Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

72
Excellent, Lorredan. That it was associated with the Sforza fits with Swords being a Sforza suit in the CY, along with Staves and its fountain.

Now I want to talk about something else, which comes out of this discussion of devices but has a direction of its own.

In this thread Phaeded seems to want to derive the imagery of the CY from the imagery in what you imagine to be on the "Giusti deck". So here is a post designed to show that there was more than enough imagery in Milan to provide the necessary images in the CY.

In looking for Visconti devices in Visconti illuminated manuscripts, I noticed that in the index under "Giangaleazzo, devices" the word "Virtues" was listed, with no less than five page references. In other words, for Giangaleazzo the virtues themselves were personal devices. Here's the story.

Giangaleazzo's marriage to Isabelle of Valois in 1360 (at the age of 9), "brought, as part of her dowry, the county of Vertus, in Champagne, together with the title Count of Virtues" (Kirsch p. 19) On this occasion, too, the personal emblem of the dove against a blue sky and radiant sun--we see it on the CY Chariot card, as well as various Coin cards, is said (by Petrarch in a letter, cited in Storia di Milano, v, 891, and by Vannozzo in a poem, published in Le rime di Francesco di Vannozzo, ed. A. Medin, Bologna 1928, 3-14) to have been devised for him by Petrarch. With it came the motto "a buon droyt" or "a bon droit", which the dove sometimes carried on a banner. So we have that device in numerous places in the Visconti Hours.

Vannozzo explicates the emblem in his 1389 poem, as Kirsch paraphrases (p. 19):
...the radiant sun represents Giangaleazzo's power, reaching out to all; the dove symbolizes humility and chastity; the azure background denotes serenity. Each component, however, carries a second meaning: the sky evokes heaven, "loco del padre," the sun is Christ, and the dove the holy Ghost.

You will notice the word "chastity" here. So we have chastity as well as Visconti power, and in addition the Trinity. Kirsch documents Giangaleazzo's personal association with the Trinity on the next page.

All of this is retained in the symbol we see in the CY Chariot card. For Filippo kept this emblem, as well as the title Count of Virtues, for himself (see Kirsch p. 86: "the present Count of Virtues"), even though the County of Vertus now belonged to their sister-in-law (as Kirsch says somewhere).

Then there are the other virtues. Kirsch writes
The diptych on LF 11v and 12 (at Matins of the Office of the Virgin) represents the Fall of the Rebel Angels, the event that precipitated the Creation of the world (Fig. 53). An enormous pair of silver keys identifies the Creator on LF 11v as the Deity of Revelation 1:18, who keeps the keys of death and of hell. He is surrounded by a heavenly court of loyal angels and by the three Theological and four Cardinal Virtues (as elsewhere in this manuscript symbols of the Count of Virtues). In the lower margin, Humility, the root of all other virtues, reads from a book supported on her left knee and, with her right hand, makes the gesture identified with the Trinity on BR 105 (Fig. 46) and throughout both Hours-Missals in Paris (Figs. 19, 49, 56). [Footnote: On Humility as the root of other virtues, see Meiss 1951, 153, fig. 162 [i.e. Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death].
LF 11v is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LF11v ... _Hours.jpg. Here Hope has an anchor, Charity a sheaf of wheat, etc. Faith is at the top; Temperance is at the upper right, somewhat damaged, Kirsch says. According to Kirsch, the original design was by dei Grassi for Giangaleazzo and then painted over by Belbello for Filippo. On LF12 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LF12_ ... _Hours.jpg) we see various virtues trouncing devils, in much the same way the Theological Virtues of the CY trounce figures standardly associated with the vices oppose their virtues. Belbello's work, says Kirsch, supporting Meiss's preface to their edition of the Visconti Hours, was done before 1434, when his work on the d'Este Bible shows more maturity. Giangaleazzo's were done at various times, mostly uncertain, before his 1402 death. Elsewhere in the Hours various of these virtues also appear; each time they do, they count as a Visconti device for both father and son.

