Here is my go at Juno:

diviciis vel opibus ditata, viribus orbata, vestibus aurata, pavone curata, yride lustrata, capite velata, in sublimi sita, ungentis linita.

Rich with wealth or resources, deprived of strength, clothed in gold, looked after by the peacock, rainbow-illuminated, head veiled, placed in a high spot,anointed with oil.

For “deprived of strength” see Correggio.

Huck wrote: Ross combines his proposal with the idea, that the 22 special cards existed, not only in number, but also in content, if I understood this correctly.

Yes - there were 22 standard subjects from the beginning. I take the Bolognese order to be the original order. This differs from attested Florentine orders only in the placement of the Chariot, and the order of the Virtues.

The earliest surviving cards of a Southern type are now recognized as Florentine (Catania, Charles VI, Rothschild... perhaps Este), and these show some potentially significant iconographical differences from the earliest known Bolognese cards, the BAR sheets. Of particular importance for interpretation of the sequence, in my opinion, are the figure on the World card and the vignettes below the Sun and Star cards. Also, since Rosenwald's (Florence) "Vecchio" actually shows a vecchio, an "old man", and not clearly an allegory of Time, a question might be raised about the original nature of this card. Was it just an infirm old man at the beginning, who quickly got conflated with the newly invented allegory for illustrations of Petrarch's "Time"? This question is worth asking because such a figure long antedates Tarot as a symbol of the last stage of life, and also appears in an early Florentine engraving of the Triumph of Death, as one of two elderly figures asking Death to end their suffering.

Note that my position regarding the Bolognese order and iconography does not require that the game was invented in Bologna. I think it was invented in either Bologna or Florence, but that, if it were Florence, Bologna nevertheless preserves the original form. This is inferred from Bolognese conservatism in general, and from Florentine profligacy in making changes to the order and iconography. Bologna, morevover, has continued to play the game from the 15th century to the present, while Florence, Milan, Ferrara and every other early center of the game no longer does. This is why I think Bologna deserves the title "Alma Mater Tarochorum" (Nurturing Mother of Tarot - playing on the university's motto "Alma Mater Studiorum").

It kicks a lot of our long, detailed considerations about a rather different development from the board. His argumentation is based on the single document about a cross-eyed servant, who bought a relative cheap deck from a merchant of Bologna.

Single or multiple, they are facts, stubborn facts. It is no different than "70 cards" in 1457. They must be addressed and interpreted. They are facts that must be explained.

In this case, the most straightforward explanation of a relatively cheap deck in the hands of a Bolognese mercer points to the game already existing in "popular" form in Bologna. Any other explanation means inventing a convoluted scenario out of thin air, like you have done below.

In his argumentation and presentation he forgets to tell, that this merchant definitely had business relations with Sagramoro, who since 1422 produced at least occasionally playing cards in the same year 1442 before (and who possibly produced this not only for the court). He does not note the possibility, that the merchant simply might have bought his decks from Sagramoro; that Sagramoro might have been sold out, so that the Ferrarese court had to buy it from the merchant. That's a common, not totally unusual, situation between a publisher (in this case Sagramoro) and his distributors (in this case Burdochio).

I don't know what you're talking about here. All we know about Marchione comes from Franceschini's edition of the Este archives, edited for the express purpose of studying artists' relations with the Este court. It is not a complete edition of the whole archives for the 15th century. In this context, Marchione is mentioned for selling fabric, usually taffeta, to an artist employed by the Este, Sagramoro. Sagramoro paints on this fabric for various reasons - Nicolo's funeral, the feast of Assumption, etc. There is absolutely no indication that Marchione and Sagramoro had some kind of business relationship between themselves outside of the court. That is pure invention on your part.

The deck was made with 4 noble versions for Leonello (document February 1442) and then perhaps with a small other cheaper edition for guests, visitors etc.,

A scenario of pure imagination.

which were sold to others ... during the festivity, bound to a specific situation.

Another layer of the scenario - building a fiction on a fiction.

Then Sagramoro had a rest of the edition ...

A third layer of the fiction - this should be a novel, it isn't history.

this he sold to a merchant outside of the city,

A fourth level of pure speculation, dependent upon the previous series of speculations, all of which are completely unfounded.

the market in Ferrara being considered satisfied.

If there were a mid-level market for the new game in Ferrara, it was a foreigner like Marchione that was already supplying it.

But suddenly the court desired to have such a deck again.

Of course they did - and they knew where to go to get it - to the mercer from Bologna.

Sagramoro had to say, that Burdochio still had those decks.

