or whether you consider those to be completely distinct, either way the suit cards are very different than Tarot decks. The number and organization of the trump cards is completely different than Tarot decks. The absence of a Fool card with its varied but usually unique role, is another very big difference. It had a completely different set of subjects on the trump cards. It was an odd hybrid sort of design, and nothing like it (that we know about) survived.

The 16 Heroes deck had one new idea which did survive, or which was resurrected 15-20 years later in the invention of Tarot. It can be used to explain, in that sense, one aspect of Tarot.

(As an aside, the fact that the 16 Heroes deck was created by a learned courtier for Filippo Maria Visconti may be used as evidence that the Ur Tarot was probably also created in Milan, where the earliest surviving decks came from, and was probably created by a later courtier, also for Filippo. Ross has posted on Gasparino Barzizza and his son Guiniforte, humanists known for their interest in both Stoic philosophy and Petrarch. Gasparino gave a funeral oration for Marziano. Guiniforte served Alfonso V of Aragon (who enjoyed the great allegorical entry of 1443), as well as the courts of Visconti, Monferrato, and d'Este. The great Latin moral works of Boccaccio and Petrarch, (De Casibus and De Remediis), as well as their allegorical cycles (Amorosa Visione and I Trionfi) would have been dear to the hearts of both father and son. The earliest mention Ross found of Petrarch's Triumphs was in fact a mention by Guiniforte, dated 1439, Milan. And so on. Therefore, Guiniforte is my candidate for the title, Inventor of Tarot.)

Huck wrote:

Michael wrote:Beyond that, I explained the reasoning behind my conclusion about the absence of a Fame card. However, I can explain it again. It is a fact that various existing Tarot decks turned different cards, (including Temperance and Judgement at the very least), into a Fame card. If there had been a Fame card in the original design, this would not have been necessary. Q.E.D.

I'm puzzled. Where was Judgment turned into Fame? Ah, you mean the Minchiate, okay.
Anyway ... how do you come to the conclusion, that Temperance or Judgment were turned into the Fame card, can't it be, that Fame was otherwise turned into other cards? Charles VI's world-prudentia-fame looks, as if Fame became a virtue, so Prudentia. As I've shown some posts ago, it looks, as if "Mondo" developed from Fama.

Again, as usual, you reject the simple and obvious but you fail to spell out what the alternative would be. How would your theory work, exactly? The original Tarot deck had a Fame card, but people didn't like it so they changed it? Except in Florence, where Minchiate actually kept the original design.

Some decks changed it to a Temperance card. This is real.
Some decks changed it to a Judgment/Angel card. This is real.
Some decks changed it to a World card. This is your interpretation, which may have some merit.

A problem is that Temperance, Judgment, and the World exist in pretty much all decks. For example, the Cary-Yale and Visconti-Sforza decks both have an Angel card as well as a World card. In decks where Fame became Temperance, they just added the Angel and World? In decks where Fame became the Angel, they just added Temperance and the World? How does all this work out, and how is it that in every locale, after all these speculative changes were made, they all ended up with 22 trumps and basically the same subject matter?

There is a simple and perfectly reasonable explanation, in the Standard Model of Tarot history. We know that Tarot was well established in the 1440s, in various locations. Tarot was known in various courts as well as being printed and sold as a commodity. We know that in every locale, when we learn of their designs, it turns out that they all appear to have been based on a single, earlier pattern with 22 standard trumps, what Decker et al. termed "archetypal Tarot". There is only one explanation that makes sense of that: at a very early date, almost certainly before the Visconti-Sforza deck was made, Tarot has already taken on that archetypal form.

Huck wrote:

Michael wrote:Yes, there were precursors to all these things -- but none of those precursors can be called an Ur Tarot.

Alright, no problem. What's then a or "the one" Ur-Tarot? How can you say, that it didn't contain Fame?

I've answered that in three posts now. If early Tarot had a Fame card, then later designers would not have needed to modify different cards to serve as Fame. If the World had been Fame, then it would have made no sense to make Temperance or the Angel into Fame, etc. Moreover, you insist on arguing about things taken out of context. Here is the context of the Cary-Yale "Fame" card.
Notice the resurrection of the dead. In your version, you ignore the Angel card and also the heavenly crown of the World card. This is not Fame, so if the original Tarot deck had a Fame card, then Cary-Yale wasn't much like the original deck.

Can you tell which of these is different from the others?


One is Fame. The others, even though they had trumpets, were not Fame.

Huck wrote:Well, we've done considerable research on the point, that development of iconography of the Trionfi poem (Petrarca) and first Trionfi card notes run together around 1440. Further we've done research, that there was not so much popularity for the Trionfi poem before 1440. So the idea is given, that both strings developed in context, influencing each other, just as a working hypothesis.

Congratulations... you are finally beginning to pay attention to Petrarch as a source/influence for Tarot.

Huck wrote:Now you claim to know, that Fame wasn't part of the Ur-Tarot, in contrast to the condition, that just Fame was especially popular between the six Trionfi poem motifs. How could you do so?

Because the Tarot trump cycle is NOT a representation of Petrarch's six Triumphs. Tarot is Petrarchian in the same sense that Costa's Triumphs are Petrarchian, even though they reverse the order of Fame and Death, and fail to include Love and Time. The trumps are Petrarchian in the same sense that Thomas More's Pageants are Petrarchian, even though some of the Trionfi are omitted and others are added.

