Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

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Phaeded wrote: 1. The earliest known tarot order includes the theological virtues (which I date to Sforza/Bianca’s wedding); the premise that this is an outlier with no relationship to the standardization of the tarot is simply unfounded. More on that below.
You might want to date it to the wedding of October 1441, but I don't know on what basis you would do so. There is, for instance, no heraldic union of Sforza and Visconti in the pack - it is all Visconti.

Like the Brambilla deck, Bandera and other Bembo experts date it to 1442-1445, the most youthful period of that artist.

The Brambilla deck might well be a year or two older than the Cary Yale - it really can't be decided. But it is, for our purposes, contemporary enough that it can be used as a counterweight to the argument that Cary Yale is a window to an earlier model of Tarot. Only two trumps remain, of course (Emperor and Wheel of Fortune), so they are not much basis for speculation about the trump sequence (except that it contained the Wheel of Fortune!), but the 7 surviving court cards are all from the four standard figures, and represent 3 of the four suits, so there is no reason to think that there were 6 court cards in this deck.

In other words, the contemporary evidence shows that both 6 court cards and 4 court cards existed in a Tarot. There is no reason to think Brambilla was like Cary Yale when complete. Since they are chronologically contemporary, the weight of the evidence following these two suggests that the Cary Yale was the unique, experimental deck, and the Brambilla of the standard type.
2. All evidence for the standardization of the 22 trumps comes with and after the PMB deck (which I date to 1450/1).
Again, I'm not sure why you are so confident that you can date it so precisely. Art historians can only note that it contains Sforza ducal heraldry, as well as Visconti heraldry, so it must be after 1450, and that it shows a more mature Bembo style, but beyond that it is pure guesswork. In one of his last articles before he died, Michael Dummett even suggested a date in the early 1460s for the deck - in the journal Artibus and Historiae, a respected journal, so his arguments must be taken into consideration instead of just ignored in favor of the requirements of a pet theory.

The only date-range I'm comfortable with now is "early 1440s" for Brambilla and Cary Yale, "around 1450" for Rothschild, and "around 1460" for PMB, Charles VI and Catania. The term "around" should be taken as meaning as much as 5 years around the center date. This is how imprecise our knowledge is at this point. I think pretending to any more precision is unwarranted by the data, and I'm unwilling to buy any theory which requires so much pretended precision.
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Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

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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. This might allow us to infer that the poem itself, in its canonical order, had not achieved great circulation before then. It seems that some of the Trionfi, like Love and Death, may have circulated separately. We cannot even say, therefore, when the canonical order of the "Six Triumphs of Petrarch" was settled.

Since Tarot was invented in this period, if the concept of "Triumphs" owed something to Petrarch's Triumphs, then, the trump sequence, and even their number, conceivably owed little to what we now consider the poem I Trionfi. It could have been influenced or even suggested by some vague knowledge that Petrarch wrote Triumphs, on subjects like Love, Chastity, Time, Fame, Death, Divinity, etc. without the inventor knowlng anything else about them, including their precise order as intended by Petrarch.

Phaeded's objection that the Chariot couldn't show Chastity then loses its force, since the iconography of Chastity had not been settled yet (derived directly from the poem and canonized in Florence in the early 1440s), so that if someone knew about a Triumph of Chastity (or just "Virtue") they might have imagined a woman on a chariot more like Dante's Beatrice, which was an image already well established. And if Chastity as "all virtue" was understood (in Illicino 's commentary on the Trionfi "Chastity", personified by Laura, stands for "Reason"), then the expansion of the other three Cardinal virtues, on the mere suggestion of Petrarch's Triumph of Chastity, is also conceivable.

This is just speculation, not an argument, but the important point is that 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.
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Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

