Re: Casa del Petrarca

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Huck wrote:... hm, Chastity and Fame are both female figures.
Ha! Why does that not surprise me?
With Italians there is the Virgin Mother, your Wife and your Mistress- so Chastity is not your Fame, and Fame is not Chaste.....not then, not now. It is still called the Madonna complex. I am told that Popes could suffer from the complex too :ymdevil:
Seriously though, I thought the brochure from Christies would show a sampling- not the whole manuscript?
...and did not the trionfi come out incomplete- I mean were not there three firstly known?
~Lorredan
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

Re: Casa del Petrarca

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The complete description of the manuscript is clear on what it contains (as any buyer would want to know). I have bolded the relevant information.

"[Pavia or Milan, c.1470]
207 x 142mm. 198ff:1-138, 14-1510, 168, 176, 18-208, 219, 227(of 8, lacks 5), 23-246, 258, textually COMPLETE, but the lacking leaf perhaps with a misplaced or incomplete miniature, vertical catchwords on inner ruling of most final folios, 29 lines in brown ink in a round humanistic bookhand between 30 horizontals and a pair and a single vertical, justification:147 x 70mm, rubrics in pink, not supplied to Trionfi, two-line initials of burnished gold against grounds alternately red or blue with white decoration with marginal sprays of three golden flowerheads with curling penwork tendrils, penwork not supplied after f.35, opening folio with FULL-PAGE BORDER WITH FOLIAGE AGAINST A GROUND OF BURNISHED GOLD inhabited by putti, birds and animals, the upper border with a MINIATURE SHOWING LAURA CROWNING PETRARCH WITH A LAUREL WREATH, the lower border with a young woman firing an arrow into the heart of a young man and a roundel with the arms of the Visconti, the side border with a roundel with Apollo pursuing Daphne, FOUR MINIATURES OF THE TRIUMPHS, three full-page and one part-page (dampstaining affecting margins, especially the final ten leaves but evident at centre of outer edge throughout, and the cause of pigment loss from the lower inner corner of the border on f.1, from the lower edge of f.150v and the outer cusp of f.166, small vellum losses from margin on two leaves). Panelled brown leather by Bedford, ruled and stamped in blind (very slight rubbing at extremities).

'CONTENT:

Alphabetical index of first lines of Il Canzoniere ff.1-7v; Petrarch Il Canzoniere ff.9-150v: nos 1, 3, 2, 4-79, 81-82, 80, 83-92, 94-96, 93, 97-120, 122, 'Donna mi viene, 123-242, 121, 243-339, 342, 340, 351-54, 350, 355, 359, 341, 343, 356, 344-49, 357-58, 360-66; Petrarch I Trionfi ff.151-190: Triumph of Love I f.151, II f.153v, III f.157, IV f.160, Triumph of Chastity f.163, Triumph of Death Ia f.166v, I f.166v, II f.170v, Triumph of Fame I, early redaction f.174, I f.176v, II f.179, III f.182, Triumph of Time f.184, Triumph of Eternity f.188; Leonardo Bruni, Vita Petrarce, in Italian ff.191-197; Petrarch, Nota de Laura in Latin ff.197-197v, and Italian f.197v-198."

In other words, the complete text of I Trionfi is present, but there are only four miniatures of the triumphs.
Image

Re: Casa del Petrarca

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The complete description of the manuscript is clear on what it contains (as any buyer would want to know). I have bolded the relevant information.
Thank you- a case of my mouth was in drive before my brain was in gear.

I will look Huck- it may have been that someone had only three images and wrote a commentary or thoughts- I remember one was Death, the others Love and Chastity. I think it was a sermon about Nuns and Convents and that sad state of affairs in the 14/15th Century.
I actually think really that there might have been some cultural influence from Petrarch's Trionfi in Tarot, but not a direct one. I fully accept there might have been some other cards that showed these Trionfi more directly- but not Tarot. I wish this 'Scarlet Pimpernel' called Tarot was about Petrarch or Dante, then I would rest.
~Lorredan
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

Re: Casa del Petrarca

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Lorredan wrote: I will look Huck- it may have been that someone had only three images and wrote a commentary or thoughts- I remember one was Death, the others Love and Chastity. I think it was a sermon about Nuns and Convents and that sad state of affairs in the 14/15th Century.
I actually think really that there might have been some cultural influence from Petrarch's Trionfi in Tarot, but not a direct one. I fully accept there might have been some other cards that showed these Trionfi more directly- but not Tarot. I wish this 'Scarlet Pimpernel' called Tarot was about Petrarch or Dante, then I would rest.
~Lorredan
Well, I fight to determine, what was known and done before 1439 with the Trionfi poem ... well, cause I think, that we should know this. Any detail is welcome.