Moakley did a VASTLY more rational and plausible job than you have attempted, trying to make the two cycles fit, and she had to fall back on the trumps being a satire, a parody in the "merry mood of Carnival". In other words, she failed, albeit respectably. You still ignore Moakley, even though you have finally discovered (and apparently been captivated by) Petrarch's Triumphs.

Huck wrote:I assume, that everybody, who hears of the terminus "Ur-Tarot" would assume "original Tarot" and I would assume, that people with some knowledge would take it as "he attempts to speak of the situation of c. 1440". But maybe you don't speak of c. 1440.

Why would you assume that? As of yesterday, YOU didn't accept that! You claimed that the Ur Tarot was the same thing as trionfi motifs, which date back much earlier, and I had to argue with you to bring the subject back to Tarot. But now you say that everybody knows that Ur Tarot refers to the earliest Tarot deck, circa 1440 or a few years earlier? LOL!

Here's an early Triumph of Caesar motif, about 150 years older than Tarot. It's still not a Tarot card.

Huck wrote:

This is my interpretation to the Cary-Yale tarocchi card, which some call World. Everybody with sharp eyes can recognize the winged trumpet, which belongs usually to Fame.

So... there are no trumpets in Apocalyptic art? Hmmm... and I thought that angels with trumpets appeared over and over and over in illustrations of the End Times. One of us is REALLY mistaken.
Do you remember that what we usually call the "Judgment" card was known as the "Angel" in all the early sources, and routinely showed one or more trumpeting angels in addition to the resurrected dead? This stuff should not be news to you. Here's a Petrarchian Triumph of Eternity (the parallel to Tarot's World card) from 1442.
Best regards,
Michael

Michael Hurst wrote:

huck wrote:Hm. I call the 5x14-theorie a 5x14-theory, not a fact.... You claim definitely, that the Ur-Tarot hadn't Fame (and this is stated, as if it is not a theory), and I'm interested to know, how you could do so.

So... you are objecting to a conclusion without an explicit disclaimer? I need to announce that it was a conclusion based on evidence and argument rather than an observation of objective fact? Okay: It is a mere conclusion based on my imperfect knowledge and understanding of the minuscule amount of fragmentary evidence that exists, yada-yada blah-blah-blah.

Yes, I demand this in this case. Is ... "It is a mere conclusion based on my imperfect knowledge and understanding of the minuscule amount of fragmentary evidence that exists, yada-yada blah-blah-blah." ... your official disclaimer, that one can quote you with this? ... :-)

I could point out that this is a silly, disingenuous complaint, given the fact that virtually everything asserted in this forum would require the same disclaimer, over and over. I could point out that you make all manner of claims without including that sort of disclaimer. For example, you seem to state as fact that every Tarot writer who has discussed the C-Y trumps has been mistaken about the World card being a "World" card.

I think I personally had spend a lot of time to distribute disclaimers, when I'm at insecure ground. There were not enough place at the card ...



... to implant a disclaimer, but I made in the overall context clear arguments, why I think, that naming the card Fame and not World is appropriate.

I could point out that in the very paragraph from which you cut that snippet, I began with facts, and explained my reasoning. That is, evidence and argument were presented before that conclusion, making it obvious that it was a conclusion based on those facts and reasoning. Unfortunately, taking things out of context and distorting them is one of your special skills, so naturally you ignored the main points of the paragraph, including that which contextualizes the parenthetical clause you quoted. Here is the quote, in context.

Michael wrote:Let me add that it would not have been unusual for the World to be conflated with Fame, even though that is not apparent in the Cary-Yale deck. If we look at different decks we can find various cards conflated with Fame, including Temperance and Judgment, and perhaps other cards as well. This is an inherently Petrarchian conflation, and illustrates both a key difference between Petrarch's allegorical cycle and Tarot's (the Ur Tarot did not have a Fame card) as well as the pervasive influence of Petrarch's scheme. Both Fame and Prudence were clearly missing from the original design, which is why they were sometimes added as secondary allusions. But the Cary-Yale World card, showing at its center a heavenly crown and following the Last Resurrection, is something which puts worldly Fama to shame as a worthless vanity.

The italicized sentence is the logic of the argument. When you ignored my argument and challenged my conclusion, I restated it in the passage you quoted above -- explicitly in terms of conclusions, not facts. Do you think I'm claiming divine revelation or something?

Hm ... "(the Ur Tarot did not have a Fame card)" ... is an additional sentence, which stands outside the overall context of the post, so, as if you refer to a higher context, in which it is clear, that Fame is not part of the Ur-Tarot.

It is not clear to me, which trumps are counted by you as belonging to the so-called Ur-Tarot, and in no way it is clear to me, how you else could exclude, that an assumed oldest Tarot (which necessarily once existed) had just a Fame card. In the given context, that I just had explained in some extension a post before, that Fame was part of the Cary-Yale for this and that reason ... I naturally felt addressed, but with the by-passing sentence "(the Ur Tarot did not have a Fame card)" I really couldn't interpret, how and why you found it necessary, just to say that. If you've said ... "in my hypothesis about the Ur-Tarot Fame is missing in the 22 motifs" ... the case might be clearer.