In one place, his funeral oration, put in manuscript in 1403, Giangaleazzo is associated with 12 virtues. Fra Pietro, the eulogizer, declares that in heaven the Count of Virtues will receive "the twelve-pointed crown of the Madonna of the Apocalypse, each of its points symbolizing one of its virtues" (Kirsch p. 76). Michelino's illumination shows him surrounded by the twelve (from http://trionfi.com/visconti-genealogy).
Image

Kirsch says they
are framed at one side by the luminous salmon tint of Charity's gown behind the Duke and at the other by the pearl gray of Mercy. Directly behind these figures, the green robe of Temperance and the blue of Humility establish a tone that resounds in the blue and green raiment of the angel pages who hold the Duke's standards and helmets.
Another of the twelve is Magnificence, Kirsch says somewhere. Trionfi has a table with all 12:
1. Faith 2. Hope 3. Charity 4. Justice 5. Fortitude 6. Temperance 7. Prudence 8. Piety 9. Clemence 10. Magnificence 11. Intelligence 12. Humility
I do not know the source of this list.

Before the Hours, there was the Song of the Virtues and Sciences, mid-fourteenth century, which came into the possession of the Milan Visconti after the exile of Bruzio Visconti, erstwhile ruler of Bologna. I have translated text and posted images from this work in the thread that Lorredan started. The iconography (if we include one of the Sciences for Charity) is very similar to the CY's. That manuscript became part of the collection of the Archinto of Milan, Pelegrin says in La Bibliotheque des Visconti et des Sforza (p. 359: "collection Archinto de Milan"). Since the Archinto were a noble family noted for its clerics (the first listed on Wikipedia was Cardinal Archbishop of Milan in the 16th century), it might have been part of the Archbishipric before them.

After the Visconti Hours, certain images there perhaps make new influences on the Milan tarot. An image I have in mind is at the bottom of Folio LF 58. On the top, Eve blames the serpent for her eating of the fruit. On the bottom, a putto with a knife stands above a lion, in a pose reminiscent of the PMB 2nd artist's Fortezza card (http://www.stanford.edu/dept/relstud/fa ... rBlame.jpg--but ignore the date given there, which is probably too early). Meiss and Kirsch say of this image, "The child triumphant over a lion in the lower margin is probably meant to suggest the power of the Duke." The same could be said of the tarot image.

As for Petrarch, the most important link between him and the CY might well be Gasparinus Barzizza (1359-1431) and his son Guiniforte (1406-1463). Ross has already quoted a 1439 letter by the son about Petrarch's "Triumph of Love." Both spent considerable time in Padua, where they could easily have absorbed Petrarch's Triumphs and the virtue tradition he represented (http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/ ... itali.html). (Michael J Hurst pointed out this likely "missing link" to me recently in a personal communication, suggesting that Guiniforte might have designed the CY for Filippo. That seems reasonable, if only I could satisfy myself that the CY-type wasn't already in existence by 1435, when Guiniforte returned to Pavia from Padua. But that is a subject for another time.)

Note: I added a couple of things an hour or two after posting: where Temperance is, in LF 12, and the quote from Meiss and Kirsch about the lion. Another thing: Barzizza Sr., at a time when he was otherwise in Padua, went to the Council of Constance, I see on the link I gave. So he likely knew about the edition of Petrarch's "Trionfi" that was done in 1414 Bologna (which Huck supposes was brought to Constance, since it ended up in Germany), as well as the people involved.

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

73
For quinces as a Sforza device, a good source is

http://www.storiadimilano.it/arte/imprese/Imprese07.htm

down near the bottom of the page (Table 32). The pictures are clear enough. A problem is accessing the discussion in English. I will give it a shot.

