Francesco Filelfo: the "Odes" (early 1450s)

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Phaeded at ...
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=974&start=19
... had pointed to the "Odes" of Filelfo with ...
Humanists invoking the Muses had become an overwrought commonplace by the mid-century of the Quattrocento. For the relevance of the Muses precisely at the time the PMB was made note that Guarino drew up his program of the Muses at Belfiore in 1447 and Filelfo writing his Odes, organized in books named for each Muse (he left the work incomplete, only completeing 6 Books/Muses); one Ode (in the book named for Thalia) is even written to Bianca, ca. 1451 (before he was allowed to leave plague-ridden Milan for Cremona, which is what he was petitioning Bianca for in this ode), although she is mentioned in other odes as well.
So I looked for the book, and found a translation of 2009, relative recently.

Filelfo's Odes consists of 5 books (not 6, as Phaeded noted), and each of the books contains 10 Odes, giving the composition a 5x10-scheme. The books got names, Apollo and 4 Muses, Clio, Euterpe, Thalia and Melpomene.

The Mantegna Tarocchi ALSO uses a 5x10-scheme, and - as the Odes - for this composition also Muses are used together with Apoll, though in another way (figures 11-20).

At least since the Decamerone of Boccaccio (10x10-scheme) the arrangement of compositions in groups of 10 was not unusual (so I've read), so a 5x10 here and a 5x10 scheme there might not mean too much.

Nonetheless it made me curious. I recognized further, that Filelfo used a fragmentary "Fulgentius row" of the Muses, as it was used by Lazzarelli and by the unknown designer of the Mantegna Tarocchi (with the minor difference, that Filelfo exchanged the positions of Thalia and Melpomene).

The "Fulgentius row" is discussed here:
http://trionfi.com/0/m/11/

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

Odes of Filelfo

from http://books.google.de/books?id=tjJ8VbF ... navlinks_s

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From the content one can see, that Filelfo also involved his stays in Cremona, close to the time, when likely Trionfi cards were produced there (1451/1452).
MikeH had:
Although Filelfo in the 1450s spent much time away from Lombardy, from Sept. 1451-January 1452 he was in Cremona, and again in Dec. 1452. (For references Google "Filelfo Cremona".)
viewtopic.php?f=23&p=14232

The second stay in Cremona seems to have been negative (invective against Cremona) for Filelfo and "his Muses".
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Francesco Filelfo: the "Odes" (early 1450s)

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I can see only parts of Filelfo's invective against Cremona:

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This seems to be the start of the invective. Filelfo leaves the city for a third time (MikeH knows of only two visits).

"Shrewd scholars of the gaming table" belong to those, who are accused.

The question is, if Filippo had been involved in the Cremonese Trionfi card production. If so, then it was negative, cause it seems, that his suggestions were not taken. "There's no place for the sacred Muses" might indicate, that Filelfo's suggestion contained something with Muses (the Mantegna Tarocchi contained something with Muses).
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Francesco Filelfo: the "Odes" (early 1450s)

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Old ideas are for the genesis of the Mantegna Tarocchi ...

1. that a production of 50 cards or paintings for the Jubilee year 1450 would have been a good idea then. The period between one Jubilee year and the next was then 50 years. This was changed to 25 years in 1467, as far I know.

2. Then there was the suspicion, that Mantegna possibly visited Marcello in the war camp (Lodi ?) around April 1449 for a commission to make a Trionfi deck for Isabella of Lorraine. Then - after this - Marcello got the Michelino deck, and needn't the Trionfi deck of Mantegna, but possibly Mantegna had already made something.
Possibly enough to manifest the idea, that Mantegna made the Mantegna Tarocchi. Not naturally the same motifs, as they later were used, perhaps partly similar motifs.
I've read once, that Mantegna (possibly) visited Milan before he appeared in late May 1449 in Ferrara. I lost this note. I couldn't confirm this journey in other attempts. But later Mantegna worked for Marcello in other commissions, and Marcello described his attempts to find a good Trionfi card producer, after the scene with Scipio Caraffa. Mantegna worked in Padova, and Monselice was near.
Part of the Mantegna team, which worked then at a chapel in Padova since 1448, had been a Johannes or Giovanni d'Alemagna, brother-in-law to a Venetian artist family in Murano. I've the suspicion, that this man had been identical to the playing card producer in Bologna 1427 with the same name (found by Orioli). Both mentioned (possibly the same man) persons had a "quondam Johannes" in their name, which means, that their father had been a "Johannes" and the quondam indicates, that the father was dead.
In the case, that Marcello knew about the past of the Johannes in 1448 as an earlier playing card producer, he might have asked him, how to do the job. And Johannes might have involved Mantegna, who was still very young then.