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Michael and Ross,
Michael wrote:
I seriously doubt that anyone has offered MORE salient iconographic precedents to support their interpretations of Tarot than I have. Ask around. I have included a number of links in this thread, but I will not repeat 12 years of posts here.
Precisely why I want to engage you and Ross in dialogue here (and Huck even though we all disagree with his chess theory); I have no desire to vet my “pet theories” before the occult kooks elsewhere. I’ve read many of your posts on your own webpage and other forums (including a disagreement between you and Ross over Prudence-as-world due to the Virtue halos in CVI but apparently you’ve changed your mind).
Ross wrote:
In one of his last articles before he died, Michael Dummett even suggested a date in the early 1460s for the deck - in the journal Artibus and Historiae, a respected journal, so his arguments must be taken into consideration instead of just ignored in favor of the requirements of a pet theory.
In the article you referenced, which is almost wholly given over to refuting previous attributions (which I thought had already been put to bed), Dummett fails to address the time lag between 1451 when trionfi were clearly being produced (all quotes from p. 22 of his work)…
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.
…to after 1462, the date of his proposal for the PMB:
The pack was the product of the Bembo workshop: of the surviving 35 picture cards, Benedetto executed six and Bonifacio the remainder (missing are the Devil, the Tower or Lightning and the Cavallo di Denari). Benedetto's earliest datable work is the Torchiara polyptych, signed and dated by him to 1462.
Reasonable, consensus attribution – product of the Bembo workshop – but extremely tentative to leap to the conclusion that the added/replacement cards (how can we be sure they were either?) were the work of Bennedetto based on comparing miniatures to larger wall-mounted paintings. Miniature work is notoriously difficult to date, especially in the absence of a scribal script that one would find in an illuminated bible for instance. The fundamental problem here, however, is that decks were being produced in Cremona at least by 1451 (per Malatesta’s letter) and would have hardly have been left uncompleted for 13 years. If one wants to cling to Dummett’s theory one can still posit the iconographic program of the PMB model as having been set in/by 1451 with the surviving PMB deck as having been produced after 1462, but the date of production of iterations is hardly what most concerns us, no?

To review my interpretation of the historical record of 1440-1441 again, events not only close in time but interwoven with the same focal person of Sforza:
1. After June, 1440: Florence/Medici produce an Anghiari Victory deck of which Giusti follows suit. Yes you can take Giusti out of context and peg him as pioneering gifts of trionfi to a condottiere but that is highly unlikely. Sforza came into possession of the Marche in 1434 and the Medici opened up a branch of their bank in Ancona (Sforza’s base in the Marche) in 1436, thus in the Medici pay for four full years before Anghiari. Sforza was then heralded as the absent victor of Anghiari (“hail to Sforza’s men” – not Attendolo, i.e., Michele) in the commune herald’s celebratory poem. It is extremely likely Sforza was given the original Anghiari deck with Giusti following suit for the lesser condottiere in Florence’s pay.
2. January 1 1441: Visconti is pissed off at Sforza for being in the pay of the allied Florentines and Venetians and so sends his daughter off to Ferrara to be courted there. 14 paintings are produced for her.
3. October 1441: Sforza takes the bribe of Cremona (along with the promise of Milan after Filippo dies?) and marries Bianca.

The historical theme here is simple: Visconti and Florence vying for Sforza. A trionfi deck commemorates the Florentine condotte with her condottiere (Sforza and Malatesta), d’Este - aware of this via their marriage to Malatesta (who supposedly kills his Este wife) – counter the trionfi propaganda with 14 painted images (not called trionfi as it was a courting deck, not a victory deck) of their own, but Sforza bites on the competitive bait and marries Bianca Visconti himself, with a similar deck to that of the Ferrarese one being produced for the wedding (Visconti has one produced for himself, now known as the Brambilla deck, sans the 3 women for 3 men court figures because he is not getting married and does not need this courting/marriage emphasis in the deck, thus reverting to the standard 4 court cards that can be played with 14 card suits).

The three events all happen within 16 months of each other, all involve Sforza, and provide the three basic aspects of the earliest deck that we need to know:
1. Anghiari, the earliest, tells us the place of origin: Florence
2. Ferrara/Este courting deck of 1/1/41 the number of trumps: 14
3. CY wedding deck of October 1441 tells us which subjects (all but three, easily surmised from Brambilla and completing the Virtue series). [Michael’s proposal of 26 trumps is unlikely in the extreme - no reference anywhere to this number and why would the nearly identical Papess and Faith be in the same deck, something that would confuse card-players?]

