This happened from post 61 on ...
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&start=61
at least till post ...
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&start=79
... somehow already prepared a few posts before with ...
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&start=57
... the appearance of this picture in the discussion, which is the backside of this picture ...All of the theological virtues were associated with the popes – John XXII famously buried with statues of these virtues on his tomb in the Florentine baptistery, but Lorenzo’s father Piero had also adapted those virtues as his own via an imprese that featured them as three ostrich feathers, each in the color of the virtues. These were in fact painted on the reverse of Lorenzo’s birth tray which he displayed in his private chamber until the day he died:
... painted by "Lo Scheggio", who is "under suspicion" to have had some participation in the production of the Charles Vi deck.
In the center of this topic are also the Medici, who in the period 1459-64 paid Benito Gozzoli to decorate a chapel in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_Medici_Riccardi
... which itself was build in the years 1444-1460.
The decoration of the chapel showed a triumphal march of the "3 Magi" ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magi_Chapel
... and the show has some references to the year 1439, which saw 3 triumphal marches, when the delegations of the council in Ferrara/Florence (1438/39) entered the city Florence in January/February 1439.
This council is "under suspicion" to have triggered a follwing production of "Trionfi cards", which for the current state of research have their first documentary evidence in September 17 in 1440.
Other references of the "3 Magi" show in the chapel lead to the year 1459, when Pope Pius II crossed the city on his way to the congress of Mantova 1459, so to the year, when Benito Gozzoli started to paint the pictures.
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Research memories ....
The whole question goes back to the year 1989, when the 5x14-theory was established. Naturally a lot of details, known nowadays, were not present then.
2 artists had painted the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo Tarocchi with 20 trumps, which by this clearly were parted in two different groups, one with 14 trumps and the second with 6 trumps.
The 14 trumps were (hypothetically) recognized as the original structure of a 5x14 deck, the other 6 trumps were considered a later addition.
In this research situation it was natural to search for the time of the addition of the six trumps. In a book of James Cleugh: Die Medici, translated from an US publication, some (few) details were detected about the change of the Medici heraldic "from 7 palle to 6 palle" in the year 1465 with the indication, that "virtues" were involved.
The 6 trumps of the second artist of PMB clearly contained two virtues (Fortitudo and Temperantia) and otherwise Star-Moon-Sun-World. The hypothesis was then formed, that the six cards meant the 6 missing virtues (only Justice was present in the 5x14-scheme).
An involvement of the 3 Magi wasn't seen in this phase of the "detection of the 5x14-theory". The research about the year 1465 led to a journey of the young Lorenzo di Medici in May/June 1465, which was then suspected as the date, when the Tarot game got 22 trumps (which isn't so clear nowadays; today I would suspect, that there was also a phase with 20 Trionfi trumps).
Nonetheless the limited information allowed to suspect in this time (1989), that the card "World" meant the missing cardinal virtue "Prudentia", and Sun-Moon-Star meant the "3 theological virtues"
Much later (in Trionfi.com's time, maybe 2005 ?) it was confirmed by an information found by Alain Bougearel, that the change "from 7 palle to 6 palle" indeed happened parallel to Lorenzo's journey in May 1465.
Also much later was found the earlier already known observation, that the card "World" inside the Charles VI Tarot was designed with octagonal halo as the 3 other cardinal virtues (and so somehow was similar to Prudentia) and that the Charles VI Tarocchi more plausible belongs to a Florentine production than to a Ferrarese (this improvement happened winter 2007/2008 in discussions at the AT Forum, mainly caused by the initiative of Ross).
The involvement of the 3 Magi must have appeared in my mind before December 2007, cause then I wrote ...
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t= ... holy+kings"When Pulci started to write the Morgante 1460 in Florence, in the same time Benoto Gozzoli painted the frescoes of the Medici Chapel. As surely everybody knows, these paintings showed the triumphal march of the three holy kings. As it is not known, but likely, the three holy kings were associated to Star, Moon and Sun (one these kings was black and this was the moon)."
... actually I count this in the category "my own ideas", I think, that I didn't got it from somebody else (in more private archives I find notes of 2006, but actually it must have been earlier). As I see it now (after the recent, above addressed, discussion), I wasn't the only one who suspected or knew this.
Well, that's fine.
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I suggest to collect details, which belong to this theme (or themes), here at this place, maybe as links to earlier discussions" or copies, if the material isn't too complex.