Tarot History Forum

Ciriaco de' Pizzicolli or Cyriacus of Ancona (31 July 1391 — 1453/55) ....

... "He retired to Cremona, where he lived so quietly that the year of his death is not certain."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciriaco_de%27_Pizzicolli

Cyriaco commented the Muses productions in Ferrara, and mentioned ...

Angelo (di Pietro) del Macagnino (da Siena), also called Angelo Parrasio

Active in Ferrara, 1447, died 1456, Italian painter. He was court painter to Borso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, and, with Cosimo Tura, decorated the Duke's studiolo at the Villa Belfiore (destroyed) from 1447 (start under Lionello). It is said, that the iconographic programme was provided by Guarino da Verona. Cyriac of Ancona, a Renaissance merchant who loved to travel and left us many notes from his journeys throughout the Mediterranean area, saw in 1449 two finished paintings of Clio and Melpomene (both untraced) in Angelo's workshop, probably destined for the studiolo. No work by Angelo has been identified.

http://trionfi.com/0/d/56/

Murray Menzies, a researcher active with us around 2004/2005, had a favor for the idea, that Parrasio had been the author of the Mantegna Tarocchi.

A part of Ciriaco's collections and writings seems to have been lost in Alessandro Sforza's library ...

"... the Commentarii were lost in the 1514 fire of the library of Alessandro and Costanza Sforza in Pesaro".
(Italian wikipedia to Ciriaco: "Il manoscritto dei Commentaria di Ciriaco non è perduto")

Another part was lost in Ancona.
"A series of Pizzicolli's manuscripts about Ancona was destroyed during a fire of the city's archives in 1532"

As Ancona is close to Pesaro, and Cyriaco came from there, one likely has to assume, that the Commentarii in the possession of Alessandro Sforza likely has nothing to do with his stay in Cremona (?).

Italian Wikipedia to the death: "Incerta è la data di morte. Una volta si pensava al 1452 ma la sua presenza nella capitale bizantina appena conquistata da Maometto II, attestata da Jacopo de' Languschi, fa pensare a una data più tarda, probabilmente il 1455"

Another man from Cremona (around the interesting time of c. 1452)) is the miniaturist Girolamo da Cremona, suspected to be one of the Petrarca Trionfi artists ...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... roject.jpg
... given as "active" between 1451-1483 (so then close at his begin as an artist just in the critical time). The object of the most interest to us is his work (possibly in cooperation with Mantegna) for the already mentioned Giacomo Antonio Marcello is a book to the soldier saint Mauritius, which went as a present to Renee d'Anjou and played a role in the knight order of the crescent (founded by Renee), in which also Marcello and Francesco Sforza had been members.
The date (and confirmation for the painters) is a little bit unclear and usually given with insecurities.


and
http://mini-site.louvre.fr/mantegna/ima ... /02_07.jpg
are from this book.

We often discussed this book and its role, though not with much attention to Girolamo and the condition, that he was "from Cremona".
In the given context (Filelfo in Cremona) now this might mean something.
As far I remember, Marcello had been often at the Western border of the Venetian territory, close to Milan, in Crema ...

http://www.academia.edu/1116660/An_Inco ... of_Letters
You can download the article, if you sign in. It's free ... but it takes some time to fill some data.
The article is from 1987, so not the last stand in the work of the author Margaret L. King. Girolamo da Cremona isn't mentioned in the article, but Mantegna.
( It seems, that Girolamo da Cremona isn't noted also in the book version of 2009.
http://books.google.de/books?id=RdWeII7 ... navlinks_s
.... but elsewhere it's noted, generally with the assumption, that Girolamo and Mantegna cooperated)

I focus with this excerpt on the row of Marcello's gifts to Renee:













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

The list is for some items longer as we had it earlier here ...
http://trionfi.com/0/l/14/

Back to Girolamo. His "life" reads like this ...

Girolamo da Cremona

active:1450 - 1485 Northern Italy
illuminator
Italian

Girolamo da Cremona was a manuscript illuminator who worked first in the North Italian courts of Ferrara and Mantua, then in Siena and Florence, and finally in Venice. A dynamic and chameleonlike artist, Girolamo worked on a number of projects with different artists and adapted his style to the different conditions of his commissions.