1 and 2 did not survive, which leaves us with the purpose and subject matter of 3, the CY deck (and to a much lesser extent, the Brambilla).
Ross objected:
You might want to date it to the wedding of October 1441, but I don't know on what basis you would do so. There is, for instance, no heraldic union of Sforza and Visconti in the pack - it is all Visconti.
Muzio Attendolo’s hometown symbol of the quince (Cotignola = quince) is clear as day on the highest court card of the CY, the king of swords’s breastplate:
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A later Sforza stemma showing a lion holding the quince:
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This otherwise extremely odd card - the king averting his eyes away from a helmeted page - is explained by Muzio’s death: drowning in his armor while trying to save his favorite page who had fallen into a river (relevant here is the genre of depicting saints – in this case, the deceased - with the instruments/manner of their deaths). Sforza’s fief of the Marche was newly acquired (and he also recently lost his Neapolitan possessions) and thus that was hardly his identity which was instead the virtue of his father, inheriting the nickname of ‘Sforza’ at his father’s death. The inclusion of Sforza’s father to represent his own stemma was appropriate for the wedding deck.

But let’s look at his bride Bianca which I believe to be represented in all three of these cards: the Lovers, the Chariot and “the World”. In the Lovers, the white cross on red field pennants represent s the arms of Pavia – when Filippo was crown prince he held the title of Count of Pavia and the Bianca/Sforza marriage implied the same with Sforza as heir (but this of course did not enter Filippo’s will, at least the one that survived him at the end). There is nothing else in this deck that supports the Savoy hypothesis - and why would Bona be offering a Visconti symbol on the chariot? Which leads us to…
Ross wrote:
Phaeded's objection that the Chariot couldn't show Chastity then loses its force, since the iconography of Chastity had not been settled yet (derived directly from the poem and canonized in Florence in the early 1440s), so that if someone knew about a Triumph of Chastity (or just "Virtue") they might have imagined a woman on a chariot more like Dante's Beatrice, which was an image already well established. And if Chastity as "all virtue" was understood (in Illicino 's commentary on the Trionfi "Chastity", personified by Laura, stands for "Reason"), then the expansion of the other three Cardinal virtues, on the mere suggestion of Petrarch's Triumph of Chastity, is also conceivable.
I argued earlier that the original Chariot would have featured Marian features and thus would embrace Beatrice/Laura exemplars, but the subject here is Bianca (or so I am arguing). More importantly there seems to be an irrational resistance on this forum to addressing the primary attribute being held up by the woman on the chariot: a coin with Visconti stemma. The coin is not a symbol of Chastity, before or after Petrarch gets illuminated. Again, in the Florentine Anghiari deck this figure would have been “Florentia” likely holding out a fleur-de-lis of the florin, canceled out here by the rival Visconti emblem. Dummet, in the same Bembo article, also comments on Bianca/Cremona which I find to be the key to the earlier CY deck: “She had a close connection with the city: she was born there, and Cremona was given to her as her dowry when she married Francesco Sforza in 1441”. Unlike Bona, who would be represented by Savoy or French emblems, it makes sense for Bianca, who was a Visconti, to be holding out a Visconti coin as a symbol of her Visconti dowry (the tax revenue of Cremona). Finally this leads us to “The World”…

“The World”: there is no encompassing circular ocean such as we find on Gloria Mundi, but rather a knight who sallies forth from a seaside domain to a maiden before an inland city on a large river. Translation: Sforza is proceeding from the southwest from Ancona/Marche located along the Adriatic towards the dowry city of Bianca’s Cremona, located on the Po, with Bianca before it (perhaps the “fishing pole” she holds is an allusion to yet another Visconti stemma of buckets attached to a burning torch, always angled forward like a rod?). Bianca is more prominently represented a second time on a Visconti cloud (commonly depicted in the Visconti Hours but only employed for God or Visconti royals), the trumpet of fama extoling her virtues and the orb being rulership a bon droyt.

In military terms, the line from Ancona to Cremona represented a sort of limes, a protective border between the Duchy of Milan and the Venetian Republic’s terra firma holdings, to be enforced by Visconti’s new son-in-law, Francesco Sforza. That Sforza immediately took his bride to Venice and was feted there, unsettling Filippo (who undoubtedly wrote him out of his will at that point), is beside the point.
“The World” (Cremona/Ancona now under Bianca/Sforza’s joint control) and Ancona/Marche (1564):
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Phaeded