The facts and argument explain the conclusion. Why is that a mystery to you?

There are so many facts and there are so many things, which call itself argument ... in the case of the Cary-Yale Tarocchi I know, that it offers a sort of basic information for earliest Tarot (or Trionfi cards) and similar things one could say about the Michelino deck, about which I'd shown, that it had not Fame, but an Aiolus, who is connected to Fame. If you say then "(the Ur Tarot did not have a Fame card)" it seems to say, that there a 3rd relevant factor exists - in your opinion. Where you got it from is your mystery.
You've given explanations in the past, which all refer to "later developments" and with the help of the later developments you seemed to wish to implant "something real" for the earlier time, but this is not an acceptable approach, as earlier discussion has already shown. I just say so to spare your time. If you say "in my Ur-Tarot theory Fame doesn't belong to 22 motifs", I know, what you're speaking of. If you say "(the Ur Tarot did not have a Fame card)" I've to ask, what you're speaking of ... if I take you serious.

Huck wrote:I know all 14 trumps, and the definition, why I take just these 14 trumps, is not done by me, but by a majority of researchers, who claim, that these all are were painted by one painter in contrast to 6 other cards of anther painter in the PMB. The cards are all given, and one can see them.

Ah, the 14 original Visconti-Sforza trumps. Okay, one more time. We have a deck, usually called the Visconti-Sforza Tarot, in which only 14 of the original set of trumps survive, although most of the suit cards are extant. These appear to have been painted by a member of the Bembo family, probably Bonifacio. It is worth noting that numerous copies of the Visconti-Sforza style were made over the years, and the probability is that they came from a single Bembo-family workshop in Cremona. This is consistent with Dummett's observations, and the suggestions of his source, Winifred Terni de Gregory, (Bianca Maria Visconti, duchessa di Milano, 1940).

Dummett wrote:From a letter of 1451 from Bianca Maria Visconti to her husband Francesco Sforza, asking him to send to Sigismondo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, a pack of Tarot cards of the kind made in Cremona, which he had asked for the previous autumn, we may infer that Cremona was especially renowned for hand-painted playing cards of this kind.

Fine, that's more or less known. Of special interest is the condition, that Dummett writes "1451" and about a "previous autumn" (what shall this mean ? ... autumn 1450 ?), and that we have a letter, which was not written by Bianca Maria, which refers to Sigismondo Malatesta and a Trionfi card deck, and the letter was written at 28th October 1452 (autumn 1452).

...

Again, as usual, you reject the simple and obvious but you fail to spell out what the alternative would be. How would your theory work, exactly? The original Tarot deck had a Fame card, but people didn't like it so they changed it? Except in Florence, where Minchiate actually kept the original design.

Some decks changed it to a Temperance card. This is real.
Some decks changed it to a Judgment/Angel card. This is real.
Some decks changed it to a World card. This is your interpretation, which may have some merit.

The Cary Yale Tarocchi had Judgment AND Fame AND Temperance ... all cards are given in the fragment. A clear World we don't have, neither in the Cary-Yale or in other early decks. As I had shown in some posts before.
Later generations of cardmakers might have behaved, whatever was their pleasure, it didn't influence the situation of c. 1440.
For the current research situation we have, that Florence must be calculated as a possible, possibly even probable location for the Trionfi card origin ... quite in contrast to earlier research situations not long ago. True, it's remarkable, that the later Minchiate has dismissed Judgment/Angel in favor of an angel, who presents Fame. This might be an old Florentine tradition, born out of a fashion around 1440, which exploded to a special attention to Petrarca, which before didn't exist with the same intensity. As dates we have a Petrarca biography of Bruni 1436, a praising biography o Giannozzo Manetti in c. 1440, the battle of Anghiari June 1440 (near Arezzo, where Petrarca was born), the begin of illustrated Trionfi poem versions 1441, the honor for Manetti for a funeral oration at the death of Bruni in 1444, that he was made poetus laureatus (which also was "Petrarca theme") and the massive use of Trionfi motifs in Florentine art starting in the 1440s.

The Cary-Yale (Milan) might have been inspired by the earliest Florentine deck forms, not in all motifs, but in some. So it might have developed, that Fame was present.

On the other hand we have, that the Michelino had 12 Olympian gods and 4 other motifs, from which 3 look like Petrarca Trionfi motifs: Amor (Love), Daphne (Chastity), Aiolus (Fame). As Hercules was responsible also as an astronomer (an idea of some importance for Filippo Maria Visconti, who is said to have been obsessed by astrological ideas), he possibly could have been associated to "Time", which would be the 4th used Petrarca motif. The Michelino deck was made in Milan, not in Florence ... and it was made long before 1440.

Anyway, we have had possibly a greater admiration of Petrarca's vernacular works in Padova and Milan, before the wave reached Florence.

..

A problem is that Temperance, Judgment, and the World exist in pretty much all decks. For example, the Cary-Yale and Visconti-Sforza decks both have an Angel card as well as a World card. In decks where Fame became Temperance, they just added the Angel and World? In decks where Fame became the Angel, they just added Temperance and the World? How does all this work out, and how is it that in every locale, after all these speculative changes were made, they all ended up with 22 trumps and basically the same subject matter?