In Italian, we have:
Alle antiche imprese viscontee, recuperate in blocco per rassicurare i sudditi sulle capacità di buon governo e sulla legittimità del potere politico (la porta del chiostro di San Sigismondo a Cremona è un vero trattato) se ne aggiungono, con Francesco, due inconsuete: La Mela Cotogna e i “Monticelli”, detti anche “Carciofi”. La mela cotogna, già comparsa fra le zampe del leone sforzesco, doveva essere un gentile omaggio a Cotignola, la città originaria di tutta la dinastia. Il frutto è di buon auspicio, anticamente veniva regalato agli sposi e decorava i talami nuziali con l’augurio che l’amore durasse fresco e a lungo come la fragranza della cotogna. “Fragrantia durat” auspica infatti anche il motto sforzesco, ma le energie fisiche ed intellettuali del duca sappiamo che non dovevano durare ancora per molto.
In other words:
To the old Visconti impresse reinserted on the block to reassure the subjects of their capacity for good governance and the legitimacy of their political power (the door of the cloister of San Sigismondo in Cremona is a real treatise) are added, with Francesco, two unusual ones: The Apple quince and the "Mounds", also called "Artichokes". The quince, which already appeared between the paws of the Sforza lion, would have been a nice tribute to Cotignola, the hometown of the entire dynasty. The fruit is a good omen, anciently given to spouses and decorating their wedding beds with the hope that their love would last and stay fresh for a long time, like the fragrance of the quince. "The Fragrance lasts" omen in fact is also a Sforza motto, but the physical and intellectual energies of the Duke might appear not to make it last much longer.
And the next paragraph:
Anche i “Monticelli” si appellano al tempo. Si tratta di un basamento con tre monticelli sui quali spuntano tre carciofi in fiore, i semprevivi, come li chiama Bianca Maria nel privilegio donato a San Sigismondo, con chiara allusione alla nuova dinastia e alla sua capacità di generazione continua. Li troviamo ricamati sulla verde veste della duchessa nella pala del Campi. “Mit Zeit”, col tempo - ammonisce il motto – sarà possibile vedere quali frutti darà l’operato di Francesco ed esprimere un giudizio.
In my English:
The "Mounds" also go back to the time. There is a base with three mounds on which emerge three artichokes in bloom, evergreens, as named by Bianca Maria in the privilege given to St. Sigismund, with a clear allusion to the new dynasty and its capacity for continuing generation. They are embroidered on the green dress of the Duchess in the leaves of the fields. "Mit Zeit" - in time - warns the motto - it will be possible to see what fruits the works of Francesco will give and express a judgment.
The pictures are of quinces. Their caption is
Tavola 32 - La Mela Cotogna in un clipeo di S. Maria delle Grazie e sulla fontana del Castello Sforzesco.
That is,
Table 32 - The Apple Quince in a carapace of Saint Maria delle Grazie and on the fountain of the Sforza Castle.
They are a good match to the fruit on the female court figures in Swords of the CY. So we have two or three candidates for these plants, all Sforza devices.

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

74
Mikeh wrote:
"Giangaleazzo, devices" the word "Virtues" was listed, with no less than five page references. In other words, for Giangaleazzo the virtues themselves were personal devices.
I would think Sforza would have most wanted to emulate this monument of Giangaleazzo's predecessor, flanked by the virtues of Strength/Force (essentially his name) and Justice:
Image


Sure enough, the two trump cards in the PMB where one can say an idealized Sforza appears by himself are Strength and Justice (on horse back, like the statue), befitting virtues for Milan's new ruler:
Image
Image


Phaeded

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

75
For the Strength card, a better match is the putto at the bottom of this page from the Visconti Hours, which I posted in my last post:
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/relstud/fa ... rBlame.jpg
This was done as a commission for Filippo (I will get to the dating later), completing what Giangaleazzo started. But it doesn't really matter which Visconti it is that the Sforza are emulating (including his wife and also his son Galeazzo, if the Strength card happened to have been done after Francesco's death). The important thing, for the CY, is that there was a strong pictorial tradition for the seven virtues in Milan, including representations as on the CY cards, before and during Filippo's reign, which he helped cultivate, and which started--for the virtues as such-with Giangalleazo (unless, of course, you have better evidence). There was Florentine influence, to be sure, but that happened in the 14th century, long before any tarot. None is needed during anybody's postulated time of the tarot origin, i.e. 1410-1440.

The World card again

76
In my previous post, I said I would get to the dating of the Visconti Hours later. I have done so in the first post of the thread "Visconti Marriage and Betrothal Commemorations," viewtopic.php?f=11&t=917#p13402.

Here I want to turn to something else: the Fama/World card, mentioned in 17 posts so far in this thread, according to the search engine. None of them is by me, so I want to put in my two bits' worth.

