Jim Schulman wrote:OK, I'm going to stop being polite now.

Most of your speculations are irrelevant to a geneology of the modern tarot, my research question, which traces only the variants that contribute to the modern decks.

As a pragmatic restriction, my first step is to say that the "bottleneck" for all modern designs and tarot conceptions is the Tarot de Marseille design.

This may not be 100% accurate, but it is close. Once this is settled, the question becomes finding the antecedents to the Tarot de Marseille in 15th century Northern Italy, where all trionfi designs, of which most have left no descendants, originate.
Obviously the Cary sheet is a major data point. It is printed. It has the "astrologized" moon and star cards, perhaps also the sun. In addition, some of the contemporary Sforza castle cards show the tetramorphic world. Neither show the conventional Tarot de Marseille designs for the devil or the magician. Are the "astrologizations" borrowings from older Minchiate cards? Where did the tetramorphic world come from? These designs might orignate with condensations of multiple cards into one. For instance, the moon could be condensing Minchiate cancer and tarot moon; the world could be condensing the Tarot world/fame card with a Byzantine style last judgement with a conquoring Christ in a tetramorph as judge.

Clearly, to answer these questions, the number of cards in older hand painted decks (or their metaphoric source) is completely irrelevant.

To answer this question, we need to know something about the library of images to which card makers had access, and the tastes of the less than noble card players to whom they sold the cards.

In short, I am not in the least bit interested in finding out what may have been meant by every use of the term "Trionfi" from 1400 to 1475. Moreover, if that is your research question, Huck, you are following the wrong method, at least by the standards of modern art history. An orthodox method for finding the meaning of "Trionfi" would require you to carefully attend to the meaning the word held for the speakers and audience, not for what it suggests to you, or might have meant in the general culture. Most of your fishing expeditions are irrelevant to your own research questions, never mind mine, since they do not properly restrict the meaning of the mentions of Trionfio to the actual context of the speaker and audience, to which you don't seem to pay attention. You may want to reread Baxandall on these points.

Jim Schulman wrote:To answer this question, we need to know something about the library of images to which card makers had access, and the tastes of the less than noble card players to whom they sold the cards.

Huck wrote:Well, the "library of images" are somehow all pictures of mankind, which have survived (to us). Maybe the real Trionfi card painters had more (but how should we know?).

Jim Schulman wrote: This attitude is precisely why much of your research strikes me (and probably others) as so pointless. The card printers who made the first TDMish decks are not "all mankind." They exist in a specific place and time, have limited knowledge, and serve a limited market. If you are committed to a transcendent culture that exists in all places and times, and to which we have non-local access; you are not doing research, you are replacing one myth by another.

Huck wrote: Well, Cary-Yale sheet. Dated "late 15th century<" (Dummett, I think), mid 16th century (Kaplan). Any questions, that I made in this contexts, couldn't answer details about the background of this dating.

Everybody knows how difficult it is to establish the provenance, and the dating, of the Cary Sheet. Michael Dummett was the first to publish it, in 1980, and assigned it to Milan, arguing as follows: Tarot must have gone from Italy to France in the aftermath of the French invasions of Charles VIII (1494) and Louis XII (1499), during the latter of which Milan was conquered and administered by France for 12 unbroken years, and several times intermittently up to 1525. Since the dominant pattern in France is the Tarot de Marseille, the pattern in Milan at that time must have been similar to the Tarot de Marseille. The Cary Sheet is definitely related to the Tarot de Marseille, and is obviously older than any surviving Tarot de Marseille. Since the Cary Sheet is conventionally dated to 1500 (I'm not sure whose date that is - it looks older to me), and is somehow ancestral to the Tarot de Marseille, it is therefore probably from Milan.

I think we need to reexamine the contention that the Tarot de Marseille order and designs, or even C in general, was invented in Milan.

I think the Tarot de Marseille C order was invented in France (perhaps in Lyon) and stayed in France (until the 18th century anyway), and that the C order of Alciato, Susio and Viéville (Hermit above Fortune; position of Chariot and Love, or Fortitude and Justice, unstable) is another, perhaps older, French C order that invaded Milan with Louis XII’s armies and immigrants. Louis XII’s explicit policy seems to have been to make Milan the Italian Lyon. In any case Milanese merchants were granted all the privileges of Lyonnais ones (see for instance two paragraphs in a royal edict published by Bernardino Biodelli, from December 1502: “Nuovo documento storico relativo alle condizioni della città di Milano al tempo della conquista del Ducato di Milano fatta dal Re di Francia Lodovico XII” Archivio Storico Lombardo (1878) s. I, t. V fasc. 2, pp. 181-204. See for example page 195: Item, quod omnes mercatores Dominii Mediolanensis possint libere et tute mercari, seque exerceri in tota Gallia et dicione Christianissimi Regis Francorum et Ducis nostri, Feudatoriumque suorum, tam acquisita quam acquirenda, et immittere et extrahere omne mercimonium et pecunias, ac uti omnibus franchisiis et immuuitatibus quibus utuntur mercatores Lugdunenses, vel quivis dictae jurisdictionis mercatores privilegiati. See also page 201).

