hi Mikeh, nice that you come on board ... .-)
but before I start to reflect your questions, I've to finish this.
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Philibert of Chalon, called prince of Orange
In Thierry Depaulis "Des cartes communément appelées taraux, 2éme Partie" (IPCS 32/06, p. 244-249) the author speaks about Philibert de Chalon, who in 1527-1530 appears in connection to early notes of taraux, which appear in the diary of Philibert.
A subtitle in the article speaks of "Le Tarot en Franche Compté" and also other elements in the article give the impression, as if we would have here notes about "Tarot in France", and Depaulis speculates, that Philibert might have gotten his cards in Lyon and presents the development of the card playing production center Lyon on a whole page. A very informative part. .... but Depaulis knows, that all these new Taraux notes were written in Italy. It wasn't in Franche Compté, which at this time already had been Habsburg territory (since 1493), so somehow "Germany or German Empire", and Philibert de Chalon didn't fight in a French army, but in that of Charles V. Phlibert perhaps might have gotten his "Taraux cards" at each corner.
The article is very worthwhile, no doubt, and expresses the great studies, which Depaulis has made about the development of Tarot, and for which all card playing researchers should be thankful ... but why these confusions about that, what was in these times Italy and France and Germany?
The 4 notes read:
Depaulis gives then the argument, that the closer company of Philibert had been French speaking persons.
Further he points to the possibility, that Philibert might have gotten Taraux cards in Lyon during some negotiations between November 1525 - January 1426 after the French king Francois I had fallen in captivity during the battle at Pavia.
All notes of 1527 appear in a time near to the Sacco di Roma (6 May 1527), at which Philibert participated. The note of 1530 is short before his death (6 August 1530)
I personally don't see a confirmation for a Tarot production in Lyon. Naturally there could have been a production.
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My information about the French contexts is not complete, I guess. So I actually could easily overlook something, but the condition, that the Roman playing card trader hadn't French Tarocchi in his sortiment gives to think.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=654&p=9741&hilit=1559#p9741
We have Rabelais in 1534, but Rabelais had been earlier in Piedmont, as far I remember. The entry itself in a big list with other games very remarkable.
Further this ...
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=611&start=10
... a Spanish artist Juan d'Alman 1538 at the court of Francois I. He ma something with playing (or Tarot) cards, but the information is obscure.
Christian Wechel was the printer of Alciato
http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alcia ... hp?id=A42b
Sylvia Mann 1971:
An extremely interesting and, to me, previously unknown pack with fanciful suitmarks (Cupids, Goats, Harps and Millstones) made in 1544 by Christian Wechel of Paris, whose name is recorded in d'Allemagne as a maître cartier. The main body of the cards was filled with quotations in Latin from the works of Ovid, Seneca, Horace and Plautus.
("A Choice Collection of Playing-Cards", The Journal of the Playing-Card Society
http://i-p-c-s.org/journal/1-1.html)
Also ...
Yet among invented games are 'pages', in which, while being played, certain traces of learning are even found, as in Tarots, and in those which are printed together with the sentences of the sacred scriptures and philosophers, by the printer Wechel of Paris. Human desire squanders all the rest, along with those like them, where money comes in the middle, and that desire is going to be felt.
(Pierre Gregoire, Syntagma Juris Universi; Lyons, 1597;
Translated by Ross Caldwell.)
... quoted both by Michael Hurst here:
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t= ... ian+wechel
Ross said then there:
I went to see it London in 2005. The deck is unpublished, but it is in very good condition, and complete. I think this is what Grégoire was talking about, and not the emblem books. The card deck isn't an emblem book, unfortunately. It is a deck of 52 cards with four non-standard suits with maxims or aphorisms on every card.
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What do we have else from France before 1559 ...
Alright, I start to look for your article.