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

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Ross,
I'd also like to propose a terminal date for the PMB based on the Strength card, but first the fruits of your excellent article on this card:
When Iohannis Angelus published Petrus de Abano’s images of the decans and degrees in his Astrolabium Planum in 1494, he depicted the 26th degree of Libra as "Victor Belli", The Victor in War. The translations and original works of Petrus de Abano (1250-1316), are considered the sources of the astrological imagery in the Palazzo della Ragione in Padua and the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara. Angelus' depiction of the symbol for 26 Libra is remarkably similar to the VS card, both in the overall simplicity of its design and in such details as the shape of the man's garments and the lion's tail between its legs. Like the Viscontis before him and as mentioned above, Francesco Sforza and many of his contemporaries relied on astrologers to help them plan their major activities. In Sforza’s case, unlike the area of Trojan romances, where all the manuscripts pre-dated his rule, astrology was one area of the Pavian library to which he added - in particular a highly illustrated volume of Iohannes de Sacrobosco’s De Sphaera, treating allegorically of the influence of the planets on human life. While Hercules alone would certainly be an appropriate subject for the triumph of Force, invoking both the Sforzas’ reputation for strength and their acquired name, the astrological subject of Victory in War seems to add another dimension to the card, both in its iconography and in the Sforza's ultimate military aims. Finally, Cornelius Agrippa, around 1530 citing Petrus de Abano and Hyginus, says that Hercules represents Victory in War (Three Books of Occult Philosophy II,37). We have a perfect match.
The flipped Abano image and PMB Strength card:
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But Sforza is dressed up in the garb of a triumphant, conquering Roman general - he is not merely showing off his stength but dominating a foe: Victory over someone. That foe has already been shown to us on the King of Swords shield, the lion of St. Mark (and like his father Muzio-with-quince, in the CY card, Sforza would have likewise occupied this card). And like Gioto's Strength, the adversary lion is also on the shield, oriented with the same 3/4 view:

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Sforza was never in the employ of Venice as Duke of Milan and so the message is ironic - "I was Venice's sceptre bearer and now they are wrongly my enemy." Since Colleoni was waffling back and forth between Milan and Venice, and we find his stemma on PMB fragment decks, the message was undoubtedly for him. At all events the Sphortia extol Sforza's defeat of Venice for Milan - the centerpience of his propaganda. The terminus ante quem is therefore the Peace of Lodi in 1454 (this effectively rules out Dummett's 1462 date for the PMB).

That the lion without a book could represent Venice is demonstrated by the Venetians themselves in the greatest place of honor in the Doge's palace (and note the Visconti snake of Milan on the sheild on Europa's bull representing the defeated League of Cambrai) - the lion with tail curled under almost looks as if the Venetians were belatedly answering the PMB image:
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Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

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I have a feeling this point has been talked about on these forums before, but a Google search didn't turn up much, so here goes. Kaplan, in the 1984 little white book that goes with his version of the Cary-Yale, says that the device that Phaeded calls a quince is actually a pomegranate, a Visconti device. He has a picture on p. 10, and under it the label "pomegranate", which he identifies on the previous page as Visconti. I personally don't know, just looking by looking, which is which, even if it is "plain as day." And you can't go by something done by Sforza later , if it was Francesco's or a descendant of his, because Sforza appropriated all the Viscinti devices.

On the other hand, Kaplan also says that the fountain, which we see on the fronts of the male Lover and the Baton courts, is a Sforza device (this is also in his 1978 Encyclopedia vol. 1 p. 62). If so, that would make Batons, one of the two suits with weapons, a Sforza suit. It would make sense for the other weapon-suit, Swords, which has the Pomegranate/Quince, to also be a Sforza suit, and so be with quinces. These two suits would be appropriate to a condottiere getting married (or having a child, if it is a 1444 christianing present), while his Visconti wife gets Cups, for sweetness and piety, and Coins, for wealth (at least Cremona).

As to the artist of the Cary-Yale, perhaps Evelyn Welch counts as a Bembo scholar, since she wrote the Bembo entry in the Dictionary of Art (1996). She says that it is unclear who did most of the work attributed to Bonifacio Bembo, except for one thing, the Church portraits, which don't look like the rest. What is clear is that the work, including that which resembles the cards, was done by the Bembo workshop, which had a father and several sons at least, and not just the younger Benedetto (who over time may have developed his own style). She reproduces some work that was found associated with the name of another brother; it is in the same style as that usually associated with Bonifacio. I posted it in the "5x14 theory" thread. Bonifacio is the one in the Sforza records, to be sure, but that just shows who they gave the money to, for work that mostly was destroyed a long time ago.