3. Another early sign are the contemporary Duccio works for the Malatesta temple. In style some of the presented sculptures or reliefs are similar to later Mantegna Tarocchi motifs.

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

Now we have an old date for the Mantegna interest in Milanese Trionfi from October 1452 (Malatesta's desire to get a Trionfi deck from Milan).
And with the Filelfo Odes we have Filelfo in Cremona in December 1452 and it reads like a big disappointment. His Muses are not desired.

It seems otherwise natural, that Filelfo - a top scholar of the time - took influence on the choice of the Milanese Trionfi. But possibly an influence can be just "negative". There was a choice of motifs, but the motifs of Filelfo were not taken. This might be the background.

The friendship between Sforza/Marcello was then (1452) somehow gone, as Venice had open war with Sforza's Milan during October 1452. If the Mantegna Tarocchi style "with Muses" somehow came from Venice/Padova and from Filelfo/Marcello, then it had bad chances in Milan just then.

The invective against Cremona in the Odes is rather angry, after Filelfo had been quite different in the other Ode, when he was very happy to approach Cremona.

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

Was there an early relation between Filelfo and Jacopo Antonio Marcello?
A relation defintely existed in the time of "Valerio's death" around 1461, and it's said, that Filelfo knew then a lot of Marcello. A context might have been given by Guarino, who also had worked for Marcello (later) and who had also an engagement for the Muses iconography (earlier).

Generally we have an Venice-influence on the Mantegna Tarocchi , though it's matter of dispute, where and how it came from. Lazzarelli found pictures in a book store in Venice.
Last edited by Huck on 18 Oct 2013, 07:01, edited 1 time in total.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Francesco Filelfo: the "Odes" (early 1450s)

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Huck,
First of all it has struck me as odd at how little focus Filelfo has received on the various tarot message boards – besides Bianca, he is the key link between Filippo Visconti and Sforza, and operated as what his key translator refers to somewhere as Milan’s “cultural dictator.” It has always been my primary premise that it is inconceivable that Filelfo did not have some influence on the design of the PMB. In fact I had worked out my theory with him as the humanist behind the deck, with the only problem as to what was Filelfo’s relationship to the CY? He was in Milan since 1439 and might have involved himself in such a project to curry favor with Bianca.

But then Giusti’s journal was discovered and seemingly changed everything (and why I started posting here). Florence must have created tarot but given the short duration until Bianca was in Ferrara (1/1441) and her wedding (10/1441) I just didn’t see enough time for anything major to have changed in the tarot between those three sets of trumps (assuming the Ferrara paintings were trumps). Filelfo could have still influenced the particulars of the CY – the Milanese version of a Florentine invention (of which he would have understood all too well as essentially an exile with the Albizzi/Strozzi faction) – but his real contribution would have been in expanding a 14 trump deck for the PMB by 8 cards: 7 trumps proper and the odd Fool card (which I equate with an allegory for the Milanese rabble that Filelfo incessantly rails against in the Odes). The propagandistic needs were different in 1450/1 than in 1441 and thus the change (and yes I realize Caldwell, Hurst and whomever else see no political uses of the hand-painted decks – I strongly disagree).