570 years are just a damn lot of time, which allows various changes in the meantime.

There is a simple and perfectly reasonable explanation, in the Standard Model of Tarot history. We know that Tarot was well established in the 1440s, in various locations.

NONSENSE.
It seems, that you can't count documents.
What did you publish recently ...
"Do the Math. Facts count."
http://pre-gebelin.blogspot.de/
...
If you had spoken of the 1450s, it would be perhaps just only an exaggerated description, but for the 1440s, that's nonsense. What do you understand with "well established"?

Tarot was known in various courts as well as being printed and sold as a commodity. We know that in every locale, when we learn of their designs, it turns out that they all appear to have been based on a single, earlier pattern with 22 standard trumps, what Decker et al. termed "archetypal Tarot". There is only one explanation that makes sense of that: at a very early date, almost certainly before the Visconti-Sforza deck was made, Tarot has already taken on that archetypal form.

FICTION.
A plausible explanation, if one didn't look at the details, where contradictions exist. For instance the 70 cards note in Ferrara in 1457. The most expensive decks of which we know of in the period 1440-1462. 70 cards ... not 78.

Huck wrote:I assume, that everybody, who hears of the terminus "Ur-Tarot" would assume "original Tarot" and I would assume, that people with some knowledge would take it as "he attempts to speak of the situation of c. 1440". But maybe you don't speak of c. 1440.

Why would you assume that? As of yesterday, YOU didn't accept that! You claimed that the Ur Tarot was the same thing as trionfi motifs, which date back much earlier, and I had to argue with you to bring the subject back to Tarot. But now you say that everybody knows that Ur Tarot refers to the earliest Tarot deck, circa 1440 or a few years earlier? LOL!

Well, your irrational statements like "(the Ur Tarot did not have a Fame card)" cause some puzzles and confusion.

Huck wrote:

This is my interpretation to the Cary-Yale tarocchi card, which some call World. Everybody with sharp eyes can recognize the winged trumpet, which belongs usually to Fame.

So... there are no trumpets in Apocalyptic art? Hmmm... and I thought that angels with trumpets appeared over and over and over in illustrations of the End Times. One of us is REALLY mistaken.

The accent is on "winged trumpet" and "winged trumpet" means Fame. Fame is presented with elephants and elephants associate trumpets.

Judgment has also trumpets.

Elephants associate chess figures, in Italy the rooks (at other locations they were used in the function of bishops). Trumpets associate also the Tower (another rook symbol, cause on the Tower were persons, who looked for approaching enemies, and they need trumpets to distribute their signals. Judgment AND Fame were used as rooks, and cause they were rooks, they were high cards in the Tarot later, cause rooks were the strongest figures on the board. So says the Chess Tarot theory, from which I know, that you don't love it especially.

Chess has two rooks, so you have the trumpet twice appearing in the Cary-Yale.

Hmmmm, well it seems to me that in the Cary Yale Visconti you have two Fama cards.
The card taken as the World is what the world has to say about you and the card taken as Judgement is what God has to say about you. Both are about your 'gloria' or reputation/ standing- one in the eyes of man, the other in the eyes of God. After all Virtue has two distinct arenas of play -Civic and Theological.
So I agree with Huck......and he is polite which is his Fama and his Virtus.
~Lorredan

Thanks, Lorredan ...

I remembered this earlier collection of mine (2006, long ago):
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?p= ... post708212

We've 5 times Trionfo della Fama in relation to Naples and Aragon:

1423: festivity in Naples with Alfonso of Naples, a great elephant is involved (the elephant is the Fama animal, cause Fama has a trumpet.

1443: The figure of Fama has the final position (which is most important in the Trionfi) at the Trionfo of Alfonso d'Aragon, who conquered the city in 1442.

1475: Trionfo della Fama for Camilla marriage (Aragon with Sforza from Pesaro).

1476: Petrarca's Trionfi for marriage between Aragon daughter and King of Hungary

1492: Another Trionfi della Fama, now as "indoor" festivity in Naples. The description makes assume, that this was very very similar to the Tarot sequence.

http://www.sedefscorner.com/2012/10/the ... ourts.html

Of special interest is the Triumph of 1443, cause it's close to "around 1440". Alfonso used "Fame" at a rather honored position.
Ross once offered a Cassone picture of the Trionfo.

http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/triu ... assone.jpg

I think, this means fame (beside the virtue of Justice):



... described at:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=390&p=5268&hilit=a ... 1443#p5268

Well, a clear sign, that "Fame" was a "hot topic" around 1440.

I found this short description (there are larger, but I don't find them) ...


http://books.google.de/books?id=ub_XZK1 ... ch&f=false

... and it gives special attention to trumpeters.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:Something to remember with regard to any possible influence of Petrarch's Trionfi on the Tarot trump sequence (or iconography) is what we discovered a little while ago in other threads here - we have no clear idea of the transmission, or the extent of the knowledge of, the Trionfi in the years preceding 1440 (or in fact of 1440s to 1470s, when it was first printed).

I think we can say with great confidence that the iconographical tradition that became canonical in the 1440s, didn't exist in the 1430s.

...

it seems that the text of the poem was probably still unsettled up to the time the game of Triumphs was invented, and the iconography was definitely so.