Except Sagramoro is not involved in this transaction AT ALL. The personal servant of Sigismondo and Ercole bought the deck for them from Marchione. The logical explanation? Marchione had some on hand among his other goods. The whole scenario of Sagramoro's selling decks to Marchione which Marchione then ended up selling to the court is baseless and extremely convoluted.

Naturally this is as an explanation "fiction", but as an behavior typical for modern book trade for instance. You produce something, the market for it turns dead and you sell the rest of it to a distributor, who pays a much lower price.
The document isn't a 100% guarantee, that the Bolognese merchant sold Bolognese decks.

Assuming a Bolognese merzaro - whether you translate it "mercer", "haberdasher", or "peddler" - sold Bolognese goods is sound reasoning. Your fiction above is not. This is why this little, stubborn fact puts a hole in the Ferrara-invention theory.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:

Huck wrote: Ross combines his proposal with the idea, that the 22 special cards existed, not only in number, but also in content, if I understood this correctly.

Yes - there were 22 standard subjects from the beginning. I take the Bolognese order to be the original order. This differs from attested Florentine orders only in the placement of the Chariot, and the order of the Virtues.

The earliest Southern types are now recognized as Florentine (Catania, Charles VI, Rothschild... perhaps Este), and these show some potentially significant iconographical differences from the earliest known Bolognese cards, the BAR sheets. Of particular importance for interpretation of the sequence, in my opinion, are the figure on the World card and the vignettes below the Sun and Star cards. Also, since Rosenwald's (Florence) "Vecchio" actually shows a vecchio, an "old man", and not clearly an allegory of Time, a question might be raised about the original nature of this card. Was it just an infirm old man at the beginning, who quickly got conflated with the newly invented allegory for illustrations of Petrarch's "Time"? This question is worth asking because such a figure long antedates Tarot as a symbol of the last stage of life, and also appears in an early Florentine engraving of the Triumph of Death, as one of two elderly figures asking Death to end their suffering.

Note that my position regarding the Bolognese order and iconography does not require that the game was invented in Bologna. I think it was invented in either Bologna or Florence, but that, if it were Florence, Bologna nevertheless preserves the original form. This is inferred from Bolognese conservatism in general, and from Florentine profligacy in making changes to the order and iconography. Bologna, morevover, has continued to play the game from the 15th century to the present, while Florence, Milan, Ferrara and every other early center of the game no longer does. This is why I think Bologna deserves the title "Alma Mater Tarochorum" (Nurturing Mother of Tarot - playing on the university's motto "Alma Mater Studiorum").

It kicks a lot of our long, detailed considerations about a rather different development from the board. His argumentation is based on the single document about a cross-eyed servant, who bought a relative cheap deck from a merchant of Bologna.

Single or multiple, they are facts, stubborn facts. It is no different than "70 cards" in 1457. They must be addressed and interpreted. They are facts that must be explained.

In this case, the most straightforward explanation of a relatively cheap deck in the hands of a Bolognese mercer points to the game already existing in "popular" form in Bologna. Any other explanation means inventing a convoluted scenario out of thin air, like you have done below.

In his argumentation and presentation he forgets to tell, that this merchant definitely had business relations with Sagramoro, who since 1422 produced at least occasionally playing cards in the same year 1442 before (and who possibly produced this not only for the court). He does not note the possibility, that the merchant simply might have bought his decks from Sagramoro; that Sagramoro might have been sold out, so that the Ferrarese court had to buy it from the merchant. That's a common, not totally unusual, situation between a publisher (in this case Sagramoro) and his distributors (in this case Burdochio).

I don't know what you're talking about here. All we know about Marchione comes from Franceschini's edition of the Este archives, edited for the express purpose of studying artists' relations with the Este court. It is not a complete edition of the whole archives for the 15th century. In this context, Marchione is mentioned for selling fabric, usually taffeta, to an artist employed by the Este, Sagramoro. Sagramoro paints on this fabric for various reasons - Nicolo's funeral, the feast of Assumption, etc. There is absolutely no indication that Marchione and Sagramoro had some kind of business relationship between themselves outside of the court. That is pure invention on your part.

The deck was made with 4 noble versions for Leonello (document February 1442) and then perhaps with a small other cheaper edition for guests, visitors etc.,

A scenario of pure imagination.

which were sold to others ... during the festivity, bound to a specific situation.

Another layer of the scenario - building a fiction on a fiction.

Then Sagramoro had a rest of the edition ...

A third layer of the fiction - this should be a novel, it isn't history.

this he sold to a merchant outside of the city,

A fourth level of pure speculation, dependent upon the previous series of speculations, all of which are completely unfounded.

the market in Ferrara being considered satisfied.

If there were a mid-level market for the new game in Ferrara, it was a foreigner like Marchione that was already supplying it.

But suddenly the court desired to have such a deck again.