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

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Just for this detail ....
Phaeded wrote:
“The World”: there is no encompassing circular ocean such as we find on Gloria Mundi, but rather a knight who sallies forth from a seaside domain to a maiden before an inland city on a large river. Translation: Sforza is proceeding from the southwest from Ancona/Marche located along the Adriatic towards the dowry city of Bianca’s Cremona, located on the Po, with Bianca before it (perhaps the “fishing pole” she holds is an allusion to yet another Visconti stemma of buckets attached to a burning torch, always angled forward like a rod?). Bianca is more prominently represented a second time on a Visconti cloud (commonly depicted in the Visconti Hours but only employed for God or Visconti royals), the trumpet of fama extoling her virtues and the orb being rulership a bon droyt.
There is a winged trumpet at the card in the Cary-Yale, which some (for instance Kaplan) call "World".

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A winged trumpet appears also here:

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http://emblems.let.uu.nl/av1615033.html
connected to this poem ...
A DEO RECIPIAM

Ne tumeas fastu, si non ingloria nomen
Fama tibi & laudes addidit egregias.
Sic te larga Dei excepit clementia: cuius
Iste tibi solo munere cessit honor. translation
... and in later Minchiate we have have not a winged trumpet, but a winged Angel with 2 trumpets and the inscribed words FAMA VOLAT.

Then FAMA is the highest trump NR. 40 and the WORLD gets only N. 39, second place.

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So, at least then there was a clear difference between FAMA and WORLD.

Early cards called "World" by modern interpretors miss clear signs, that they really were meant as "World" at the time of their production. Neither PMB (two putti holding a shield with a city at so-called "world"), Charles VI (this looks like either Fame or Prudentia, dancing on shield showing city in mountains) nor the d'Este card are very convincing.

The Boiardo Tarocchi poem, likely 1487, knows the terminus world, but it places it on the first card together with the Fool, so actually = number "0":
Mondo, da pazzi vanamente amato,
Portarti un fol su l'asino presume,
Ché i stolti sol confidano in tuo stato.

World, you are vainly loved by the mad,
And a fool thinks he can bring you on his donkey,
Because the stupid only trust your state.
The last Card (21) then has ...
Fortezza d'animo in Lucretia liete
Exequie fece: per purgar sua fama
Se uccise, e all'offensor tese atra rethe,
Dando exempio a chi 'l nome e l'honore ama.

Inner strength made happy the death of
Lucretia: to clean her fame
She killed herself, and she prepared for the offender a dark net,
Giving an example to those who love their own name and honour.


And second highest card 20 has also fame and time, but the real signifying names are Oblivion and the "ruine":
Oblivion di termine e confine
Del tutto sei, Elice e Dido a Lethe
Menasti, e famma e tempo hai in toe ruine.

Oblivion, you are the end and boundary
Of all, you took to Lethe Elice and Dido,
And among your ruins you have fame and time.
And at third highest 19 we meet then "Time":
Tempo, che gli homini a la morte sproni,
Nestor servasti, e si pur vinne al fine,
De un viver tal non par che se ragioni.

Time, you that hurry men to death,
You saved Nestor, and if in the end he came to an end,
It seems impossible to think of such a life.
So ... analyzing Boiardo, who actually has a strange model, of course, we see, that "Oblivion", the "end and boundary" (20) is ranked between "TIME" (= 19) and "FAME" with a mix of Fortezza (= 21).

Well, we have no common Tarocchi card with the name "Oblivion", but we know a "ruine" in the form of the Tower card, and rightfully we detect in the Sola Busca at card number XX (=20) ...

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... a lightning and a falling Tower, which naturally associates the Tower of Babylon with the person (Nenbroto) presented.
compare: http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Sola_Bus ... :_Nenbroto

The Sola Busca was made 1491 (so agree the most) and the Boiardo Tarocchi poem was made 1487 (that's at least my opinion), so both are close in time to each other. The Tower was later (in Tarot versions) taken as Nr. 16 or 15, as everybody knows, I think. His numerical value Nr. 20 in Boiardo and Sola Busca comes likely from the condition, that the early Trionfi cards had some relation to the the chess figures, and in old Chess the Tower (= Rook) was the most dominant figure, so naturally in the Trionfi game also a good choice for the highest cards.

So we have .. for instance ... in the Cary-Yale (suspected by me to play a deciding role in the connection between Chess and the then new Trionfi cards) at the card Judgment - in Tarot also usually a very high card, either highest (in Bologna) or second (in Marseille Tarot) or 3rd (in Ferrarese Tarocchi) - a nice Tower ...

