Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

51
Huck wrote:Just for this detail ....
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.
Huck posted:
Image


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 ...
.
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)???

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

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

52
Marco wrote:
Here (also not from 15th century) we recognize Medici heraldic, and the dome of Florence

Image

... and this card is not World, but Fame.
Marco,
Per my other posts on this subject, if we dispense with the later accretion of the word "World" and substitute the more applicable "principality" then I think we get much closer to the original intent of this card. Via Bruni and a host of other writers, establshing the fame of city was essential to Florence. Thus Fame of Florence - not exactly fama per se, but rather that subject tied to a polity. As a non-aristocratic form of government (at least in name, the grandi being excluded by this historical point) this concept of the fame of one's city - versus one's aristocratic family - practically had to of originated in Florence.

Finally, I've mused often about the odd shape of the arch on the CY's "world" card (the latter reverting back to an aristocratic ethos with the ducal crown), verus a circle/tondo; Did the original Giusti deck also have an arch that the CY's Cremonese artist adapted to serve the purposes of Bianca/Sforza? On the face of it the arch is simply a triumphal arch, sans the architecture. One can find this in the Church Triumphant frescoes in Florence, Massacio's painting of the crucified Christ, etc. So ubiquitous it escapes a defining model. However there is one other possibility I'll very tentatively propose here: the arch as simulating the outline of Brunelleschi's dome just completed a few years before Anghiari (the dome was in fact illuminated to celebrate the victory of Anghiari - the only concrete "triumphal" image we know of for Anghiari besides Castagno's painted hanged Albizzi men). Instead of a Bianca royal, there would have been the Duomo's namesake - Santa Maria del Fiore - crowning the arch (there was no piece installed atop the dome as of yet in 1440). Perhaps she (or flanking putti) held the winged trumpet and perhaps the lily (fiore), proclaiming the virtuous fame/renown of Florence. The later card you posted showing the dome being an echo of the earlier tradition....


Essentiial reading in regard to this idea: Marian Politics in Quattrocento Florence: The Renewed Dedication of Santa Maria del Fiore in 1412, Mary Bergstein, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 4 (Winter, 1991), pp. 673-719.

Phaeded

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

53
Phaeded wrote:
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)???

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
If you look from the north of the Garda lake (that's where the relevant battle took place, Tenno is mentioned, many prisoners, between them also Carlo Gonzaga), you would see (if you could see, which seems difficult cause the distance) Brescia to the right and Verona to the left (as it is painted). At the Southern end of the lake there is a river, and likely also bridges. Today East of the river is the Veneto, West of the river is Lombardy, likely according n old traditional border. In 15th century Venice had taken control of Brescia (Lombardy) in 1427 and Filippo Maria attempted to "correct the border" with the war of 1439.
You wouldn't see Venice in the South (even if you could see it in spite of the distance), cause it is far in the East. Well, freedom of art, the painter didn't promise our ideas of a correct landscape. The city near the sea is surrounded by water, perhaps this shall indicate the island state of Venice. At least, behind the city starts the open sea (or at least it seems so), and that makes it difficult to assume another location than Venice.
Why Filippo Maria Visconti should have chosen this motif for his son-in-law? Perhaps to remind him, that Sforza, if he really would get once Milan, that he would have a natural enemy and that would be then Venice. Filippo expected, that Sforza would break with Venice and settle in Cremona to protect the Eastern border of Milanese territory with his armies. Sforza didn't fulfill this wish, went short after the peace to Venice and had some time there in winter/spring 1441/42. Then he went to Southern regions with Fermo as his capital.

Cremona became then the place, where the new wars between Milan/Venice started in 1446.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

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Huck wrote
I guess it are ...
5 of the 6 Petrarca Triumphs
4 of the 7 Cardinal + Theological Virtues
Empress, Emperor.
Thanks for the corrections, Huck. One of these days I will get it straight how many triumphs Petrarch had, and what was in the CY. I tend to think it's so obvious, I don't need to proofread that part. And thanks for the informaition about bishops. My only reason for thinking that there was a Wheel of Fortune was that there was an old man in the Brera-Brambilla's, a reason I still think has merit. On Hungarian/Italian interrelations, I've put up some new material on the Duerer/SB thread.

Ross wrote (conclusion only)
...So, to sum up, it appears more likely that there are no card games at all listed in the Rosselli Inventory, and that the word "giuoco" is used in a metaphorical sense, as something simple and enjoyable to look at (as opposed, say, to a serious devotional painting or a detailed miniature in a book of Petrarch's Trionfi).
Thanks for the information from Hind, Ross. I hadn't read the pages you point me to. I'll keep reading, unless the rare books dept. is already closed for the holidays.

