Lorredan wrote:...
3. I believe that you Huck, are right when you say ....a sort of political and juristic excuse (1456), that "Trionfi" was a game of the category "played with skill" and not of the category "played with luck". ...
I speak of Trotti's text, and in this Trionfi cards are mentioned in a very small passage, but the text has totally more than 30 pages. It's a general defense of knight and nobility culture, and Trionfi cards play a minor role. Tournaments and chess take far more place for instance.
5. I think the handpainted cards i.e. Visconti were Trionfi not Tarocchi- but not anything to do with Petrarch except in the name and the idea of 'events'.
If you speak of PMB or 14 Bembo cards, you're likely right, that the Petrarca Trionfi interpretation was already rather far away.
If you speak of Cary-Yale Tarocchi, then I would assume, that this had a Petrarca influence.
We've meanwhile 5 "Trionfi cards" documents around 1440, we've at the same time an increased interest in Petrarca, especially documented by illustrated "Trionfi poem texts" and a Petrarca-Cassoni-fashion in Florence, and in the same time a "Trionfi-as-celebration" outburst of some dimension. If you decide to call these coincidences all accident, it's hardly believable.
Well, card games with predefined trump-structure might have existed before, but we've no evidence, that the word "Trionfi" was used for them. Celebrations, marriages, opportunities to enjoy a military victory, existed before, but this exaggerated cult-form as the typical 15th-century-Trionfi-genre had to develop.
Whole Europe had suffered with the plague (1348-50) and its repeated appearances, a better time during 12th and 13th century was gone. The general population loss stabilized around 1450, just the time, when Trionfi culture was born. Optimism returned ... world found a way out of depression. More believe in some future.
6. I believe that the cards called Visconti were painted aprox about 1450, because Sforza was not in a position to have had them painted earlier because Milan had not happened, and he was too busy soldiering anyway.
I think, there's a general agreement about this.
7.I believe that it is far more likely the sequence had something to do with Forgiveness i.e Festa del perdono than
any other reason I have read about in any Tarot book or on forums; because it explains every card and a sort of natural order.
8. Although I cannot explain this clearly- I think the attraction to Tarot is the same attraction people had to the genre of Bible Moralisse- a sort of pictorial goodness- a bit like why some fruit machine images are more popular when they show positive symbols.
I'm not fixed on the idea to interpret the cards. Surely Sforza had he idea to have a good relation with his citizens, and he normally forgave them their earlier hostility. Generally he made a lot progressive actions, his diplomacy system is praised, and the hospital is also praised as a great enterprise. He stopped the long lasting wars. The period after his death was likely the best in Italy during the whole century, and that likely not cause of Galeazzo Maria, but based on the good work of Sforza. He wasn't conquered like Lodovico, his son.
... :-) ... La Festa del Perdono della Ca' Granda di Milano ... why not.