Dummett 1980 pp. 406r-408l; discussion of C order and spread to France.

Dummett only knew Susio at this time. Thus the C order was known in Pavia in the mid-16th century. Suggests it must have been known in Milan too.
(Okay, of course. This can now be supplemented with Alciato (the earliest witness, and actually in Milan) and Piscina – both are C, but not Tarot de Marseille)
He argues that the improbable placement of Temperance between Death and the Devil in both Tarot de Marseille and Susio argues for a common origin for both orders.
(Okay – I use the same argument – “improbability for both Bologna and Tarot de Marseille to have it” - for the priority of the order Love-Chariot in the Ur-Tarot)
Viéville’s order is closer to Susio than to Tarot de Marseille, showing that the Tarot de Marseille order did not prevail in France until the late 17th century.
(Okay)
Suggests the Italian invasions of Charles VIII and Louis XII, then followed by Francis I – all using French and Swiss soldiers – were the time of France and Switzerland’s first acquaintance with the game. Since they use the C order, the C order is original to Milan.
(Not exactly okay – see below)
The Cary sheet is ancestral to the Tarot de Marseille pattern, and therefore must be Milanese.
(Not okay – a circular argument – it is obviously ancestral to the Tarot de Marseille pattern, but assigning it to Milan is only on the assumption that the Tarot de Marseille is Milanese, for which there is no evidence, and for which, given the prevalence of the type of C order known in Lombardy and Piemonte in the 16th century, there is plenty of absence-of-evidence)

Note that the 1505 French “taraux” was not known in 1980; Dummett, like everyone, believed the earliest reference to be Rabelais, 1534.
For the invasion theory (page 407), Dummett summarizes: “The period of the French incursions into Italy, from 1494 to 1525, may therefore well have been the time when the game of Tarot first entered France.”

We know now that this time-frame must be considerably shortened, since packs and woodblocks of the cards were already being exported from Avignon to Pinerolo (near Turin) in 1505.

So the argument must become “The period of the French incursions into Italy, from 1494 to before 1505, may well be when the game of Tarot first entered France.”

Now, in 1980, Dummett writes of Charles VIII’s invasion, in 1494 – “Charles VIII of France invaded Italy in 1494, originally on the invitation of Lodovico Sforza (il Moro), Duke of Milan.” (Actually he was not yet technically Duke, but this is beside the point). Thus, Charles’ presence with a large Franco-Swiss army in 1494 is circumstantial evidence for their possible first acquaintance with the game, in its C family of orders.

I want to note that Dummett is not clear on what happened during this invasion, since he writes in 2004 – “It must have been from Milan, during the wars from 1494 to 1525 in which the French, under Charles VIII, Louis XII and Francis I, fought for possession of that city, that the game spread to France and Switzerland.” (HGT 111)

That Louis XII and Francis I fought for Milan is absolutely true; but nothing could be further from the truth in the case of Charles VIII, which considerably shortens the period for which Tarot must have entered France, on this theory, to between the end of 1499 and 1505.

Also, the period “1494-1525” is a misleadingly solid 32 years inclusive (although Dummett does go to the trouble to narrate the turmoil of the period 1512-1525); in fact Charles’ army was in Italy only from September 1494 to July 1495. They were only in Lombardy for 3 weeks inclusive (both invading and retreating), constantly marching. They never “fought for possession” of Milan, and never had any intention of doing so.

Charles VIII invaded Italy to claim Naples (which included Sicily of course, i.e. all of southern Italy), with the promise to use its strategic position to launch a crusade against the Turks. He never tried, nor intended, to invade Milan or any city in Lombardy, since he was there, as Dummett noted (without realizing the implications?) on the “invitation” of Lodovico Sforza.

Sources for the itinerary of Charles VIII in Italy:
Henri-François Delaborde, L’expédition de Charles VIII en Italie (1888)
Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1978), pp. 461ff.

They entered Milanese territory on their march on 10 October 1494 (Delaborde, 417); they were assured free passage by Sforza. Charles spent three nights in Vigevano. On the 14th, he was in Pavia. On the sixteenth, he saw the Certosa. On the 17th, he left for Piacenza. The bulk of the army went forward on 20 October, into Tuscany; Charles remained, in Piacenza, until the 23rd of October 1494, when he went to lead them. He was very impatient to conquer Tuscany, Rome and Naples. They had conquered Naples by February 1495, and Charles remained there until May. French affairs required his presence, and he travelled up the peninsula until the league that had been formed against him, the Holy League, met his army at Fornovo (he knew it had been formed, but assumed he was assured safe passage and had left enough forces, along with good-will, to defeat whatever actions it might take). The battle took place on July 6, and both sides buried the dead on July 7. It was not decisive from a military standpoint, but Charles was leaving anyway. They marched 130 miles to Asti, in Piedmont, for 7 days (8 to 15 July 1495).

So the total amount of time Charles spent in Milanese territory was 3 weeks. Most of his army spent less, about 18 days. It was a hectic passage both coming and going.