Phaeded wrote
You got me to rexamine the suits as an interreleted whole, particularly in light of the problems associated with the CY Chariot and King of Swords - I will post a separate post on that soon. A problem I'm still grappling with: the female Sword suit court cards do appear to have pomegranates, but the 3-lobed "tulip"-like shapes on the King of Swords is clearly different (compounding the problem: the other two male Sword court cards did not survive).
When I look at the CY Swords, it seems to me that the King and Queen have the same design. The Female Knight is the same near her neck, but then reverts to a single-stem pattern below. The Female Page has a single-stem pattern. Is that the difference you are referring to? Or is there something different about what is at the end of the stem, the fruit or flower? I don't know what you mean. All I see is that some paint has come off sometimes. The King and the Queen seem to me to correspond closely to the drawing labeled "Pomegranate" in Kaplan's LWB, whatever that's worth.

Female Page: http://brbl-media.library.yale.edu/imag ... uarter.jpg

Female Knight: http://brbl-media.library.yale.edu/imag ... uarter.jpg

Queen: http://brbl-media.library.yale.edu/imag ... uarter.jpg

King: http://brbl-media.library.yale.edu/imag ... uarter.jpg

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

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mikeh wrote:Thanks for the corrections, Huck. One of these days I will get it straight how many triumphs Petrarch had, and what was in the CY. I tend to think it's so obvious, I don't need to proofread that part. And thanks for the informaition about bishops. My only reason for thinking that there was a Wheel of Fortune was that there was an old man in the Brera-Brambilla's, a reason I still think has merit. On Hungarian/Italian interrelations, I've put up some new material on the Duerer/SB thread.
I think, that the Cary-Yale had a Chess concept. Chess is not a game of Fortune.

I think also, that the Charles Vi had also a Chess concept, and I assume, that the deck is complete (16 trumps). There is no Fortune card.

The Brera-Brambilla deck has a Fortune card ... but there is no guarantee, that the Brera should have had the same trumps as Cary-Yale Tarocchi. Actually the Brera had 14 cards in each suit, and the Cary-Yale had 16, so a difference is there anyway. Abnd from Filippo Maria we know, that he had 3 decks, and that two of them (Michelino deck and Cary-Yale Tarocchi) had clear differences, so there is no reason o assume, that the third must be = Cary-Yale.

Fortune as a picture accompanied traditionally very often lot books, perhaps also games of luck.

Considering, that there are something like 70-78 cards (or perhaps more) in the Trionfi decks, it' a little astonishing, that there are 2 trumps only, when 56 cards (right number ?) survived.

Thinking about this condition, I thought, that there is a chance, that decks with much less special Trionfi cards existed and that the Brera might have belonged to them. For the unsolved question of the Imperatori cards it might well be, that they had only 8 special cards. So the Brera might have been an Imperatori deck, and right, we have an Emperor in the deck. Another possibility would be, that there were only 4 special cards. Together with a usual 56 cards deck this woul make 60 cards, and this was form was chosen or the John of Rheinfelden deck and also for the Michelino and later there in Germany also decks with 5x12 structure.
If there were only 4 trumps, the game designer would have "likely" chosen 4 motifs with similarities to the 4 common court cards.

4 Kings would attract an Emperor ... the Emperor is given in the surviving Brera.
4 Queens would attract an Empress ... the Empress is NOT given, but quite logical, if the Emperor is there
4 Knights would attract "something with a horse" ... a possible motif would be the Chariot
4 Pages would attract ... the Wheel of Fortune, cause Fortune was necessary for those in a low position. The Wheel of Fortune is given in the deck.

In the Karnöffel we have designed 4 figures.

Emperor ... relates to Kings
Pope ... can replace the Empress, which is related to Queens.
Karnöffel ... beats them all and makes a good knight
Devil ... might relate to the "poor devils", the pages.

This is nothing, what one can rely upon, but some reason not to assume, that Wheel of Fortune must have been necessarily inside the Cary-Yale.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

56
Huck wrote:
Why Filippo Maria Visconti should have chosen this motif for his son-in-law? Perhaps to remind him, that Sforza, if he really would get once Milan, that he would have a natural enemy and that would be then Venice.
Venice was hardly a “natural” enemy of Sforza, having already made him a citizen and given him a palace on the Grand Canal; and Venice was legendary as an island – no way anyone would have depicted it within the mainland shore. At all events there is a ducal crown hovering over a peaceful scene (a knight with joust is riding forth to court a lady, not go to battle) with the allegorical woman above holding the orb of rulership – this is not an anti-trionfi deck with some admonitory tale of defeat to Venice. And your unprecedented south-facing orientation of the card with a view from the Alps down Lake Garda would mean a view of the Italian peninsula (or at least marshy Mantua where the river from Garda leads to), not an ocean filled with ships. None of your interpretation holds up to scrutiny.