Thank you Ross, I had missed this very important piece of information. It answers my question about the influence on Tarot of Petrarch's "fight between allegories".

Huck wrote:Well, we've done considerable research on the point, that development of iconography of the Trionfi poem (Petrarca) and first Trionfi card notes run together around 1440. Further we've done research, that there was not so much popularity for the Trionfi poem before 1440. So the idea is given, that both strings developed in context, influencing each other, just as a working hypothesis.

Given the coincidence of dates in the development of these two "trionfi" phenomena, I agree that this hypothesis is worth pursuing.

Huck wrote:You've given explanations in the past, which all refer to "later developments" and with the help of the later developments you seemed to wish to implant "something real" for the earlier time, but this is not an acceptable approach.

I think that making reference to later developments is both correct and necessary. The Ur-Tarot is the game from which later Tarot evolved. So it is necessary never to lose sight of later tarot.

It seems to me that only "later Tarot" makes it possible to recognize this image as the World. Here we have no sphere or landscape that could suggest a naturalistic representation of the World, but we know what this image is thanks to "later Tarot". This is not a Jesus Christ card, it still is the World, even if it includes an image of Christ: The World card has had a huge degree of variation, possibly because being the highest card it was regarded as particularly significant. Personally, I have no difficulty in seeing in the CY World card both a World card and a depiction of Fame or Glory, just as a virtue appears in the Charles VI or Fortune in the Tarot de Paris. So I cannot see why the fact that Fame or Glory is represented on the CY card should make it "wrong" to interpret it as "the World".

hi Marco,

Huck wrote:You've given explanations in the past, which all refer to "later developments" and with the help of the later developments you seemed to wish to implant "something real" for the earlier time, but this is not an acceptable approach.

I think that making reference to later developments is both correct and necessary. The Ur-Tarot is the game from which later Tarot evolved. So it is necessary never to lose sight of later tarot.

Naturally one can create from later developments suspicions how the later state developed from an earlier state, and in the course of the own research these evaluations might be a key of success, which might give clues, how one should proceed in research.
But real evidence like the Martiano text and the Cary Yale Tarocchi, further the Brera-Brambilla Tarocchi and all the written documentation (especially if it can be dated) has another character and is not of the same level. As Michael recently formulated: "Facts count".
(I can give no link, the text has disappeared overnight and was replaced by " 2012: and to all a good night.")

So a "good night" back.

It seems to me that only "later Tarot" makes it possible to recognize this image as the World. Here we have no sphere or landscape that could suggest a naturalistic representation of the World, but we know what this image is thanks to "later Tarot". This is not a Jesus Christ card, it still is the World, even if it includes an image of Christ:

mn2.jpg

The World card has had a huge degree of variation, possibly because being the highest card it was regarded as particularly significant. Personally, I have no difficulty in seeing in the CY World card both a World card and a depiction of Fame or Glory, just as a virtue appears in the Charles VI or Fortune in the Tarot de Paris. So I cannot see why the fact that Fame or Glory is represented on the CY card should make it "wrong" to interpret it as "the World".

Well, the point is, as I earlier brought to attention, that all known and so-called "World"s during 15th century aren't really suggesting "World" ...



Here we see really "World", but this is later. In written lists of the Tarocchi we meet the Terminus "Mondo" ... so the name existed then. But these lists in most cases are surely from 16th century and in two cases doubtful.

The 15th century versions of "World" look like ownership circles, a place for personal design, expression for the fame of somebody (owner, producer, whatever)

PMB (Milan) has a fortified city (Sorzinda ?), Charkles VI (Florence ?) presents a mountain region.



Splendor Solis (not from 15th century) has as 22nd and last picture this:



... possibly Augsburg (?)

Well, the mountains of the Charles VI might present Toscana.

Here (also not from 15th century) we recognize Medici heraldic, and the dome of Florence


... and this card is not World, but Fame


Here we have the dragon of the star firmament.

And Boiardo related Mondo to the Fool riding on an ass card (0 or 1), not to card 21 or 22.

Perhaps in this way or another:


Well, it came up the rule, that the 2 of coins presented (usually) the name of the producer. World alias Fame was just to present the local region (if one hadn't a better idea), at least this seems to have been a habit for some time.
I think, that the old producers treated the questions about the content of their decks less religious and less fanatic than modern Tarot historians, creative and with some common phantasy and with harmless enjoyment about "good ideas".

Well: "Ur-Tarot". One of the ancestors of Tarot is likely an "earliest import-deck to Europe", likely a deck with 4x13 structure (but naturally: also this might be different). So with some right we could call it "Ur-Tarot", if we're foolish enough to do so. But with the same right we could call a lot of other decks which signify a special state of development as "Ur-Tarot", so that we finally would have a lot of other "Ur-Tarots" and the whole band could compete which each other, which would be the most beautiful, most important etc..
The terminus "Ur-Tarot" doesn't help us in the attempt to study the origin of Tarot, which is a development in many steps.
We have, that the termini Tarochi and Tarau first appeared in 1505. That's nice. That's something real. We have, that the term Trionfi appeared to our eyes first in September 1440. Also good.
None of the old decks was called in contemporary literature "Ur-Tarot" or "oldest Tarot" or "Ur-Trionfi" or "oldest Trionfi". Okay, I can live with this. This is just what makes us to research the question and the conditions of the time.