Much more to my theory, but that is the broad outline; but to address one specific issue you broached:
Huck wrote
The invective against Cremona in the Odes is rather angry, after Filelfo had been quite different in the other Ode, when he was very happy to approach Cremona..
Filelfo played a significant literary role in the welcoming terms with which Milan received Sforza(see Gary Ianziti. Humanistic Historiography under the Sforzas: Politics and Propaganda in Fifteenth-Century Milan. Oxford: I988), but then was stuck in the city after Sfora took it. In the Odes Fielflo petitions Bianca to provide him with permission to leave plague-stricken Milan which apparently she obtained from her husband, as Filelfo was headed down the Po to Cremona (via Pavia) in 1451. Cremona was “her city” so perhaps one could simply accept that as a reasonable destination provided to Filelfo. However, in the same ode, Fielfo points to services previously provided to Bianca (inclusive of the CY?) and asked if there isn’t anything else he could do right now as he was desperate for cash as well. Apparently inspired by the discovery of the Marziano deck, we know Sforza was obtaining tarot decks right before he took Milan and it is thus a reasonable hypothesis that he wanted one made especially for himself after the city fell. It is easy to draw conclusions from there, like Marziano for Filippo, Filelfo wrote up the program for a trionfi deck for Sforza and might have been asked to view the painter’s works who carried this out: thus one can posit the trip to Cremona was to view/approve Bembo’s painted cards. The fact that one of Filelfo’s servant girls came down with the plague and he was detained at the Po when trying to enter Cremona put a bad taste in his mouth in regard to the Cremonese, has nothing to do with his putative designing of the expanded tarot deck nor with the attribution of the PMB to Bembo (how Filelfo’s bile vented on Cremona went over with Bianca is another matter, but the Odes weren’t published – after being edited – until well after the facts they describe) .

Finally, Rudolf George Adam’s unpublished 1974 dissertation on Filelfo (still the primary reference source on Filelfo, but also see Robin’s Filelfo in Milan, 1991, where she discusses the “Cremona Ode” at length), mentions payments made to Filelfo in 1451 not associated with his normal duties; one could relate these to payment for his program for the tarot. Luckily someone has provided an online scan of Adam’s dissertation, with the second part being the footnotes, here: http://www.medievalists.net/2013/04/08/ ... 1439-1481/
[otherwise this dissertation is unavailable unless you are in Oxford or willing to pay their press a small fortune for a facsimile]

All of this is circumstantial, but it does tie Filelfo closely to Bianca and Sforza precisely when the PMB was likely made. At the end of the day I return to this question: In light of the Marziano/Filippo deck that was discovered by then allied Sforza/Marcello, how likely was it that the particulars of the PMB weren’t at least vetted by a humanist? If yes, how was this humanist not Filelfo?

Phaeded

Re: Francesco Filelfo: the "Odes" (early 1450s)

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The Invective that Huck posted is complete on the one page. Pages 262-63 start the next ode, as I verified with the hard copy.

I am very pleased at this attention to Filelfo. He has been on my radar for a while (as Huck and Phaeded note). I dealt with him most extensively in relation to the PMB, on ATF two years ago in the thread http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=160976 . Since my own part in that thread is hard to follow, owing to a lot of good input from the others (Huck, SteveM, and Ross), I wrote it up afterwards as a blog, http://tarotandchaldean.blogspot.com/. I was looking at Filelfo's relationship to the PMB in terms of Chaldean "Oracles", which he would have known either through Plethon, in writing or in person (if the latter, then 1439), or through Ficino, or through his own study the sayings embedded in Proclus (probably prompted by Plethon); he had brought Proclus over from his time in Greece. I think the case is better for the six 2nd artist cards than for the rest. Since 2011 I have tried a few other ways of relating him to the PMB, i.e. through Cyriaco, Filarete, and his knowledge of Plato (but I don't know if he had Plato's works). I haven't been able to connect him to the CY except in a very subsidiary way, possibly as an adviser on Plato, as I see the Phaedrus in the CY Chariot; but there were other humanists in Milan then who would have known this material, I think. I'm not even sure it required a knowledge of Greek, since Bruni had translated/paraphrased/summarized the relevant text.

Note also my post at viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&p=14334#p14334, in which I verify that Filelfo had a book of Philo's writings, including at least one, "On the Creation," which uses Pythagorean arithmology. That was in relation to Decker's invocation of Philo as one of the formative arithmological sources in the Milan-based tarot sequence.

Re: Francesco Filelfo: the "Odes" (early 1450s)

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Mike wrote
I see the Phaedrus in the CY Chariot; but there were other humanists in Milan then who would have known this material, I think. I'm not even sure it required a knowledge of Greek, since Bruni had translated/paraphrased/summarized the relevant text.
The only other major humanist was Decembrio and Filelfo, as was his specialty, painted him with words of extreme condemnation for his role in the Ambrosian Republic - such poisoned words that were otherwise reserved for the likes of Niccoli and Travesari (Cosimo's "mouthpieces"). Filelfo quickly became Sforza's main humanist advisor as Decembrio sought employment elsewhere - no doubt due to Filelfo.