Girolamo first appears working alongside Taddeo Crivelli and other artists in Ferrara on the magnificent Bible of Borso d'Este, which was executed between 1455 and 1461. His art is most closely related to the Mantuan court painter Andrea Mantegna, who in 1461 seems to have recommended him to complete a missal for Barbara of Brandenburg, the wife of one of Mantegna's patrons, Ludovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua.

Around 1468, Girolamo began illuminating choir books in Siena, a project on which he collaborated with Liberale da Verona. He also worked in Florence for a time before ending his career in Venice. By the 1470s, Venice had become a major center of the new technology of printing, and Girolamo worked there, primarily illuminating frontispieces for deluxe versions of early printed books, called incunabules. These miniatures are known for their playful and extravagant trompe-l'oeil conceits.

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/art ... 359&page=1

I don't know, who brought it up, that Girolamo was responsible for the St. Maurice manuscript, but somehow it fits with the situation of Cremona/Crema 1452, two cities, which are not far from each other (the map says, 36 km) with ironically Crema under Venetian control closer to Milan than Cremona under Milanese control.

Crema is later in a dark manner noted for the first Trionfi game allowance at Venetian territory in a situation of a Milan/Venice war (Ferrarese war) in 1483.

Perhaps Marcello played a role, that Girolamo (just for the case, that he was really involved in the St. Maurice production 1452/53) found a place in the development of Borso's bible in Ferrara. Marcello had been long in the region, it seems to be plausible, that he got some relationship to local artists.

Huck wrote: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. … And at least once he commented on something with playing cards with ""Shrewd scholars of the gaming table""

Exactly - why attack Bianca's own dowry city of Cremona with such vehemence?

Instead of something remaining incapable of being of interest to Fielfo (garnering dismissiveness at best) he has to implicitly contrast his own standing as a dottore at Pavia with the “shrewd scholars (doctoribus)” involved with table gaming in Cremona. Why, unless the game in question impudently touched on something Fielfo found himself involved in? More on that after describing the context again.

Filelfo hardly thought of himself as an artistic program director but rather as the leading rhetor/orator of his age (mainly due to his advantage in Greek). Flawlessly aping the ancients was the name of the game, not associating one’s name with a new leisure that had no pedigree in the classical world of antiquity. We’re not even talking about a cycle of frescos for a church or palazzo after all…just paper cards! The humanists' world had gotten even more classically correct (Ciceronian, etc.) after Marziano had invented his game for Filippo and passed on.

In my scenario the PMB program was a commission - not an ode, idyll or satire that Filelfo produced with the initiative of his own genius. He asks Bianca (Ode 5.1) what he can do for her for money and she (theoretically) assigns him what would become the PMB; not unlike the Muses program commissioned by Leonello from Guarino (who still preferred medals when it came to art).

Filelfo would have thought nothing about stooping to such a chore (but would have hardly mentioned it to his humanist friends – again, it was well beneath their primary objective of improving upon classical models) due to what his esteemed university mate at Padua and lifelong friend had already written on this very subject in 1436:

"For their own enjoyment artists should associate with poets and orators who have many embellishments in common with painters and who have a broad knowledge of many things whose greatest praise consists in the invention." Alberti, On Painting, Book 3

Thus Alberti provided the ‘license’ for Filelfo to accept for such an undertaking…as a favor for artists, the Duchess Bianca’s artist in Cremona Moreover Alberti was fresh in Filelfo’s mind in 1451 as he dedicated an ode to Alberti in the same book of odes which opens with the one to Bianca (Thalia, IV.6) ; here he famously wonders at whom Alberti’s Momus, written in 1450, was directed (the presumption is Filelfo feared that it was himself and several scholars have thought that as well although the recent translator of this works tends to think Momus was a figure aggregating the worst humanist personality traits of the time).