The terminus "Ur-Tarot" doesn't help us in the attempt to study the origin of Tarot, which is a development in many steps.

..From Huck
Just like Fama!
For Fama could be seen as a process of building up of the things remembered to suit each areas social and political interests- hence the difference as in the cards illustrated in Huck's post. Fama is an idea of something possessed (be it good or bad).
Interestingly considering the amount of commissions of tapestries in the time of Tarots beginning that were an almalgamation of Petrach's Triumphs and the Virtues as sets- this was a process of Fama and it worked.
I remember the saying from Horace when he wrote about Jupiter's son Hercules....
"To extend the reach of one's fame through deeds, that is the job of Virtue"
So Fama and Virtue go together like a horse and carriage....or Elephant and carro if you prefer.

I think, that the old producers treated the questions about the content of their decks less religious and less fanatic than modern Tarot historians, creative and with some common phantasy and with harmless enjoyment about "good ideas".

From Huck
I could not agree more- except to say that playing cards had inherent strands of political propoganda more than religious dogma; or it might be called aggrandisment of person and place which today might be called subliminal messaging.
~Lorredan

Very good, Lorredan. I'd like to know more about amalgamations of Petrarch + Virtues, examples and dates, for reasons that will be clear below. Meanwhile, I want to submit something I've been working on for a couple of days.

On various threads I have advocated the position that Petrarch's 6 Triumphs, as well as the 7 virtues, probably were an influence on the early tarot, at least judging from the earliest decks we have substantial fragments of, the CY and the PMB. I have been reading this thread patiently hoping to see something to make me question my position. I haven't seen anything, but maybe I've missed something. So perhaps I should just put out what I think and hope for more clarification.

I look at the oldest extant triumph cards available to us, the CY (there is also the Brera-Brambilla, but I will add it next), trying to see them from the perspective of someone who doesn't know the later cards, but does know what has come before, at least where he lives (somewhere in Northern Italy; I am not assuming that the images in the CY are specific to Milan, except of course the heraldics). We might also imagine that I have been told that this a game of Triumphs. From that perspective, they naturally fall into three groups:

5 of the 7 Petrarchan Triumphs [Correction: this should be, 5 of the 6]
5 of the 7 Cardinal + Theological Virtues [Correction: this should be 4 of the 7]
Emperor. [Correction: this should be Emperor and Empress.

I would know that Petrarch wrote a poem about Triumphs, although probably not have read it, except maybe the first two, which did seem to get around. Love is obvious, even though it doesn't match the description in Petrarch. It matches other representations of that emotion (in alchemical sequences, medieval romances, etc.). Chastity is also obvious: triumphs are associated with chariots, and we have a lady (chastity being feminine) on a chariot. Death is obvious. He isn't usually shown on a chariot. Eternity is obvious, the scene of the Last Judgment. Fame is harder to recognize. But there is a lady holding a trumpet on one card, with a somewhat this-wordly scene below.

I know the seven virtues. And in particular I know that they were sometimes represented in a triumphal way, standing over defeated virtues (see viewtopic.php?f=12&t=848&start=20#p12161 for SteveM's reproduction of one from Bologna 1355). Sure enough, I see that the three theological virtues are represented in just this way.

I know that Emperors and generals were associated with triumphs in ancient Rome.

So I might think that some cards were missing: 2 virtues, 2 Petrarchan Triumphs. [Correction: This should be 3 virtues, 1 Petrarchan.] Any others?

Well, Fortune was often depicted triumphing in this world. (This is where the Brera-Brambilla is relevant) And if there is an Emperor, there might be an Empress, to provide the hope that the triumph will continue into the next generation. [This last sentence should of course be omitted.]

Sometimes vices were representated as triumphing in this world (e.g. the Michelfeldt Tapestry, if Durer was correct in saying that it was from long before his time). But there were quite a few such vices, and I don't see any cards suggesting them; so this is a more remote possibility.

I end up in this way with 15 or 16 cards. Knowing that the suits also have 16 cards, I might think of the four sides of a chess board, with the triumphs as a fifth army (like a foreign army swooping in to pick up the pieces after, as often happened, Italy itself is weakened by internecine war). I could observe that two cards have towers (like rooks), two cards have horses (like knights), two cards have royalty (I get this from Huck, of course). But otherwise this game is not like chess, since like most card games of the time it is a trick-taking game.

I don't see two bishops' miters, but perhaps these are in the missing cards. (However here hindsight rules out such an hypothesis.)

If I could see cards of the other oldest deck, the Brera-Brambilla, I'd see an old man at the bottom of the Fortune card. On other decks, such as the later PMB, I would see that there is another card with an old man on it, with an hour glass, so he is Petrarch's Time. Instead of miters, we have old men.

Well, this seems to me natural, except maybe for the part about bishops = old men, as the cards would be seen by at least some classes of people in Northern Italy of the first half of the 15th century. By these I mean those we already know bought, received, or made such decks, and those like them: nobles, condottiere, notaries, lawyers, doctors, scholars, tutors, artists, artisans, those supervising illuminations, those in training for various professions, and others of a humanist stamp.