It seems to me that the primary influence on the iconography of the card in its early appearances, be it Milan's CY, Florence's Charles VI, or Bologna's BAR, is Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione. (Ross pointed out the connection in relation to the Charles VI at http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.ph ... ost1319869: I thank M.J. Hurst for this reference.) In Canto VI has the narrator, in a dream, describing a painting, one of four:paintings of "Gloria del popol mondano", as the narrator reads the inscription (line 75)--"Glory of the worldly folk" is Hollander's translation. If this "Gloria" is similar to Petrarch's "Fama", then already we have "World" and "Fame" in one breath. If we also look at Boccaccio's description of the painting immediately preceding (lines 69-72), we can see the prototype of the circle with hills and castles of the Charles VI (http://expositions.bnf.fr/renais/images/3/049.jpg) and the BAR (http://www.tarothistory.com/images/encyclopedia1.jpg.), or semicircle with plain and castles (CY).
And among other things which I noticed there
around about this supreme
lady, in her magnanimous breast
the enemy of death, was a perfect circle
rotating lofty and round,
from beneath her feet and over her head.
I do not believe that there can be anything
in the whole world, town or country, domestic or foreign,
which would not appear within that circle.
The phrase "enemy of death" is the theme developed in Petrarch's "Triumph of Fame". Who influenced who is unknown to me, and I think irrelevant. What is relevant is the description of the circle, with the whole world in it, all its towns and countries. So in the tarot we have representations of towns and countries in a circle. The CY only has part of a circle, because when one depicts a plain, there is nothing in the bottom half of the circle. The Charles VI and BAR solve that problem by depicting castles on hills.

In all cases, the person associated with the circle, unlike in Boccaccio (line 53), is not in a chariot. In a tarot deck, that would have been confusing, since there already is a Chariot card. Also, she is not shown in the circle, but above it. This is dictated by the dimensions of the card, considerably taller than it is wide. In the CY, the person on top is the lady Fama, identifiable by her trumpets. This is not Boccaccio's depiction (he has her with a sword in one hand and an apple in the other), but it is a conventional one. In the BAR, it is Mars, identifiable by his helmet, which he wears in many depictions of the Triumph of Mars. My explanation for this is that the vast majority of the people associated with her in the poem, and in Petrarch's Viris Illustribus, are military folk or people primarily concerned with matters of state. In the Carrara Palace in Padua, that is who decorated the walls there, all from Viris Illustribus. So naturally Mars is their champion. (Petrarch's "Triumph of 'Fame" gets away from military and political figures in part III; but few would have read that, before the 1440s.)

The Charles VI has a lady on top, with an octagonal halo and holding a scepter in one hand and a small golden globe in the other; that is how Boccaccio's "apple" was interpreted here: perhaps the apple of discord thrown by Mars's twin sister Eris, the prize awarded by Paris to Venus, or (but there is not the usual tripartite division into the three continents) perhaps a small emblem of the world. The scepter is explainable as the emblem of statecraft. The prize is the world.

That is what is common to all three of our early World/Fama cards. But there are regional differences. In Milan, there is the doctrine of Decembrio's that SteveM told us about, of the "good state" (or something like that) as opposed to Plato's "best state". A good state has farmland and a port, as well as good defenses. All are represented on the card, which in that respect marks out Milan's claim to Genoa. At the same time, the red castle has some significance; it could be the capital, or, as red is the color of passion, Filippo's love nest. Or the Grail Castle. For purposes of gifts to military men, it might suggest a battle or two, but I cannot make heads or tails of that discussion.

Bologna, however, is a weak state. For it, Fama is nothing but trouble, as stronger powers compete for it as a minor prize. Only with a strong leader can they have any Fama, and when they get it in the Bentivoglio, that is what is what they see on the card: Mars on a world (the four elements) with a scepter and a small globe divided into continents ( http://www.tarothistory.com/images/encyclopedia1.jpg).

Much digital ink has been spilled over the significance of the Charles VI's polygonal halo, since it otherwise appears in the deck, and elsewhere in art of that time and place, as an accoutrement of virtues. For clarification, I again turn to Boccaccio. In Canto IV. This is where he first enters the room with four paintings, so exquisite that he can only compare their art to that of Giotto (lines 13-18). The first painting he sees, is of a lady unnamed in the poem as far as I can find:
Her left hand held a little book,
the right a royal sceptre, and I
reckoned her clothing to be crimson.
At her feet sat many people'
upon a grassy and flowered meadow,
some more, some less distinguished.
But at her left side and her right
I saw seven ladies, each different
from the others in gesture and attire.
The translators' notes say that the seven ladies, four on one side and three on the other, are the seven liberal arts. That makes sense, because Boccaccio goes on to name famous philosophers, astronomers, and mathematicians on one side, and poets and historians on the other, who could be presumed to write musically, grammatically, rhetorically, and poetically.