Perhaps after the bad quarantine experience in Cremona he did resent the assignment, but again it was quite odd of him to include in the city’s supposed vices the “gaming table” unless he knew the studios there were turning out trionfi. And where after all did Sforza get his decks when in Lodi in December 1450 (a month when travel would be difficult) and yet expected to send out a rider on the 11th and receive the decks back on the 13th unless it was from somewhere nearby (75 km. by car from Lodi to Cremona)? Less than a year later, in November 1452, Malatesta is also asking for a “pack of the famous hand-painted trump cards from the highly praised artisans of Cremona” (Ross’s translation of Pizzagalli). Filelfo was in Cremona precisely in this time period – September 1451 (Robin, 415). What would have vexed him the most is not the bureaucratic treatment by customs officials but someone with the airs to disagree with him about something of which he would be an expert at – something scholarly, or at least with pretensions to being scholarly (a category to which the allegorical trumps can be said to loosely fall). But why in the hell would Filelfo have had even been in the position to have a “scholarly” argument with those of the gaming table…unless he had been asked to do something in regard to the game Cremona had become famous for: trionfi? If trionfi decks had been around since 1440 with the 14 trumps/suits structure, and the Duchess suddenly requests a new version of 21 trumps + Fool for them to execute there would naturally be resistance; but its her city and her commission so of course they accede. But then a pretentious windbag, throwing Latin/Greek phrases around, shows up to inspect your work – the very person responsible for this deviation in the number of cards which affects the very way it must be played. Well, from there its not very hard to imagine Fielfo, who rubbed plenty of people wrong within his own station in life, getting an earful from the “shrewd scholars of the gaming table” who knew better to not ‘fix what isn’t broken.’ Does Filelfo even care how the game must be played now? He was told to add and describe a certain set of subjects to the trumps and he did that. Again, the fundamental question here is: Why the animosity and need to derisively and mockingly call card-makers ‘scholars’ without a personal reason and/or incident being involved?

Phaeded

In matters of the whole problem with the Trionfi production in Cremona it would be of interest to know the motion-profile of Bianca Maria Visconti. Where she had been when in 1452?

Actually one should know this, if one had an overview about her letters. We surely are not the first with the question.

Fantoni, G. L. "Un carteggoi femminile del sec. XV: Bianca Maria Visconti e Barbara di Hohenzollern-Brandeburgo Gonzaga (1450-68)," Libri e documenti, 72 (1981):6-29.
I remember, that a German dictionary praised this letter exchange between Bianca Maria and Barbara, who married the Gonzaga heir, as a very interesting source. I wondered then, if somebody had checked it for Trionfi card notes.

The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan
By Monica Azzolini
http://books.google.de/books?id=U2CqtG4 ... ra&f=false
... uses these letters in an interesting topic.


For 1452 I find only this scene of interest in a reference, which leads to this book ...
The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order
By Robert S. Westman
http://books.google.de/books?id=iEueQqL ... ae&f=false
.... and this picture (page 72) ...



it was even taken as the title graphic:



... well, it reminds, that for the year 1452 one shouldn't overlook the emperor visit, and the fact, that Borso made a big deal then, getting two Duke titles in this year with lots of festivities.
The emperor loved astronomy/astrology, and when we find Peurbach and Regiomontanus teaching and studying in Vienna, then this is an expression of this favor of the emperor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Bianchini

Giovanni Bianchini (in Latin, Johannes Blanchinus) (1410 – c. 1469) was a professor of mathematics and astronomy at the University of Ferrara and court astrologer of Leonello d'Este. He was an associate of Georg Peurbach and Regiomontanus. In the letters exchanged with Regiomontanus 1463/4 are mentioned works of Bianchini: Primum mobile including astronomical tables, Flores almagesti, Compositio instrumenti.

Bianchini was the first mathematician in Europe to use decimal positional fractions for his trigonometric tables, at the same time as Al-Kashi in Samarkand. In De arithmetica, part of the Flores almagesti, he uses operations with negative numbers and expresses the Law of Signs.

He was probably the father of the instrument maker Antonio Bianchino.

.... well, these are rather interesting books. Not for 1452, but generally.

Huck,
Not 1452, but more germane would be Raffaele Vimercati's presentation copy of his Liber iudiciorum (Biblioteca Trivulziana Ms.1329): "This manuscript contains the horoscope that the author, Raffaele Vimercati, made for Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the future Duke of Milan. There is only one miniature in the manuscript, on folio 1 which precedes the work. In the miniature, the kneeling author is offering the text to a figure who is thought to represent Francesco Sforza, the father of Galeazzo Maria who was only sixteen years old in 1461 when the manuscript was completed. The illumination was executed in the workshop of the so-called Ippolita Master."

Note the pieces of coral hanging around the necks of both Putti (relevant to another thread discussion that touched on the coral necklass about the PMB Sun putto) - but I'm confused as to why imperial eagles are shown on the coat of arms unless the astrological forecast is calling for a future imperial investiture. This is the only copy, I bleieve, so perhaps the regime felt less risky about showing the imperial eagle here:



For an illuminated manuscript showing Filelfo teaching G.M. Sforza (with both person's coats of arms), see Firpo Luigi's Francesco Filelfo educatore e il "Codice Sforza" della Biblioteca Reale di Torino [this work - fairly late in Filelfo's career - has many illustrations I've not seen scanned and available on the web].