Now I'll return to my present self. There is nothing in the extant designs of the CY cards to suggest that the designer drew on the words of Petrarch's poem, which are of considerable variance from the cards. He just used the titles, and the idea that each triumphed over the succeeding one, rather like in the suits of ordinary cards. If the game is defined by these Triumphs and the virtues necessary to achieve the goal, Eternity, it is not necessary to include traditional attributes of these figures, although the designer might sometimes do so. But other things take precedence, like heraldics.)

[Sentence omitted, thanks to Ross's later observation about Rosselli's inventory.] For details on the cards, topical considerations would have been important, such as relevant heraldics, battles, etc. It is an educational game, probably designed as such to give the Church an excuse not to apply the strictures with which its members often threatened other card games.

Admittedly the identification of the Chariot lady as Chastity, or the lady with the trumpet as Fame, is not clear in isolation; it helps to know the theme of these cards, these triumphs or trumps, as a whole, which is, well, triumphs.

Chastity's identification, at least as some sort of virtue, is somewhat clearer in the PMB, where the wings on the horses clearly suggest the allegory of the Phaedrus, in which Platonic archetypes are named--"The divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like" (http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/ ... html)--and described as riding in chariots led by pairs of winged noble, i.e. light-colored, horses. In other early Chariot cards with ladies, the one dark and one light horse suggest the same source, but with the lady now the rational soul, a figure that can easily be masculinized to the same effect.

Apart from a possible Platonic reference, the main consideration for the CY Chariot would have been one of heraldics in a particular topical situation. Assuming a topical reference to Bianca Maria or some other Visconti lady, there had to be a Visconti heraldic for this stand-in for Bianca. (I am not assuming a 1441 date, as it could also have been done for the 1444 christianing of her first child, when Filippo and Francesco were temporarily friends; it could even be later, copying a design based on such a theme.) Giving the lady a design already used in the suit of Coins, the Visconti dove on a gold disc, does the job with a minimum of effort. And besides her chastity, we have her being rich in other ways.

No doubt these cards were used to play a trick-taking game, as I have said, and so had a numerical order of some sort. So virtues get interspersed among Petrarchan Triumphs in some fashion, probably corresponding to ones that the designer imagined as needed at particular times in the life of the soul, conceived as going from pre-Love to Eternity. Historically, there was no particular order to the seven virtues, except that the theologicals came after the cardinals. I would assume that the same would be true in this game. Perhaps it was similar to the order of the virtues in Minchiate later (where Prudence gets a high spot, too).

The game combines triumphal sequences from three sources. One is Petrarch. Another is the triumphs of the virtues, which in 14th century Northern Italy were shown standing over personnages representing the defeated vice. That aspect is retained in the CY's Theological Virtues. A third is the traditional Roman triumphs of the imperial period, which had emperors or generals as their focus.

Whether there were more than 16 in the CY is speculation from a higher order of hindsight. Dummett's argument that the number of trumps would have been greater than 22, in proportion to the increase in the number of suit cards (i.e. 2/14th more, or about 3), is not strong; one could just as cogently say that the number in this fifth suit (as it is for purposes of trick-taking) would logically be the same as in the other suits, i.e. 16.

The same theme of the Triumphs is confirmed in the first artist PMB; however it is not obvious where Prudence would be. Given that at some point the theologicals were removed, perhaps Prudence was removed, too (unless another card does double-duty), and we have the 3 moral virtues instead of the seven traditional. We also see 5 additional cards (Fool, Bagatella, Popess, Pope, Hanged Man). I have tried to show in the "Petrarch and Giotto Revisited" thread that these five bear traces of Giotto's virtue and vice series in Padua. Since the Devil and the Arrow (Tower), in later decks, also show traces of Giotto, that is a reason for saying that they were there, too, for a total of 22 special cards (if not in the PMB specifically, supposing someone finding them distasteful, then in others it followed). So the allegory of the game now gives the vices a certain power that they lacked in the iconography of triumphal virtues, making the framework a kind of psychomachia, another traditional concept, and one very much suited to games of winning and losing. Something like the thinking that Michael has long proposed would now fit as well

My focus on Milan decks does not assume any priority to that city or region as far as the invention of the game. That is simply where the earliest cards we can see come from. Other considerations might favor one area or another (for example, where our earliest sighting of the moment is from, but that is not at all decisive). Petrarchan considerations may or may not favor one area over another. Surely the idea of the series of six, with their titles, was known throughout Northern Italy. I learn from Wilkins (Petrarch's Eight Years in Milan) that Petrarch wrote often about the poem to his friend Francesco Nelli in Florence, where there was a Petrarch Club of some sort.

On the other hand, this club in Florence is described as being all but disbanded at that time, in the 1350s when he was writing the Triumph of Fame. When he declined to return to Florence and instead put himself at the disposal of Florence's absolutist enemies (especially Milan), his writings stopped extolling the Roman Republic and instead praised the absolutist power structure of the Empire. According to Hans Baron (From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni, 1968, p. 29), the first draft of the Triumph of Fame is a clear example of this. It has Caesar next to Fame, and Scipio obscured. One might expect enthusiasm in Florence for Petrarch's additions to his poem to wane at this point. In fact extant inventories of Florence's pre-1440 libraries reveal no desire to own his Trionfi. (In the final draft of the Triumph of Fame, it is true, Petrarch makes Scipio the equal of Caesar; but as Baron points out, at the end of Africa Petrarch says that Scipio could have been even greater if he had not had the Republic reining him in.) This factor might be a point in favor of the position that if the tarot originated in Florence, then Petrarch wouldn't have been a factor. On the other hand, it might have originated elsewhere. Or people in Florence valued the sentiment of the 6 triumphs and could ignore, or had forgotten, the wording.