Boccaccio does not name the lady herself, that I can find, but the translator's notes and introduction say she is Wisdom. That, too, makes sense. In 13th and 14th century codices discussing the seven liberal arts, the figure on top of the liberal arts is philosophy, love of wisdom (Dorez, La canzone della viru e dele scienze di Bartolomeo di Bartoli da Bologna, Appendices, Tavola II). But philosophy is not a virtue, and it would include only some of Boccaccio's famous people.

So I suspect that if the Charles VI lady is a virtue, she is Wisdom or Sapientia, Greek Sophia, that which philosophers love. Boccaccio's figure has a scepter but no small globe. Instead, it's a book. So she's still Fama, offering the world as her prize. But Fama, in the eyes of the Florentines of 1460 or earlier, is best when accompanied with Wisdom. So they conflate the two figures. She is Fama possessed of Sapientia. That is what they see Florence as representing, and Cosimo de' Medici, too, as in the medallion that Phaeded posted. Sapientia not only masters the world, but also transcends it, in the sense that if fortune doesn't give one worldly glory, Sapientia's philosophy is one's consolation (and may give one worldly glory in the end); both interpretations are suggested by the lady's position on the card, above the world.

Probably the Charles VI is later than the BAR or the CY. In that case, people would have read Part III of Petrarch's "Triumph of Fame," which includes the philosophers and historians that Boccaccio had associated with Wisdom.

I should probably say something about Prudentia, who is sometimes propounded as a candidate here. In the Middle Ages, there was a tendency to conflate Prudentia and Sapientia as the same thing, and Minerva as the goddess of both or either. This is eloquently discussed by art historian Nicholas Webb in an article called "Momus with little flatteries: intellectual life at the Italian courts," in Mantegna and 15th century court culture ,on p. 68 (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BzfjM-pYVEw/T ... nd69LG.jpg). Cicero did the same, Webb says. But he adds (p. 68)
In Seneca's De Constantia Animae or Petrarch's De remediis utriuesque fortunae, it is the enduring sapiens rather than the active Prudens who resists fortune.
. And on p. 69 (the right side of the link above):
However, Cicero speaks of sapientia as the mater omnium bonarum rerum in De legebis. Two commonplaces of Renaissance moral philosophy were that prudence governs the other virtues and is itself subject to wisdom.
On the link, you can see a footnote giving particulars, or articles that do give them.

Incidentally, the first page of the Webb article speaks of Alberti's Momus, of some time between 1443 and1450," in which the title god begets the goddess Fama, who wreaks havoc on the world.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PZqv2JyU3s4/T ... nd57LG.jpg. Hence the desirability of Sapientia.

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

77
I need to add something to my previous post, to what I said about the Charles VI World/Fama lady's representing Sapientia rather than Prudentia. That is not quite what I should have said. Looking at the translator's notes to Petrarch's De Remediis, I see that Ciceronian wisdom has two aspects. Rawski (vol. 2, p. lvii) speaking of the intellectual virtues, gives as his first one "wisdom, including prudence, which is both intellectual and moral/cardinal." So now I say the following.

Boccaccio's Lady Wisdom holds two objects, a scepter and a book. It seems to me that these objects represents two aspects of Wisdom (Sapientia, in Latin): the practical and the contemplative. There is wisdom acquired and exercised in study and reflection, and there is wisdom acquired and exercised in the action of a sovereign will. It is true that Petrarch, in De Remediis, speaks of Sapientia in a contemplative context (Book 1, dialogue 12), e.g. (Rawski translation, Vol. 1, p. 35f, p. 34):
REASON: Those who think magnificently of themselves boldly attempt things beyond their power and, failing amidst their effort, learn at their own peril and to their shame just how well they have judged their own cause. Believe me, therefore, that it is better to reject false opinions, to rid oneself of arrogance, to ponder your folly, and to hope that there will never be a need to test your wisdom and to find that you have nothing to brag about. This is the shorter and safer road to wisdom.
JOY. But I feel confident I have arrived at wisdom.
And it is clear that Petrarch, just like Boccaccio, distinguishes fame from wisdom (p. 33):
JOY. Everyone praises me as a wise man.
REASON. This adds something to your fame, perhaps, but absolutely nothing to your wisdom.
But the whole of Petrarch's De Remediis is meant as a guide to practice; it is meant as an essay in practical wisdom, which is the same as Prudentia. So in holding the scepter, the Lady on the Charles VI is symbolizing practical Wisdom, i.e. Prudentia, while at the same time she holds the globe, symbolizing Fame (perhaps she is offering a choice).