Phaeded

Well,
I'm still puzzled, if there are "gaming tables" OR "game statutes" in the poem.

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

There's an old post of mine (November 27 in 2012), which might be of interest here (about contradictions between the Pizzagalli notes and the letter found by Ross, both related to the Cremona Trionfi production in 1452)

Quoted from ...
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=858&p=13146&hilit= ... 452#p13146

It's already some time ago ...

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:While we're at it, here is the letter from Francesco Sforza to Antonio Trecco asking for "uno paro de carte da triumpho" for Sigismondo Malatesta in October 1452.

Emilio Motta, "Altri documenti per la libreria sforzesca", Il Bibliofilo, X (1889), pp. 107-111.


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/book ... letter.jpg

"Antonio Trecco.
Perchè el Mag[nifi]co Sig[no]re Sigismondo ha rechesto ad la Ill[ustrissi]ma Madonna Bianca nostra consorte uno paro de carte da triumpho per zugare, ti commettimo et volemo che subito ne debij fare fare uno paro de belle quanto più sarà possibile pincte et ornate con le arme ducali et al insigne nostre et mandaraile subito como serano facte. Apud Calvisanum XXVIIJ octobris 1452.
Non obstante quello dicemo de sopra de mandarne qui le dicte carte volemo le retegne lì et ne avisi como serano facte et similmente retegni tre berrette quale te mandarà Mattheo da Pesaro. Dat[a] utsupra."

... it seems to me, that Pizzagalli had one or more other letters:

1452 [November – Sigismondo Malatesta requests cards of Bianca Maria Visconti Sforza, recounted by Daniela Pizzagalli]:
"Gran parte del suo [Bianca Maria's] tempo era anche occupato dalla corrispondenza, perché aveva contatti personali con tutte le corti. Intratteneva carteggi paralleli spesso ricchi di argomenti che esulavano dalla politica: significativa, ad esempio, la richiesta che ricevette da Sigismondo Malatesta, nel novembre 1452, di un mazzo dale famose carte da trionfi miniate, vanto dell'artigianato cremonese…. Di far realizzare un mazzo di carte per il Malatesta, Bianca Maria non aveva affatto voglia, anzi temeva di non saper mascherare abbastanza la sua invincibile ostilità contro di lui, tanto che, quando Francesco ordino personalmente i tarocchi a Cremona, lei, ringraziando per averle `levato questa fatica dalla mano' gli sottopose il testo della risposta a Sigismondo autorizzando il marito ad apportarvi modifiche."

Ross translated:

Preliminary translation
(by Ross Gregory Caldwell)
A large part of her time was also occupied in written correspondence, she having personal contact with the whole court. At the same time she maintained correspondence rich in subjects outside of politics: shown, for example, in the request which she received from Sigismondo Malatesta, in November 1452, for a pack of the famous hand-painted trump cards from the highly praised artisans of Cremona … Bianca Maria did not have the slightest desire to have a deck of cards made for Malatesta, on the contrary she feared of not knowing how to disguise enough her undying hostility for him, so much that when Francesco personally ordered the tarocchi at Cremona, she thanked him for “lifting this burden off my hands”, in the text of her response to Sigismondo, authorizing her husband to make modifications.

... as given at http://trionfi.com/0/e/08/

Pizzagalli writes from "November 1452", but Cichus has late October 1452.

Pizzagalli uses the term "carte da trionfi miniate", which doesn't appear in the given letter.

The meaning of "Miniate" is given here:

Min´i`ate
v. t. 1. To paint or tinge with red lead or vermilion; also, to decorate with letters, or the like, painted red, as the page of a manuscript.
[imp. & p. p. Miniated ; p. pr. & vb. n. Miniating .]
a. 1. Of or pertaining to the color of red lead or vermilion; painted with vermilion.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Miniate

Well, "Miniate" sounds very similar to "Minchiate", this might be accident, but one doesn't know. And we don't know, where Pizzagalli got his information from.