Another consideration related to Petrarch's Triumphs and the tarot is how Padua and Bologna come up in the poem's early adventures. Bologna is where a 1414 manuscript of the Trionfi was made (I'm not sure if it was the whole or a fragment), likely on Vergerio's orders for the Council of Constance; it is also a place where the motif of triumphal virtues, as in the CY Theological Virtues, was well known (see SteveM's link above). As for Padua, it is where the autograph of the Trionfi first went, where Giotto's cycle was done, and where Vergerio lived. But Padua is not a tarot city; for us it is of interest for its connection to Bologna (also, to be sure, as Cosimo's city of exile). Bologna in turn was often controlled by Milan during the period in question.

I am also not assuming any particular time for the invention of the tarot, other than pre-1440. In that case, if there was a tarot in Milan then (originating there or elsewhere), we have no extant cards or other confirmation. But there is evidence of a sort in the CY itself: the archaic clothing (continued in the PMB but not other decks), the heraldics of the Love card (left over from another deck, perhaps, and the artist wasn't sure about removing it), and another possible topical reference (not exluding others for the same image): the red castle reachable by water that Marcos posted (on the 5x14 theory thread), the love nest for Bianca's mother. The fact that currently the earliest reported deck called "triumphs", whatever it was, is from Florence 1440, and that available documentation stops around then, are two considerations, but there are others, including a few that Andrea Vitali has brought forward.

Note: an hour after posting, I added a few sentences to the paragraph beginning "Well, this seems to me natural"... Also, a day after, I put in a few corrections toward the beginning, in brackets.

Huck wrote:Well, the point is, as I earlier brought to attention, that all known and so-called "World"s during 15th century aren't really suggesting "World" ...

Hello Huck,
in your hypothesis, which is the earliest date that you would accept for the Fame card becoming the World card? Could you please propose a range of dates for the invention of the world card?

It is hard for me to follow your argument, because personally I have no difficulty in seeing world in early Tarot world cards, with the exception of the Sforza Castle card I attached to my previous post. Do you think that card was also meant to represent Fame? Jesus Christ and the four evangelists were quite famous.

The CY world card also is not completely trivial, because the world is represented by a landscape, not by a more easily identifiable and conventional circular shape, as in Charles VI or PMB. But, for instance, the Splendor Solis image you proposed is a good example of “the whole world” being represented by a landscape. That image illustrates the knowledge contained in alchemical books (represented by the sun) enlightening the world (represented by the landscape): “In these last four Chapters is all contained where with the Philosophers have filled the whole world with innumerable books”. The fact that the sun represents the books is made obvious by the title of the book (the Splendour of the Sun). Interpreting the landscape as a representation of the World seems to me a reasonable deduction. In the same way, I take the landscape in the lower part of the CY World card as a representation of the World: this makes it easy to me to accept this card as a World card with an interesting secondary allegory in the higher part.

Hello Huck,
in your hypothesis, which is the earliest date that you would accept for the Fame card becoming the World card? Could you propose a range of dates for the invention of the world card?

I think, when it was contemporary called World (Mondo), then we have to accept that it was meant as World. Unluckily the Teruionfi lists appear late. I think, two have justified suspicion to be from late 15th century.
Sola Busca (1491) at least seems to be astronomy related, as Sun-Moon-Star etc., whereas the others seem to present more "my region or my city or my fame".
But generally we have not enough examples.

Perhaps the question must be asked, when it had been common knowledge so far, that earth is a globe. I mean common knowledge, not internal knowledge of experts. Likely after Columbus detected America, though we know, that Borso had a globe in the mid 1460s (as far I remember ?).

Boiardo seem to unite Fool with World on the first card, possibly critically stating, that the fools at his time didn't understand the globe model or general astronomy.

It is hard for me to follow your argument, because personally I have no difficulty in seeing world in early Tarot world cards, with the exception of the Sforza Castle card I attached to my previous post. Do you think that card was also meant to represent Fame? Jesus Christ and the four evangelists were quite famous.

Looks more like eternity, I agree.

The CY world card also is not completely trivial, because the world is represented by a landscape, not by a more easily identifiable and conventional circular shape, as in Charles VI or PMB. But, for instance, the Splendor Solis image you proposed is a good example of “the whole world” being represented by a landscape. That image illustrates the knowledge contained in alchemical books (represented by the sun) enlightening the world (represented by the landscape): “In these last four Chapters is all contained where with the Philosophers have filled the whole world with innumerable books”. The fact that the sun represents the books is made obvious by the title of the book (the Splendour of the Sun). Interpreting the landscape as a representation of the World seems to me a reasonable deduction.

Looks more, as if somebody is returning home (just my opinion) ... I remember dark, that it has such an internal context. But I would have to check it again.