The usual objection to this card's symbolizing Prudentia is that she has none of Prudentia's usual attributes. However the lady is doing so as the practical side of Wisdom, Sapientia, as described in Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione and exemplified in Petrarch's De Remediis. She symbolizes Prudentia as Practical Wisdom and in addition the lure of Fama, while standing on the World.

Boccaccio and the "game of the gods"

78
I know this is supposed to be a thread on Petrarch, but I just did a post saying that Boccaccio was at least as relevant, at least for the details on the early World/Fame cards. I want to take some of that and apply it to the "game of the gods" designed by Marziano for Filippo Visconti , Duke of Milan, in 1420-1425,

In Boccaccio's Amorasa Visione, the narrator, in a dream, enters a room with four paintings on the four walls. They represent, in order, wisdom, fame, wealth, and love. There are correspondences here to the four suits of the Game of the Gods. The one headed by Jupiter is Virtues, but the figures in it (Jupiter, Apollo, Mercury, and Hercules) are all known for feats of brave, or at least clever, killings, some starting as children. Virtue = Fame, defined in the military way of the no longer extant Giotto "Vanagloria" fresco in Milan and Petrarch's Viris Illustribus and its frontispieces. Next is Riches, just as in the poem. Then comes Virginities, headed by Athena. She's the goddess of Wisdom. The last is Pleasures, headed by Venus, goddess of Love. So it's not surprising that tarot decks might show influence of the same poem, whether designed in Milan or elsewhere.

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

79
What follows is my reply to Mike and Ross from the discussion here: viewtopic.php?p=25887#p25887

I am still very doubtful of the wisdom of sharing what is still a work in progress, and even more so of attempting to present my findings in abbreviated form, without laying out all the evidence in full detail and in a properly argued manner. I fully expect everything I say here to be cursorily dismissed by many readers. But I also feel that Ross has a point—who knows when or even if I will ever find the time to present this material properly? So here it is, for what it's worth...
mikeh wrote: 19 Jun 2023, 13:11I need more persuading that the fad of Petrarch illustrations (in manuscripts and cassone) in Florence starting around 1440 shows anything about the game, except that the game's popularity, with cards associated by those familiar with them to Petrarch's poems, probably stimulated the demand for the illustrations.
This remark by Mike goes to the crux of what I've found, namely: evidence of mid-15th century illustrations of the six subjects of Petrarch's Trionfi poems which significantly resemble 15th century Trionfi cards, to a degree that makes it extremely likely that the latter were originally likewise intended as illustrations of those same subjects.

Among other things, the evidence from the illustrations strongly indicates that the female figure on the World card was originally intended as an anthropomorphic allegory of Eternity. She is female because the Latin and Italian words for Eternity are feminine, in the same way as the allegorical figures on the Love and Time cards are male because the corresponding Latin/Italian words are masculine. In other words, the World woman literally was Eternity—in exactly the same way that the Old Man was Time.

As will be seen, however, this conclusion relies in part on a reconstruction of the evolution of the World card, arguing that the design from which all World cards are descended must have depicted a figure much like that on the Visconti di Modrone card (although probably showing the full figure, either standing, or sitting in such a pose that it could be mistaken for standing, and perhaps with the world below as a full circle rather than a half-circle). That alone will have to be an essay in itself, I fear...

The illustrations have also convinced me that the Visconti di Modrone "Chariot" card is the only surviving card that was ever intended to depict Chastity, and that all the other surviving "Chariot" cards were directly descended from earlier Fame cards, and had nothing to do with Chastity at all. In particular, both the Issy Chariot and the Visconti-Sforza Chariot—the only two to depict a female charioteer other than Visconti di Modrone's Chastity—must either have been consciously intended by their designers as depictions of Fame, or were closely based on earlier designs that were so intended (unlike later Chariot cards, where there is no longer any indication that their designers understood the subject as Fame, or anything other than simply a "Triumphal Chariot," as they no doubt called it). The Issy Chariot and the Visconti-Sforza Chariot are simply two different approaches to depicting the same subject (Fame), and both those approaches are attested in surviving manuscript illustrations of Petrarch's Triumph of Fame. Of the two, the Fame card from which the other Chariot cards are descended must have been much closer to the Issy than to the Visconti-Sforza, although with some significant differences.
(This means (among other things) that the Visconti di Modrone deck must have originally had two "Chariot" cards, one being the Chastity card that has survived, and the other a Fame card, now lost, which would have looked more like a conventional Chariot card. Most likely it resembled the one on the Cary Sheet but with a female charioteer.)