In Minchiate we have the term "Rossi", which is explained by ...
http://www.tarocchino.com/page50.html
with

Rossi: XXXIII-XXXX (all of these cards have a red background)

... and controlling it,

XXXII ... background is not red

XXXIII ... background is red

... indeed, the highest 8 cards have this red background, at least in this version.
http://a.trionfi.eu/WWPCM/decks07/d05114/d05114.htm

It isn't true for this version:

http://a.trionfi.eu/WWPCM/decks07/d05115/d05115.htm

When we compare the idea, that some cards have much "red" to the Visconti Sforza cards (PMB), we have a very red-background card Love, but at all the others it isn't so dominating .

Generally it's assumed, that the 1452 documents address the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo Tarocchi, but would we say, that they are "miniate"?

That's strange, but as long one doesn't know, why Pizzagalli wrote "Miniate", it's likely not worth, to get too excited about it.

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

A further note to Calvisano (the location, where Francesco Sforza was in October 1452)

Francesco Sforza was in this time at a fortress in Calvisano (about 30 km in Southern direction from Brescia) and rather objectively he was just engaged in the war against Venice, which broke out in the mid of the year 1452. For the following November 1452 three battles are recorded in Manerbio, Asola and Gottolengo, all in the range of 12-20 km from Calvisano. Calvisano belonged to Sforza and Milan since 1451, but it was given back to the control of Venice after the peace of Lodi 1454. Sforza's many letters from Calvisano between October 22 and November 14 make assume, that Sforza used the small town as his provisional war capital for 3 weeks.

...

One day after the letter, which relates to the Trionfi cards, at October 29, Sforza wrote indeed to Sigismondo Malatesta, but this letter didn't note the Trionfi deck. But it might be speculated, that this message was transported together with a small parcel, which contained the Trionfi cards, especially as Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta was addressed rather seldom in the given letter collection.

Just to clarify something I wrote above -

Filelfo hardly thought of himself as an artistic program director but rather as the leading rhetor/orator of his age (mainly due to his advantage in Greek). Flawlessly aping the ancients was the name of the game, not associating one’s name with a new leisure that had no pedigree in the classical world of antiquity. We’re not even talking about a cycle of frescos for a church or palazzo after all…just paper cards!

Filelfo did write the epigrams for a fresco cycle of great men and women painted by Bembo (a repeat performance of a prior collaboration on the PMB?) in the ducal palace behind the duomo, when rebuilt after the Ambrosian Republic by Sforza; see:
"Francesco Sforza e il Filelfo, Bonifacio Bembo e 'compagni': Nove prosopopee inedite per il ciclo di antichi eroi ed eroine nella Corte Ducale dell'Arengo a Milano (1456-61 circa)", Francesco Caglioti, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 38. Bd., H. 2/3 (1994), pp. 183-217 [available via JSTOR]

Phaeded

Phaeded wrote:Just to clarify something I wrote above -

Filelfo hardly thought of himself as an artistic program director but rather as the leading rhetor/orator of his age (mainly due to his advantage in Greek). Flawlessly aping the ancients was the name of the game, not associating one’s name with a new leisure that had no pedigree in the classical world of antiquity. We’re not even talking about a cycle of frescos for a church or palazzo after all…just paper cards!

Filelfo did write the epigrams for a fresco cycle of great men and women painted by Bembo (a repeat performance of a prior collaboration on the PMB?) in the ducal palace behind the duomo, when rebuilt after the Ambrosian Republic by Sforza; see:
"Francesco Sforza e il Filelfo, Bonifacio Bembo e 'compagni': Nove prosopopee inedite per il ciclo di antichi eroi ed eroine nella Corte Ducale dell'Arengo a Milano (1456-61 circa)", Francesco Caglioti, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 38. Bd., H. 2/3 (1994), pp. 183-217 [available via JSTOR]

Phaeded

Sounds interesting. I took a short view, but jstor had technical problems after the 6th page.

My impression (correct me, if I'm wrong): The Corte Ducale dell'Arengo is lost ... ???? ... or partly changed (now Palazzo Reale) ???? :


http://www.lombardiabeniculturali.it/ar ... D80-00075/

Azzone Visconti, nominato vicario imperiale, all'inizio del XIV sec., ordina sostanziali modifiche e fa costruire un nuovo palazzo: chiama Giotto a decorarlo.
Fu abbandonato nel 1412, perché ritenuto poco sicuro, tanto che nel 1443, crolla il grande salone della Corte Ducale che si trovava a destra di chi entrava nel primo cortile.
Nel 1447, con la promulgazione della Repubblica Ambrosiana, qui si insedia il governo dei 24 Capitani e Difensori della libertà, divenendo palazzo dell'Arengo. Ma proprio come sede del nuovo governo viene assaltato 2 volte: la seconda sarà fatale per tutta la città, perché aprirà la strada alla presa di potere di Francesco Sforza, nel 1450, che qui si stabilisce.
Nel 1452, viene demolita la parte del palazzo più esterna per procedere con i lavori del Duomo.