Filelfo's writings that are closest in time to the PMB are the Odes and Satires. I don't see the influence of Proclus in either of those works. And again, the PMB chariot has zero to do with the Phaedrus chariot, which is pulled by two Pegasuses (Pegasi?) which indicate an association with the Muses and the charioteer (Bianca). Filelfo even touches on this in the Odes, Book 3.1, where he has the muse Euterpe say in the opening lines: "Phoebus Apollo ["father" of the Muses], the father in whom I rejoice, has sent me to you from the mountaintop that winged Pegasus is said to have made famous with a sacred spring when he emerged from the blood of the dark Gorgon."

Elsewhere Filelfo compares the Milanese mob (which I see in the Fool) with the Gorgon. The unusal depiction of the Chariot can be explained by reference to Filelfo - I've never seen another explanation for why there are winged horses (e.g., Dummett simply threw up his hands at the problem).

Phaeded

Re: Francesco Filelfo: the "Odes" (early 1450s)

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Phaeded wrote:Huck,
First of all it has struck me as odd at how little focus Filelfo has received on the various tarot message boards – besides Bianca, he is the key link between Filippo Visconti and Sforza, and operated as what his key translator refers to somewhere as Milan’s “cultural dictator.” It has always been my primary premise that it is inconceivable that Filelfo did not have some influence on the design of the PMB. In fact I had worked out my theory with him as the humanist behind the deck, with the only problem as to what was Filelfo’s relationship to the CY? He was in Milan since 1439 and might have involved himself in such a project to curry favor with Bianca.


Well, Filelfo deserves some attention, that's sure. However, from my view he couldn't play too much the "cultural dictator" cause Sforza seems to have been a man with own opinions.
If I assume, that the Cary-Yale hadn't Fool and Magician (I assume that actually), I couldn't well imagine (at least for the moment) that Filelfo invented it. I could imagine, that the ""Shrewd scholars of the gaming table" of Cremona made it or simply followed an already given player tradition.
I can imagine, however, that Filelfo desired to create an educative noble Trionfi deck version, and perhaps he influenced one. If this would have been a successful deck we would know about it, likely by Filelfo himself. But we don't know about it.

When Filelfo arrived in Milan, there were also others. Shouldn't one ... with Filippo Maria, who is said to have played himself ... expect, that Filippo searched ideas from a person, that also played something ? I personally think, that the Cary-Yale was composed out of chess and Trionfi poem ideas. Filelfo got the job to write about Petrarca works, but in 1444 (Canzonieri). Before him Lapini, an earlier astrologer, had a Petrarca commission ... as far I got this. I hope, that it is right. I don't remember the references in the moment. Lapini's son later became Trionfi poem specialist, likely based on the earlier work of his father. His commentary was combined with Filelfo's Canzonieri commentary.

Should we expect (if my memory and earlier research should be right), that Filelfo stood in first row in c. 1441, when (possibly) the Cary-Yale was done? Was Filelfo a chess player? Or a card player?
Much more to my theory, but that is the broad outline; but to address one specific issue you broached:
Huck wrote
The invective against Cremona in the Odes is rather angry, after Filelfo had been quite different in the other Ode, when he was very happy to approach Cremona..
Filelfo played a significant literary role in the welcoming terms with which Milan received Sforza(see Gary Ianziti. Humanistic Historiography under the Sforzas: Politics and Propaganda in Fifteenth-Century Milan. Oxford: I988), but then was stuck in the city after Sfora took it. In the Odes Fielflo petitions Bianca to provide him with permission to leave plague-stricken Milan which apparently she obtained from her husband, as Filelfo was headed down the Po to Cremona (via Pavia) in 1451.
I was puzzled by the plague in 1451. I understood, that the Milanese plague had been in 1450, but you're right, as I see from storiadimilano.it
http://www.storiadimilano.it/cron/dal1451al1475.htm

Which would make the 14 Bembo cards a post-plague deck. The death card has a bow, and it rides not on a horse, likely indicating death by plague and not death by war.
Cremona was “her city” so perhaps one could simply accept that as a reasonable destination provided to Filelfo. However, in the same ode, Fielfo points to services previously provided to Bianca (inclusive of the CY?) and asked if there isn’t anything else he could do right now as he was desperate for cash as well. Apparently inspired by the discovery of the Marziano deck, we know Sforza was obtaining tarot decks right before he took Milan and it is thus a reasonable hypothesis that he wanted one made especially for himself after the city fell.
Sforza had difficulties to get a Trionfi deck in December 1450, likely for the Christmas time, when gambling was common. He didn't get one. This doesn't seem to say, that he had already arranged a local production then.

