The CY deck was produced in a city controlled by Visconti, is full of Visconti stemma and is related to a second deck by the same artist studio produced for Filippo Visconti himself (the Bambilla)…but per your Piccinino theory, the penultimate card of the deck celebrates a Venetian victory of reclaiming Verona/Brescia for itself over Visconti (Sforza was employed by Venice at the time)???Huck wrote:Just for this detail ....
Huck posted:Phaeded wrote:
“The World”: there is no encompassing circular ocean such as we find on Gloria Mundi, but rather a knight who sallies forth from a seaside domain to a maiden before an inland city on a large river. Translation: Sforza is proceeding from the southwest from Ancona/Marche located along the Adriatic towards the dowry city of Bianca’s Cremona, located on the Po, with Bianca before it (perhaps the “fishing pole” she holds is an allusion to yet another Visconti stemma of buckets attached to a burning torch, always angled forward like a rod?). Bianca is more prominently represented a second time on a Visconti cloud (commonly depicted in the Visconti Hours but only employed for God or Visconti royals), the trumpet of fama extoling her virtues and the orb being rulership a bon droyt.
In the war end of 1439 Piccinino had a very difficult situation. After a lost battle, he was enclosed by Sfoza, and the prospect for the next days promised to become prisoner or to die. But Piccinino, a small man, jumped in a sack, a big German put the sack on his shoulders and walked across the battlefield of the day, where plundering soldiers of Sforza searched for usable items. Nobody cared about him, they found a fisher boat and crossed the lake. Quickly Piccinino regained his forces, attacked the not protected Verona and took it. Sforza was totally surprized and couldn't believe it first. Then he also very quickly organized his troops, attacked also Verona and got it very quick back.
So it looked from the perspective of Iacopo Antonio Marcello ...
.
More incredulous is my reaction to that imaginary geography you reconstructed on the CY World, where Venice is no longer an island but a mainland city surrounded by a moat, Brescia has got up and moved from well west of Lake Garda to the east of it, and the rather large Lake Garda itself somehow has a medieval bridge over it. Having had a very lovely lunch in Peschiera del Garda (on the southernmost shore of Garda) this past April on my way from Milan to Venice by way of Verona, I can assure you that you have completely wandered off of the chessboard on this one.
Phaeded