I don’t believe the card can be interpreted too literally in geographic terms, but generally speaking the woman kneeling next to a representation of city has to be Bianca/Cremona and the shoreline the Adriatic. To try to get more specific, going from south to north, the major cities are: Ancona-Pesaro-Rimini-Ravenna-mouth of the Po River-Chioggia-Venice. The inland town behind the knight to the right was likely to stand for the Marche, not Ancona, which Sforza ruled from Fermo and Jesi – in fact the last town he owned was Jesi which he sold for the pope for 35,000 florins in 1447 before heading off to take Milan. North of the Marche was Rimini with whom Sforza had been battling off and on with Malatesta; north of that was Ravenna – the southernmost outpost of Venice whose rebellious ruler Marcello had helped the locals drive out in 1440. Sforza was to check Venetian aggression, thus directly beyond the knight in the center it would have been appropriate to have shown moated Ravenna (Sforza between the Duchy of Milan and Venetian aggression). The smaller town to the left directly on the sea could be Chioggia (a conquered city just south of Venice), but Ravenna was removed from the Adriatic over the centuries due to silt - and that is exactly what is depicted in the middle of the CY “world card”: a moated city near the sea. http://www.indiana.edu/~dmdhist/ravareamap.jpg

Back to the motif of the woman kneeling next to a town which I argued for as Bianca/Cremona (the latter being famous for its tall tower – and sure enough, it has the tallest tower of all the towns depicted) and the enigmatic men in a boat crossing the river (Po) to the approaching knight. Marriage being a sacrament of the church would posit the men as priests/monks, greeting the groom.

There are two precedents that are extremely close to this detail of the CY card, a kneeling figure next to a town: Giotto’s lost Navicella painting (known through copies) and a page from the Visconti Hours painted for none other than Filippo Visconti himself.

Giotto’s Navicella shows the kneeling figure with fishing rod and boat but with Jesus and disciples, thus underscoring the religious nature of the model for the CY ( the sacrament of marriage); from Spinelli of Arezzo's 1420 drawing:
Image

The Visconti Hours page shows kneeling, cowled monks next to the towns; in the CY card the monks have been removed to the boat (and why would Sforza cross a river any other way after his armored father having drowned in a river?) and the kneeling person next to the dowry town replaced with Bianca. The added element of the angler is from the famous Giotto painting, but clearly she is not a “fisher of men” but a fisher of one man in particular here.
Image

It goes without saying that none of this has anything to do with the military capture of cities (Verona/Brescia) and everything to do with the dowry of a city in the context of a political transaction (the marriage itself) consecrated by the sacrament of marriage.
Image

Phaeded

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

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mikeh wrote: Phaeded wrote
You got me to rexamine the suits as an interreleted whole, particularly in light of the problems associated with the CY Chariot and King of Swords - I will post a separate post on that soon. A problem I'm still grappling with: the female Sword suit court cards do appear to have pomegranates, but the 3-lobed "tulip"-like shapes on the King of Swords is clearly different (compounding the problem: the other two male Sword court cards did not survive).
When I look at the CY Swords, it seems to me that the King and Queen have the same design. The Female Knight is the same near her neck, but then reverts to a single-stem pattern below. The Female Page has a single-stem pattern. Is that the difference you are referring to? Or is there something different about what is at the end of the stem, the fruit or flower? I don't know what you mean. All I see is that some paint has come off sometimes. The King and the Queen seem to me to correspond closely to the drawing labeled "Pomegranate" in Kaplan's LWB, whatever that's worth.

Female Page: http://brbl-media.library.yale.edu/imag ... uarter.jpg

Female Knight: http://brbl-media.library.yale.edu/imag ... uarter.jpg

Queen: http://brbl-media.library.yale.edu/imag ... uarter.jpg

King: http://brbl-media.library.yale.edu/imag ... uarter.jpg

Mike,
Nothing to do with the stems - zoom in on the King card: the only two fruit/flower images that are really clear are on the top and bottom/right one on his chest - they clearly have pointed "3-lobed tulip-like shapes" as I mentioned originally.

Either it is the flower of a quince or a pomegranate - photos of either are inconclusive.