We have, that Giovanni di Domenico in Florence and Sagramoro in Ferrara had in 1450 to do with Trionfi cards, no other name is known. I don't think, that there was already rather much with Trionfi decks in 1450. The big wave starts likely with the emperor visit in winter 1451/1452, perhaps earlier in Florence and Siena (which are known for public allowances).
Sure, there was another, likely much smaller wave 1440-1442 ... but it's followed by a big pause with one exception till 1449. As far we know it for the moment.
It is easy to draw conclusions from there, like Marziano for Filippo, Filelfo wrote up the program for a trionfi deck for Sforza and might have been asked to view the painter’s works who carried this out: thus one can posit the trip to Cremona was to view/approve Bembo’s painted cards. The fact that one of Filelfo’s servant girls came down with the plague and he was detained at the Po when trying to enter Cremona put a bad taste in his mouth in regard to the Cremonese, has nothing to do with his putative designing of the expanded tarot deck nor with the attribution of the PMB to Bembo (how Filelfo’s bile vented on Cremona went over with Bianca is another matter, but the Odes weren’t published – after being edited – until well after the facts they describe) .

Finally, Rudolf George Adam’s unpublished 1974 dissertation on Filelfo (still the primary reference source on Filelfo, but also see Robin’s Filelfo in Milan, 1991, where she discusses the “Cremona Ode” at length), mentions payments made to Filelfo in 1451 not associated with his normal duties; one could relate these to payment for his program for the tarot. Luckily someone has provided an online scan of Adam’s dissertation, with the second part being the footnotes, here: http://www.medievalists.net/2013/04/08/ ... 1439-1481/
[otherwise this dissertation is unavailable unless you are in Oxford or willing to pay their press a small fortune for a facsimile]

All of this is circumstantial, but it does tie Filelfo closely to Bianca and Sforza precisely when the PMB was likely made. At the end of the day I return to this question: In light of the Marziano/Filippo deck that was discovered by then allied Sforza/Marcello, how likely was it that the particulars of the PMB weren’t at least vetted by a humanist? If yes, how was this humanist not Filelfo?
Rudolf George Adam at the given place noted ...
Francesco Sforza was rather indifferent to the court poet. For reasons of prestige he renewed Filelfo’s contract as court poet, but he never took any serious interest in what Filelfo was doing. Worse still were the irregularities in the payment of Filelfo»s stipend.
This leaves a lot of questions.
Nonetheless Filelfo is interesting.
Last edited by Huck on 18 Oct 2013, 21:07, edited 1 time in total.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Francesco Filelfo: the "Odes" (early 1450s)

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Huck wrote: Rudolf George Adam at the given place noted ...
Francesco Sforza was rather indifferent to the court poet. For reasons of prestige he renewed Filelfo’s contract as court poet, but he never took any serious interest in what Filelfo was doing. Worse still were the irregularities in the payment of Filelfo»s stipend.
Short answer: despite the broke Duchy, Filelfo was paid for something in 1451 and just so happened to travel to Cremona in that same year with a letter of passage from Bianca.

Ultimately timing is everything . That Adam comment (or similar), is usually given out in the context of Filelfo's later work, especially the Sforziad, which Sforza had no need of because it was primarily written after the wars were over. But during the wars to keep his Duchy, 1452-1454, Sforza's chancellery’s efforts were heavily supplemented by Filelfo, acting as a virtual cultural diplomat (and this after having played a major role in Sforza's official ingresso into Milan in 1450). His value was that he personally knew every powerful ruler at the time. He of course knew the Venetians well frrom his earliest career there (especially the powerful Guistiniani patricians) but as that was Sforza’s committed foe he could do little there except spit rather ludicrous bile at the Venetians (that city is a recurrent subject of derision in the Odes). The Holy Roman Emperor was pissed off that Sforza assumed the duchy without the imperial blessing, but that was a legal matter handled directly by Sforza’s official diplomats and the Simonetta-directed chancellery (see Ianziti). That still left two major powers Sforza would need to come to peace with: Naples and the Papacy.