Well, in the cards we have only one chariot, and that is filled with a female charioteer in the oldest examples: Chastity, one should assume, and cards for a wedding .... and playing cards were something for women.

Possibly the Christie Trionfi poem edition was for a man: ... and men shall love (Love)... cause world needs children, and they shall die as a brave knight (Death) or become old as Father Time (Time).
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Casa del Petrarca

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Huck wrote: Well, I fight to determine, what was known and done before 1439 with the Trionfi poem ... well, cause I think, that we should know this. Any detail is welcome.
I have never seen a comprehensive list of manuscripts, with date and provenance, of the poem before it was first printed (even that I don't know off hand - 1473 perhaps).

The only use of it I have come across before 1441 is in a letter of Guiniforte Barzizza, from Milan in March 1439, to a Francesco Scitigles (otherwise unknown, I believe).
The book is a collection of writings of Gasparino and Guiniforte -
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/ ... itali.html

The letter begins here -
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/ ... /s122.html

Barzizza quotes extensively from the Trionfo d'Amore, parts 3 and 4, as well as from the Canzoniere, sonnet CXXXII.
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/ ... /s128.html
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/ ... /s129.html
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/ ... /s130.html
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/ ... /s131.html

The only abiding impression I get from my readings is that the Trionfi did not become popular until the 1440s. There seems to be more recent literature on the subject, if you look around the web for bibliography, but it will take a determined effort to find these studies. The most recent I have that discusses the question is Gian Carlo Alessio, "The 'lectura' of the Triumphi in the Fifteenth Century", in Konrad Eisenbichler and Amilcare A. I annucci, eds., Petrarch's Triumphs, Allegory and Spectacle (University of Toronto Italian Studies 4, Doverhouse Editions, 1990), pp. 269-290. He refers to evidence about the Portilia commentary, published in 1473, and suggests it was written after 1426, because it mentions the author Celsus, who was only becoming known after that date. It is not completely clear what the origins are, but they stretch from Rimini, through Florence, to Naples.

Prints of the subjects, in the their "canonical" artistic form, invented in Florence, begin appearing in the 1460s.

So Guiniforte Barzizza had a copy of at least the Triumph of Love (the Trionfi are not listed in Visconti's library), and the poem obviously had a devoted underground following, but the lavish illustrated "canonical" editions seem to have begun appearing in the 1440s.
Image

Re: Casa del Petrarca

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Ross,

your source looks very interesting, especially the date, begin of March 1439. The triumphal events at Florence were ...

27th of January (Pope)
11th of February (patriarch Joseph)
15th of February (Emperor)
(all triumphal entries)

..., so the letter might be a reaction on some use of Petrarca motifs during these events.
I see in the introducing sentences (3rd line of text at page 122) the word "concilium". Might this be a reference to the Council of Florence?
The addressed person Scitiglis might have been in Florence and has written a letter, which was answered in the given letter? Is this a possible interpretation? As there were in Scitigli's letter something about the Trionfi poem, the writer of the letter referred to the Trionfi poem in the text?
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Casa del Petrarca

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Here's the biography of the author.
http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/gui ... rafico%29/
He was in the service of Filippo Maria Visconti in 1439. He had married in March 1438, and wrote in the favour of the matrimonium ("ciò gli diede occasione di scrivere più di una lettera in favore del matrimonio")

And :
Oltre alle orazioni e alle lettere, molte delle quali tuttora inedite, e all'esposizione dell'Inferno dantesco, che fu rintracciata a principio del sec. XIX in due manoscritti francesi, l'Argelati (Bibl. script. Med., II, Mediolani 1745, col. 2065) nomina due codici, non rintracciati finora, contenenti l'uno le tragedie di Seneca con note autografe del B., l'altro un'esposizione dei sonetti del Petrarca. Ampie citazioni dal Canzoniere e dai Trionfi sono nella più lunga tra le lettere in difesa del matrimonio, del 1439 (Furietti, II, pp. 122-131): è questa quasi un trattato sull'amore, con cui il B. si inserì nella disputa umanistica de re uxoria: Giovanni Pontano ribattè in difesa del libero amore.
.
Here gets the letter of March 1439 special attention.