This is obviously not enough time to pick up the C order, and take it home. Since they spent November, December and January marching from the coast of Tuscany to Naples, and remained there until May – in all, eight months in central and southern Italy, including the march in June -, the game the army would have become acquainted with, if they did at all, was the southern game and A order, the only order known in Tuscany and southern Italy.

So we have to dismiss the first part of the French invasion theory, and with it the years 1494-1499.

The second one didn’t happen until 1499, when Louis XII, with a valid claim to Milan, took it easily, and a French regime administered it until 1512. This makes it a very short amount of time before Avignon is exporting Tarot cards to Italian-speaking Piemonte, an unlikely scenario, if Lombardy had been making enough cards for a Tarok-kartenspiel-invasion of France only a few years before. What happened to the local industry?

I think the French invasion theory was a more or less off-hand suggestion on Dummett’s part, and we can now see it as jejune and unnecessary. French-Italian relations were always profound enough that the game could have gone there any time after it was invented, and we do not have to assume that a mass of soldiers had to encounter the game for it to have begun to be played across the Alps.

My theory is that it is precisely opposite – the French invasion of 1499 is when French Tarot invaded Milan and Lombardy, and whatever native industry there was, was simply overwhelmed and adopted the new, French, game.

I don't follow Dummett's attribution of the Cary Sheet to Milan, since his argument is circular: C comes from Milan, the Cary Sheet is clearly ancestral to the Tarot de Marseille, which is C, therefore the Cary Sheet comes from Milan. In fact the premise that C comes from Milan is not proven. All we can say is that at least since the mid-16th century it was present in Milan, and a lot of French water had passed under the bridge by that point. (the only evidence of Tarot in Milan earlier than Alciato's list (1543) are the Visconti and Sforza cards, which are not numbered and are not related to the Cary Sheet or Tarot de Marseille iconographies)

I'd rather have an expert in 15th-16th century prints assess the Cary Sheet, without theoretical bias. I've been meaning to ask Mark Zucker, who edited The Illustrated Bartsch for Italian prints of the 15th and 16th century, what he thinks of it. He doesn't include the Cary Sheet as an Italian print in The Illustrated Bartsch, although he has written on the Tarot and is familiar with the best secondary literature, so he must have seen it (see Mark Zucker, "The Master of the 'Sola-Busca Tarocchi' and the Rediscovery of Some Ferrarese Engravings of the Fifteenth Century", Artibus et Historiae, 18 no. 35 (1997), pp. 181-194; the list in note 6 on p. 193 consists of Game of Tarot, Tarot: jeu et magie, and I tarocchi. Le carte di corte).

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: You're right, Jim. Huck does promote this unified vision of all times and places, unified by various but related numerical schemes.

The original alphabet, I Ching, Hesiod's Theogony and all Greek divine genealogies, Chess, Dice, all divination systems, all games - all of these can be understood as mnemonic systems built to express or play arithmetical games, and they can be reduced to a few simple groups.

THIS is Huck's context for understanding anything that might be called "trionfi" in the 15th century, why every deck is explained in an ad hoc way, and if it has a number with "meaning" in his system, he finds that the most congenial way to start his story.

Hofämterspiel is Huck's "Favourite Tarot" at Aeclectic Tarot.
http://tarotforum.net/member.php?u=2835
(just google hofämterspiel to see some images if you don't know that it is a unique 15th century German playing card deck, not related to Tarot at all)

This gives you an idea of how much weight the term "tarot" or "trionfi" has for him - nothing at all. All of the above things, and probably every other systematic organizing story for myths or games, is a "Tarot" to Huck. In fact discussing only "standard Tarot" is boring for him, he wants to discuss all of this other stuff, which is far more interesting.

Jim Schulman wrote:

Jim Schulman wrote:To answer this question, we need to know something about the library of images to which card makers had access, and the tastes of the less than noble card players to whom they sold the cards.

Huck wrote:Well, the "library of images" are somehow all pictures of mankind, which have survived (to us). Maybe the real Trionfi card painters had more (but how should we know?).

This attitude is precisely why much of your research strikes me (and probably others) as so pointless. The card printers who made the first TDMish decks are not "all mankind." They exist in a specific place and time, have limited knowledge, and serve a limited market. If you are committed to a transcendent culture that exists in all places and times, and to which we have non-local access; you are not doing research, you are replacing one myth by another.

Huck wrote: In 1704 Père Menestrier (often relevant in heraldic questions at the French court) wrote about playing card history, and came up with the idea, that Tarot cards were a French invention, based on the Gringonneur document and the Charles VI. cards.
After that it was made public, that Tarot was "from France", then we get the result of the begin of the swam of the TDMish decks, but also the swarm of the "Tarot de Besancon" (after 1704, actually a little bit later, but already during the war, before 1714). As we may assume from the situation (Menestrier 1704), that there was the approach to establish "the true story" of Tarot as a "French invention", we likely have to assume, that the designer took older cards ... to which degree we don't know. Perhaps the Chosson is really from 1672, then they might have taken this one.