The cycle included:

Ninus
Semiramis
Tamiris
Cyrus
Alexander
Mirina (??????)
Giulio Cesare
Pentisilea
Pantea (????)

9 figures, mixed gender, 5 women

It seems, that one has to think in this context on the problem with Constantinople in 1453 and the hopes on Uzun Hassan and Persian diplomats in Italy with the hope to organize resistance against the Ottomans, as Ninus and Cyrus present Persia and revive "Persia".
And one shouldn't forget "Chess", cause Persia was associated as motherland of Chess.

And, so says my memory, Filippo Maria had founded a chess club in Palazzo Arengo in 1427.
My own report to it ...
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=460&hilit=arengo&start=30
... got meanwhile a web child at http://vitaescacchi.blogspot.de/

Naturally it also presents "9 worthies".

And there were Trionfi and Tarocchi cards with Ninus, the Leber Tarocchi.
And in this deck we know also Thamiris and Alexander the Great

??? "Pantea Arteshbod - Commander of the Persian “Immortal” Army. " .... = Pantea
More at http://www.persepolis.nu/

??? "Mirina .... old French romance writers from Mirina,
an Amazon, mentioned by Strabo (l)ook xii) and Diodorus
Siculus (book iii), and included in Zedler's list of forty-
eight of these striking beauties" = Mirina
http://www.archive.org/stream/journalof ... t_djvu.txt

Ha, you've made a nice finding, Phaeded .... :-)

Huck wrote:
My impression (correct me, if I'm wrong): The Corte Ducale dell'Arengo is lost ... ???? ... or partly changed (now Palazzo Reale) ????

The same, but perhaps the correct word is "modified" rather than lost, although I'm not sure what might be original behind the 18th century facade. It is an exhibition space today - when I was there in 2011 I caught an excellent exhibit on Arcimboldo (http://www.tickitaly.com/blog/2011/02/m ... xhibition/) but saw nothing inside the building that looked remotely medieval.

Per Storia di Milano it was the scene of the proclamation of the Ambrosian Republic in which they decide to destroy Visconti's castle and move the seat of government back to the Broletto; it also touches on the Filelfo epigrams
(http://www.storiadimilano.it/citta/Piaz ... _reale.htm )

The records about the renovation of the building conducted in the second half of the fifteenth century are rather scarce and fragmented. Filarete in his Treatise (Book I, 29, f. 5v) quotes the court as an example of building "sick" and "half dead" that Francesco Sforza would be healed. We know that the Filelfo had composed in 1455-56 eight epigrams to be painted as figures provided below in the courtyard-Nino, Semiramis, Cyrus, Tamiri, Alexander the Great, Myrina, Julius Caesar, Penthesilea - perhaps an echo of vainglory has now disappeared. The same idea and almost the same characters also appear in the palaces of the Lord Filarete to Sforzinda and Plusiapolis. The number eight suggests that these figures were painted between the windows of the main floor on the body towards the garden where there are just eight regular spaces between the southern corner and the ancient tower. In the same years Bartolomeo Gadio relates the Duchess Bianca Maria on reconstructions of rooms. These works, including numerous frescoes in the rooms and the porch will be charged in 1460 in part to the Fabbrica del Duomo in exchange for the portion of the building was sold and demolished. Of all this there is very little: the photo of some frescoes found in long sleeve during its demolition in 1936.

What is most intriguing to me is the earlier fresco cycle created by Giotto for Azzone featuring 'vainglory' and its relationship to the later Filelfo/Bembo work of 1456. Alas, all lost except for that reference to photos. And too bad for you that the article in that German periodical is in Italian instead of German. ;-)

Phaeded

hm ... the jstor article speaks of 9 figures, Pantea is missing in this list.

Azzone seems to have had 6 male figures beside vanaglory:

Di rimpetto alla casa degli uccelli poc’anzi additata vi era un magnifico salone, contradistinto col nome della Vanagloria, che ivi si vedeva dipinta, ed all’intorno vi furono dipinti ad oro, azzurro e smalto vari principi celebri nelle Storie, come Enea, Ettore, Ercole, Attila, Carlo Magno, ed Azzone.