He accompanied young Galeazzo Maria Sforza to Ferrara 1457 (as teacher naturally ... the 70 cards note in the Ferrarese account books) and he went with him to Florence in 1459.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Casa del Petrarca

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I have found it Huck.
Cosimo De medici had his own copy of The Trionfi by 1418. A splendidly illuminated humanist edition of the text was his son Piero's first commission for an expensive manuscript, and the other son Giovanni used his Father's copy when he went to his villa at Fiesole. (which I read about when at Fiesole and saw 3 copies of the 12 line Triumphs by different hands apparently as letters from Petrarch to his friends) So, it was just like Petrarch's other fragments or trifles- his sonnets- he sent them out peicemeal to his friends. Some people must have received complete sets- because Cosimo had one.(Like Pandolfo Malatesta)
Anyways...as to the letter from Matteo de'Pasti- he was gilding a an image of the Triumphs for Piero(1440/41) and he was checking up on the 1418 version; and later in 1449 Fame was chosen for a 'desco de parto' for the birth of Cosimo's Grandson Lorenzo.
So the letter that Ross quoted is about Piero de Medici's first commission for a manuscript- illuminated or at least gilded by Matteo de Pasti.

~Lorredan
Information comes from Fraser-Jenkins 'Patronage of Architecture andTheory of Magnificence.'
The Universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts

Re: Casa del Petrarca

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Huck,
Belated reply (was away for the recent American holiday).

As for the photo of the Euganean Hills from Petrarch’s house in Arqua that wouldn’t load from Flickr– here’s someone else’s photo showing the same, but presumably from the garden (too bad as my photo included the long window frame so the image more properly aped the dimensions of a PMB trump card with the similar mountains on the horizon at the bottom – compare “the Star” for instance):
Image


As for your focus on 1440 (mine as well since the Giusto diary reference came to light – I’ve been lurking about this webpage for some time and have been enjoying the fruits of yours and everyone else’s research), I’m not sure how Petrarch’s Trionfi matters in terms of being a template for the earliest trionfi cards, not the least of which is that a series of 6 does not follow any known tarot deck series or subset thereof. Your comment - “My logic dictates, that there should have been persons, who made this new popularity of Petrarca. Marcello might have been one of them” – misses in both time and place: Marcello was in the East of Italy, not Florence, and the first mention of him in association with Monselice is in 1441 (King, 1994: 61). Like the production of Petrarchan-related works of art, this comes right after the earliest known deck of 1440 but one could still posit that the Anghiari triumphal celebrations (or earlier Council of Florence as you would have it) and perhaps related trionfi deck paid for by Giusto inspired the subsequent Petrarchan works. However the very fact that Piero de Medici had to commission a Venetian artist (Matteo de Pasti) in 1441 - while Giusto specifically mentions commissioning his deck in Florence - militates against the idea that Petrarch’s Trionfi were in any way a common production in Florence before 1440 (and there is nothing to suggest anything happened in the intervening period from the time Cosimo acquired his copy in 1418). The auction house listing for one of those works clearly illuminates why Florence became interested in Petrach: “The Visconti were likely to have regarded themselves as having a particularly close association with Petrarch for the poet was for many years the friend and protégé of successive Visconti lords of Milan.” After the 1440 defeat of the Visconti-backed Albizzi exiles at Anghiari it became a point of civic pride to reclaim one of the “three crowns” for the Medici regime (that influential Florence helped spread the fashion for Petrarch in the Quattrocentro to other cities is unsurprising but still not relative to the earliest 1440 deck).

Finally, to get back to your original point, Marcello, despite the large corpus of literary and artistic works commissioned and gifted to him, only had one work associated with him that is (very loosely) connected to Petrach’s Trionfi. But this is a literary gift from a Fortebraccio celebrating Marcello’s deeds and merely alludes to his life’s achievements as a series of “triumphs” a’la Petrarch and dates from after 1458 (King, 1994: 51).