One other note: I have searched for Pomegranate as a Visconti stemma in vain - e.g., nowhere in the Visconti Hours which is overloaded with every stemma available in a variety of ways. Kaplan is surely wrong here, retrodating the combined Sforza-Visconti stemma back to the Visconti themselves for this one. Let’s assume then the possibility of quinces (flowers) on the male Swords and pomegranates on the female. The Italian for both sometimes contains the word “apple” (mela, mela-cotigno and melagrano), hence a possible source of confused identification as related. But then there is the odd significance of pomegranates – Persephone’s seeds eaten in Hades that lead to the seasons (known via Ovid in such works as Boccaccio). It could be seen as a foreshadowing pagan proto-symbol of resurrection – split time spent in Hades and some back on the earth. The context here is King of Swords as the deceased Muzio, looking away from the page he tried to save but drowned in his armor instead; the page wears his oversized helmet. This almost seems too “humanistic” for c. 1441 but I can’t see any other significance for the pomegranate. The flowering quince reborn from death (along with the rest of life with Persephone’s annual return in the spring).

Pomegranates in Christian art - 4th c mosiac of Christ with pomegranates and Botticeli Christ with pomegranates:

Image


Image


Phaeded

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

58
Phaeded wrote:
Huck wrote:
Why Filippo Maria Visconti should have chosen this motif for his son-in-law? Perhaps to remind him, that Sforza, if he really would get once Milan, that he would have a natural enemy and that would be then Venice.
Venice was hardly a “natural” enemy of Sforza, having already made him a citizen and given him a palace on the Grand Canal; and Venice was legendary as an island – no way anyone would have depicted it within the mainland shore.
... :-) ... and with whom Sforza had war, once he got Milan? ... spring 1452, with Venice, and also immediate, when he conquered Milan, begin of 1450. Venice didn't like it, that a capable Sforza had so much territory in their neighborhood. They preferred to deal with a weak Ambrosian republic finally. As Milan had lost the control about a lot of the Lombard cities, and Lombardy seemed to have been split in different dominions, the future promised further territorial wins for Venice ... if Sforza didn't unite the region.

Well, I interpret the card from the political situation 1439-1441. If you've good and better arguments, for instance from views of cities, which might really have been presented, okay, I don't mind. I don't have good material for such a research.

So, what do you say? Just simple, so that I (and everybody else) understand it:

My Verona is your ....
My Brescia is your ...
My Venice is your ...
Th 4th city, which I didn't name is your ...
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

59
Huck wrote:
So, what do you say? Just simple, so that I (and everybody else) understand it:

My Verona is your ....
My Brescia is your ...
My Venice is your ...
Th 4th city, which I didn't name is your ...
Your Verona, the most inland city = Cremona (with the fishing woman next to it and Po running south of it)

Your Brescia, the city on the far right, also inland = Jesi (Sforza conquered this city first in the Marche in 1435 and it remained the base of his military operations until he left it in 1447 to battle for Milan). Jesi is fairly well inland/west from Ancona, towards Cremona - thus everything beyond Jesi (off the card to the right and hidden behind it) would be the Marche of Ancona. But in 1441 Sforza would have retained both the Marche and the newly acquired Cremona, hence those two cities in the foregorund. The knight is leaving the city on the right for the city on the left - that is the "gesture" of the painting that needs to be explained, which I have done: Sforza riding forth from his fiefdom to his dowry city and site of his wedding.

Your Venice = Ravenna (moated city just slightly off the coast; the smaller city to the left that you do not label could be Chioggia, which is on the coast at the southern end of the Venetian lagoon and obviously north of Ravenna). Also note: Chioggia and Cremona are almost on the same lattitude and that is what the picture shows - the smaler town on the coast would be due east from Cremona.

Phaeded

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

60
Phaeded wrote: Your Brescia, the city on the far right, also inland = Jesi (Sforza conquered this city first in the Marche in 1435 and it remained the base of his military operations until he left it in 1447 to battle for Milan). Jesi is fairly well inland/west from Ancona, towards Cremona - thus everything beyond Jesi (off the card to the right and hidden behind it) would be the Marche of Ancona. But in 1441 Sforza would have retained both the Marche and the newly acquired Cremona, hence those two cities in the foregorund. The knight is leaving the city on the right for the city on the left - that is the "gesture" of the painting that needs to be explained, which I have done: Sforza riding forth from his fiefdom to his dowry city and site of his wedding.

Your Venice = Ravenna (moated city just slightly off the coast; the smaller city to the left that you do not label could be Chioggia, which is on the coast at the southern end of the Venetian lagoon and obviously north of Ravenna). Also note: Chioggia and Cremona are almost on the same lattitude and that is what the picture shows - the smaler town on the coast would be due east from Cremona.

Phaeded
How would you relate Cioggia and Ravenna to Sforza or Filippo Maria?
Huck
http://trionfi.com
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