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... hardly to overlook, but most overlook it.

And at "Fame" in Cary-Yale (not "World", as many minds handle it) the painter showed a lot of Towers in many cities, from which the central in the background likely has to be taken as Venice.

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In the war end of 1439 Piccinino had a very difficult situation. After a lost battle, he was enclosed by Sfoza, and the prospect for the next days promised to become prisoner or to die. But Piccinino, a small man, jumped in a sack, a big German put the sack on his shoulders and walked across the battlefield of the day, where plundering soldiers of Sforza searched for usable items. Nobody cared about him, they found a fisher boat and crossed the lake. Quickly Piccinino regained his forces, attacked the not protected Verona and took it. Sforza was totally surprized and couldn't believe it first. Then he also very quickly organized his troops, attacked also Verona and got it very quick back.
So it looked from the perspective of Iacopo Antonio Marcello ...
http://books.google.de/books?id=RdWeII7 ... no&f=false

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Piccinino's escape is likely the most famous anecdote of the whole war.

At October 1441 (or short before? ... or at the wedding ?) the old foes Piccinino and Sforza are said to have seen each other, having some talk about their past adventures. A good opportunity to paint just this theme on a Fame card.

About the true time of the meeting:

Piccinino's biography
July - September 1441
Nel frangente il Piccinino commette un grande errore di comunicazione allorché chiede con forza al Visconti la signoria di Piacenza; è pure in lizza con altri pretendenti al matrimonio con l'unica figlia del Visconti, Bianca Maria. D'altra parte il duca di Milano non ha solo questa richiesta da fronteggiare: altri condottieri pretendono chi la signoria di Novara (il San Severino), chi quella di Tortona (il dal Verme), chi le terre di Bosco Marengo e di Frugarolo (il Furlano). Come risultato, il Visconti fa contattare in gran segreto lo Sforza dal proprio segretario Eusebio Caimi e gli propone una tregua; a lui è intimata la cessazione immediata dalle ostilità per un anno (agosto). Il Piccinino si oppone con forza alla decisione presa alle sue spalle; deve cedere allorché il duca minaccia di abbandonarlo. Nel levare il campo da Martinengo, si bacia con lo Sforza e conclude con lui un patto segreto che prevede la spartizione dello stato della Chiesa e del senese. Il Visconti gli conferma la carica di luogotenente generale e lo esenta, al contrario degli altri feudatari, da alcune restrizioni poste in atto nei loro confronti.

October 1441:
Nemico acerrimo dello Sforza e dei suoi fautori come Rolando Pallavicini, dopo il matrimonio del suo emulo con Bianca Maria Visconti accusa di tradimento il marchese di Busseto davanti al duca e con il suo favore assale Fidenza. Si impossessa di una vasta parte delle terre del rivale appropriandosi -si dice- di un bottino di 400000 ducati. Si porta a Casalbuttano da dove manda i suoi uomini alle stanze invernali.
This seems to say, that the meeting took place before October 1441. There seems to be suspicion, that Sforza and Piccinino agreed on a secret contract for their future political behavior regarding the Chiesa and Siena (if I understand this correctly.

Anyway, cause of this scene at the Fame I think, that the date of October 1441 gains some little more probability than other dates.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Non nova sed nove

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Hi, Phaeded, Huck, et al.
Phaeded wrote:I’ve read many of your posts on your own webpage and other forums (including a disagreement between you and Ross over Prudence-as-world due to the Virtue halos in CVI but apparently you’ve changed your mind).
This comment is odd in several ways. Your conclusion is that the Cary-Yale World card 1) should be considered Prudence, and 2) not the World, and 3) that arguments about the so-called Charles VI World card should pertain regarding the Cary-Yale World card. Given Huck's post on what he calls the Fame card in the Cary-Yale deck, addressing this particular error seems worthwhile.

The decks with standard trump subjects tend to show remarkable consistency from one deck to another and remarkable diversity, in both ordering and iconography. This is a very general observation, and by "remarkable" I mean that this requires some explanation. The basic explanation for changes in both ordering and iconographic details appears to be the same: the people in every locale in 15th-century Italy wanted their own Tarot deck. Each area wanted an identifiable version of the game, a civic-pride variant. It needed to be obviously Tarot but obviously different.