The previous Pope Eugenius had sent army after army into the Marche against Sforza, with the latter eventually selling out his remaining possessions to that pope. In 1447 Sfroza was off to pursue Milan and ironically Eugenius died the same year. But Filelfo was on intimate terms with Tommaso Parentucelli (from their days at the University of Bologna) who became the succeeding Pope Nicholas V; Sforza could ill-afford another rocky relationship with the new pope and Filelfo not only guaranteed that friendship but got Nicholas V to help broker the Peace of Lodi in 1454. In fact Filelfo traveled to Rome in the early summer of 1453 at the height of the wars and was lavishly entertained by Pope Nicholas V and was awarded a stipend as an honorary papal secretary on his return visit. Filelfo continued on to Naples on that same trip to see a rival claimant to the Duchy of Milan, King Alphonso of Aragon. Filelfo knew Alphonso and his principal advisor, Inigo d’Avalos (individual odes are dedicated to both men), from when they were captured by a Genoese fleet and held in Milan by the former Duke Filippo (Alphonse famously charmed Filippo into letting him go and subsequently took Naples from King Rene in 1442). Filelfo brought his Satires as a gift and was so favorably received he was made a knight of the Order of the Stola d’Oro and crowned Poet Laureate. “While he was in Naples Filelfo attempted to effect a reconciliation between Sforza and Alfonso” (Robin, 2009: 406).

Sforza was more than interested in Filelfo’s “works” in 1453. Constantinople fell that year and after the news hit Europe, peace was found the following year.

The only difficult thing to reconcile between Filelfo and Sforza is that the former hated the latter’s banker with a mortal vengeance; naturally Filelfo’s invectives against Cosimo de’Medici cease when he took up work with Sforza.

You won’t find another humanist of that stature in Milan (perhaps not anywhere else at that time).

Phaeded

Re: Francesco Filelfo: the "Odes" (early 1450s)

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Reading the invective against Cremona after his third visit it's hardly imaginable, that Filelfo influenced in strong manner a successful Trionfi deck production produced just in this time, when the invective was written, in just this city of Cremona.

Nonetheless ... Filelfo at least has been c. 1452 at the "right place" (Cremona). And at least once he commented on something with playing cards with ""Shrewd scholars of the gaming table"" ... at least once. I don't know another game-related passage from Filelfo, but I don't know much about Filelfo. Maybe something like this appears more often, and it would show up in the search engines, if one had the right word combination "Filelfo" and "??????".

What about Filelfo and "gioco"? A "gioco di parole" appears more than once, but I don't understand, what it is.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Francesco Filelfo: the "Odes" (early 1450s)

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Here's the Latin text of the critical passage, including the translated "shrewd scholars of the gaming table" ...

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... and here's the English version.

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My Latin is something between bad and not existent. Is the translation "gaming table" clear and really necessary?

venefica ... sorceress, witch ... poisoner (?)
gula ... gullet, throat, palate ... gluttony, greediness
publicanus ... tax collector, publican
ingens honos ... great honors
scortum ... skin, hide, prostitute
leno ... pimp, seducer

... so the riddle seems to be in "aleae vafris doctoribus statutis", from which I identify ...

vafer ... sly, cunning, crafty, artful
... and I think, that this must have caused the "shrewd" in the translation.

"aleae" is often a translation problem. It could refer to dice, but also to other games, mostly gambling games.

... coming so far with this sentence, I realize or at least suspect, that there are no "gambling tables" in the sentence of Filelfo, but those gambling statutes ("statutus" in the text), which so often play an important role in our Trionfi documents as witness of the existence of prohibited games during 15th century.
Naturally a translator, who didn't often meet the relevant "statutes" in their specific juristic function in his usual literature, had difficulties to identify these statutes as a very relevant factor of the sentence.

So I identify for the given situation, that Filelfo with his humanistic playing card project (with Muses) stranded in the Cremona bureaucracy, made by "shrewd doctors" with their statutes, and Filelfo found himself in one category
with pimps, prostitutes etc. (the common prohibitions in the statutes) and also as an object for the tax collectors, cause playing card production without special taxes was not in the interest of the city of Cremona.

So my speculation. But, as I said, I have only a bad Latin understanding, and I'm pleased, if somebody corrects it, if necessary.

We naturally don't know, if the "invective against Cremona" had been really the last word in the matter ... Filelfo presented it 3 years later in his Odes in the rubric of Thalia (comedy), perhaps as a sign of his final personal victory against the city administration in Cremona.
Huck
http://trionfi.com