Of course they did - and they knew where to go to get it - to the mercer from Bologna.

Sagramoro had to say, that Burdochio still had those decks.

Except Sagramoro is not involved in this transaction AT ALL. The personal servant of Sigismondo and Ercole bought the deck for them from Marchione. The logical explanation? Marchione had some on hand among his other goods. The whole scenario of Sagramoro's selling decks to Marchione which Marchione then ended up selling to the court is baseless and extremely convoluted.

Naturally this is as an explanation "fiction", but as an behavior typical for modern book trade for instance. You produce something, the market for it turns dead and you sell the rest of it to a distributor, who pays a much lower price.
The document isn't a 100% guarantee, that the Bolognese merchant sold Bolognese decks.

Assuming a Bolognese merzaro - whether you translate it "mercer", "haberdasher", or "peddler" - sold Bolognese goods is sound reasoning. Your fiction above is not. This is why this little, stubborn fact puts a hole in the Ferrara-invention theory.

Well, it's like I said ...

The document isn't a 100% guarantee, that the Bolognese merchant sold Bolognese decks.

The relation between a playing card producer and a merchant is usually, that the producer sells cards to the merchant (that's not a fiction, that's usual behavior).
Sagramoro and Burdochio had a business relation, as they appear together in Ferrarese documents.

Sure, we have no document, that attests, that Sagramoro's playing card production activities happened outside of the court - you might call this fiction, if you like.
Similar we have no document about any contemporary Bolognese playing card producer in Bologna - I might call this part also fiction, if I'm interested.

All, what we have, is, that the document is insecure in its meaning. As it is insecure, there's an interest to get more information about the background, for instance about Marchione Burdochi ...

I contributed to this question, when I collected ...

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=334&p=7197&hilit=f ... 1442#p7197

The following passages in Franceschini's work contain "Marchione Burdochi" or "Da Marchione"

Adriano Franceschini, "Artisti a Ferrara in età umanistica e rinascimentale. Testimonianze archivistiche, vol. I, Dal 1341 al 1471", Ferrara-Roma, Corbo, 1993.

p. 220

p. 221

p. 222

p. 223

.... anything else of relevance ?

Naturally also
http://trionfi.com/0/e/02/

1442 [28 July – credit to Marchione Burdochi, merchant]:
E adi dicto per uno paro de carte da trionfi; ave Iacomo guerzo famelio per uxo de Messer Erchules e Sigismondo frateli de lo Signore. Apare mandato a c___,………… L. 0.XII.III [Franceschini 1996:170; cf. Bertoni 1917:220 note 3]

There appears Marchione Burdochi four times and in each case also Jacopo Sagramoro is mentioned. I would call this a business relation. Some clear exchanges between Burdochi and Sagramoro, all in the year 1442. An indication of some general cooperation between the both in this year.

In this proven relation your explanation invents a "3rd new factor": Another playing card producer in Bologna, who naturally would stand in competition with Sagramoro, who is Burdochi's partner or at least a business friend in 1442 ... should we assume, that Sagramoro would love that ... ... ? Usually not.

But I agree, that the situation of the document is not clear.
However, one cannot base important answers to important questions (who invented Tarot ????? ) on single documents. We've a series of documents of playing card productions in Ferrara and we have some sure involvement of the court of Milan in the development. We have some internal logic to see "worthwhile Trionfi decks" as a side product of "high courts", which are given in Ferrara and Milan, but not in Bologna.

For the general statement about cheap-deck-development and expensive-deck-development we have, that decks with many cards and especially many figurative cards are naturally more expensive than shortened decks with less cards and less figurative outfit.
It's simply probable cause of simple reason, that Tarot or Tarot-similar objects started in the upper society and not in the lower society.

You said ...

Yes - there were 22 standard subjects from the beginning.

[/quote]
... and you present it as a fact.
I would say, that you have no evidence. The deck form with the structure 4x14+22 appears to our eyes first with the Boiardo Tarocchi poem. There's even not only "no evidence", there's also contradicting evidence (70 cards in Ferrara, 1457).

I personally research also evidence for systems with 22 elements. Recently I put a lot of energy in the German lot book with 22x22x22x22 elements. I also made some analyzes for Alberti's "Philodoxus" (1424, Bologna) and saw the involvement of a sort of a longer triumphal row (at least 20 elements) in this theater play. I didn't meet a great interest here, curiously.

I think, it's wrong to take a too narrow-minded position in research. There's a full 15th century with 100 years of time to develop, and there wasn't only one card deck form or only one system. If the Tarot form had been so dominant as you believe, there would have been more mirror effects in other media ... and we didn't find those, although we really did take a lot of attention to various objects.