The essential principle, which I'll talk about if/when I reply to Marco's post, is non nova sed nove, doing the same thing but in a different way. This is a fundamental aspect of pre-Modern art, applicable to understanding the design of the Ur Tarot as well as the many varieties that developed. Knowing this about early Italian Tarot in general gives us insight beyond the cultural history of the game. It offers guidance in terms of explaining the specific details of each deck, as well as understanding the generic or synoptic design of the trump cycle.

The most significant aspect of this civic-pride variety, novelty within a standard framework, is that it explains why everyone changed the deck but almost everyone also kept it "the same". The three sections identified by Dummett in 1980 maintained their integrity even while the ordering within each section changed. The basic subject matter of the trumps was kept even while Time became the Old Man, or the Hunchback, or the Hermit. They are the "same" subjects, but different enough for the desired effect -- non nova sed nove.

As an obvious example, the Este Sun card showing Diogenes and Alexander is both clearly a Sun card and clearly a classical variation of the more common designs. As such, the conflation of the basic subject matter with an idiosyncratic but intelligible related subject is common. Fools, looking for a lock-picking interpretation, might take Diogenes, or the classical subject in general, as a key to secret meaning. That's why they're called fools.
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Getting back to my own, perhaps foolish, argument about the World card in Charles VI, the three virtues IN THAT PARTICULAR DECK are shown with the conventional Florentine attribute of polygonal halos.



It is a CONVENTIONAL attribute of virtues in Florence.



Therefore, knowing how subjects were routinely conflated in early Italian Tarot decks, and knowing the common significance of that attribute in Florentine art, when the triumphant figure on the World card shows that same attribute, the idea becomes inescapable that a fourth virtue was included in the deck, conflated with the World. The implication, in lieu of any other specific identifying attributes, is Prudence.
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This may not be the author's intention -- I can't read his mind. But it is the apparent intention of the work, to use Eco's distinction. And that is the argument I made to Ross. As for how you apply that argument to a Milanese deck which lacks the attributes under discussion, I have no clue.

Huck's desire to ignore the fact that the Cary-Yale World card is a World card is equally mystifying. It is not even clear that it has been conflated with Fame in the worldly sense, although that is certainly possible. The heavenly figure with crown and winged trumpet, coming immediately after the resurrection of the dead, clearly suggest as a primary meaning eternal glory rather than mundane Fama in this world. Other elements of the image may have specific references. For example, a portrait of a family member may have been used for the main figure, or recognizable features may have been included in the landscape. Such pictorial allusions are wonderful to discover, if they can be determined with some certainty, but they mean essentially nothing in terms of the overall design of Tarot. They are no more "the key" than the conflation of Diogenes with the Sun.
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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.

Best regards,
Michael
We are either dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, or we are just dwarfs.

Re: Non nova sed nove

28
mjhurst wrote:(the Ur Tarot did not have a Fame card)
... :-) ... what right do you have say that? What's your Ur-Tarot? That of 1505?

Well, my research is for the Ur-Trionfi or something like this. Or maybe, just the state of worthwhile decks around 1440, whatever they presented.

We have this German Petrarca Trionfi fragment in 1414, which used illustrations. One picture a relative common Fame, another Petrarca at the funeral (or deathbed) of Laura or something like this, so a rather unusual death representation (at least, if one thinks, that it must have been like a known Tarot card).

During my research to this point I saw the argument, that
a. Fame had the special favor of Petrarca between the six motifs,
and b. that Fame would have the most similar representation, and therefore should be the oldest representation of the six motif.
Don't ask me, where I saw this argument. I didn't care about it.

Following this, then somehow Fama might be called perhaps the oldest Trionfi card or Trionfi motif, quite in contrast to your opinion, that the Ur-Tarot didn't know Fama. Under the condition, that one could believe, that Petrarca's poem and its popularity influenced the card deck development.

Or, maybe, you've defined the terminus "Ur-Tarot" in the manner, that it precisely should have had the 22 cards, that you're thinking of, otherwise it wouldn't be Tarot and so can't be of course also not an Ur-Tarot. So Fama couldn't be part of the Ur-Tarot cause your definitions, what this U-Tarot shall be.

Somehow not a really justified method. You yourself found Vainglory as a very early Trionfi motif, somehow in a similar condition as the Fama picture of 1414.

What shall this terminus Ur-Tarot be and why do you think, that Fama in no case would belong to it?
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Non nova sed nove

29
Hi, Huck,
Huck wrote:
mjhurst wrote:(the Ur Tarot did not have a Fame card)
... :-) ... what right do you have say that?
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?
Huck wrote:Following this, then somehow Fama might be called perhaps the oldest Trionfi card or Trionfi motif, quite in contrast to your opinion, that the Ur-Tarot didn't know Fama.
You are using the term "Ur-Tarot" to refer to "Trionfi motif". This is bullshit. Any questions?

The "Ur" or first Tarot deck was a DECK of PLAYING CARDS, used to PLAY CARDS. That's what a Tarot deck is, a deck to play Tarot. The thing about the "Ur" Tarot deck is that it was the first design, but other than that, it was still a Tarot deck, hence the name, "Tarot deck".
Huck wrote:Or, maybe, you've defined the terminus "Ur-Tarot" in the manner, that it precisely should have had the 22 cards, that you're thinking of, otherwise it wouldn't be Tarot and so can't be of course also not an Ur-Tarot. So Fama couldn't be part of the Ur-Tarot cause your definitions, what this U-Tarot shall be.
I've defined "Tarot deck" to mean "Tarot deck". What part of that is hard for you?

It does not include things which were not decks of playing cards. For example, it does not include the E-Series model book, nor later copies of the E-Series model book. You have referred to these prints as "cards", "decks", "Tarot", "Trionfi", Tarocchi", and other bullshit terms. I don't. Likewise, I'm not going to call a manuscript page with a Triumph of Fame on it a "Tarot card" or "the oldest Trionfi card" as you have. You are free to do that, but I am free to call you rude (but accurate) names for doing so.

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.
Huck wrote:You yourself found Vainglory as a very early Trionfi motif, somehow in a similar condition as the Fama picture of 1414. What shall this terminus Ur-Tarot be and why do you think, that Fama in no case would belong to it?
Yes, I have posted on that subject, and the tradition going back to a painting by Giotto and a description by Boccaccio, and uploaded high-res images of manuscript pages from Gallica. Here is an example.
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Note carefully: It is NOT a Tarot card, nor is it "the oldest Trionfi card", nor a playing-card of any sort.

Again, you can call it what you want, but if you choose to call it something which it is not, like a Tarot card, then someone should say rude things about you, publicly and preferably in direct reply to your post.

There were Triumph of Fame works in art and literature a century before there was Tarot. So what? There were Wheel of Fortune works in art and literature about a thousand years before Tarot. In the century before Tarot was invented there were various Triumph of Love and Triumph of Death works, and the Emperor/Pope pairing, and endless examples of Apocalyptic art with things like the Devil, falling towers, Sun/Moon/Star combinations, resurrection, and the New World going back centuries earlier. Yes, there were precursors to all these things -- but none of those precursors can be called an Ur Tarot.

For example, this is a 12th-century Wheel of Fortune. It is NOT a 12th-century Tarot card, "the oldest Trionfi card", nor is it the Ur Tarot.
Best regards,
Michael
We are either dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, or we are just dwarfs.

Re: Non nova sed nove

30
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. And btw, 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.

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, 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.

Btw: The Michelino deck has not a Fame, but the figure Aiolus, and this was seen at least by Chaucer as a figure accompanying Fame, so possibly it's a replacement of Fame (and so indicating Fame). As we have (16th trump) Amor for Love and (15th trump) Daphne for Chastity, so it makes sense to assume (14th trump) Aiolus for Fame.
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.
There were Triumph of Fame works in art and literature a century before there was Tarot. So what? There were Wheel of Fortune works in art and literature about a thousand years before Tarot. In the century before Tarot was invented there were various Triumph of Love and Triumph of Death works, and the Emperor/Pope pairing, and endless examples of Apocalyptic art with things like the Devil, falling towers, Sun/Moon/Star combinations, resurrection, and the New World going back centuries earlier. 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?

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.
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?
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.

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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. It belongs to the oldest picture material, that we have for the question of "oldest Trionfi deck".
Further we have the older description of the Michelino deck, which contains an Aiolus, which plausibly connects to Fame.

On the base of what fiction (or "special definition" of the terminus "Ur-Tarot") do you want to keep up the opinion, that Fame wasn't part of the Ur-Tarot?

Well, there's no problem, when you just say, that Fame isn't part of "your personal Ur-Tarot-theory".
Huck
http://trionfi.com