Thus we find, not surprisingly, that all six of Petrarch's Trionfi were originally depicted in the tarot deck by an entirely consistent series of anthropomorphic allegorical representations, all gendered according to the grammatical gender of their Latin and Italian names. This is just the kind of nice, neat set of trumps that one would expect from people influenced by the Marziano game, and rather more satisfyingly consistent than what later became the most common illustrative schema for Petrarch's Trionfi, in which five of the six were anthropomorphic allegories but Eternity was not.
(Note that I am not suggesting that the first proto-tarot deck had only six trumps. It almost certainly did not have 22 trumps, because it would have been designed to be a "Trionfi" deck, focused on those six Petrarchan subjects, and 16 other trumps would overwhelm them. But six trumps would have been too few for the game to work well, so it must have had more, probably something like the number in the Marziano deck, and that would have made the set somewhat less neat. As I have said elsewhere, I think that all seven virtues would have also been present, plus Judgment as a supplementary card for Eternity, for a trump suit of 14, the same length as the four regular suits, giving a sum total of 70 cards in the deck, as attested at the court of Ferrara later. That would certainly have been messier than just the six Trionfi personifications, but nevertheless still very neat compared with the hodgepodge of the 22-trump sequence that developed later.)

In that snippet from Mike that I quoted at the start of this post, there are two words that are almost like a red rag to a bull to me now: "the fad of Petrarch illustrations (in manuscripts and cassone) in Florence starting around 1440".

In Florence! Tarot history has, I believe, been terribly hampered by an excessive focus on Florence in the art-historical studies of illustrations of Petrarch's Trionfi. The worst aspect of this is perhaps the widespread misconception—originating with the highly influential but nevertheless flawed 1902 survey of Petrarchan artwork by the prince d'Essling and Eugène Müntz—that a standard schema for illustrating the six Trionfi was established very early on and hardly changed thereafter, with virtually all illustrators adhering to it. The features of this schema include each Triumph being mounted on a chariot (with the temporary exception of Eternity), those chariots being pulled by specific creatures for each Triumph (horses for Love, unicorns for Chastity, etc.), and various other details. Essling/Müntz wrote of a "quasi unanimité", an "entente internationale entre les illustrateurs [...] presque dès le début" (p. 121).

Closer inspection, however, reveals that this "quasi unanimity" in fact only truly existed in Florence and in certain other sectors that were very heavily influenced by the Florentine tradition, such as the Trionfi editions printed in Venice. In those places, the artists did indeed conform with surprising strictness to the schema described by Essling and Müntz. Elsewhere, though, there was considerable variation. Illustrators in other places (in Italy and beyond) were admittedly often influenced to varying degrees by the Florentine schema—not surprisingly, given the huge amount of Petrarchan Trionfi artwork produced in 15th century Florence, and the cultural influence of the city at that time in general—but they rarely adhered to it strictly, and frequently diverged from it greatly. Moreover, in most cases, they do not seem to have developed their own separate, similarly strict schemas for Trionfi illustration, but instead continued to experiment with varying depictions. Milan is one of the best examples: I know of four illustrated manuscripts of the Trionfi produced in 15th century Milan, and only one of them adheres to the Florentine schema to any great extent. All four are quite different; one could almost believe that the Milanese illuminators never depicted the Trionfi the same way twice. Two of them were created apparently within a few years of each other by the same artist, the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum (the most important illuminator in Milan in the reign of Filippo Maria Visconti), yet they have relatively little in common. And both of them differ greatly from the Florentine schema.

This Essling/Müntz misconception is particularly pernicious for tarot history because, as Mike and others have noticed, the Florentine schema is quite unlike the images we see on the cards. Indeed, there is no real evidence to suggest that anyone in Florence was ever aware of any link between the Trionfi game and the poems by Petrarch. It's theoretically possible that some Florentines were aware of such a link, at some very early stage, but there is really no surviving evidence of it: The surviving Trionfi cards made in Florence and the surviving Petrarchan Trionfi illustrations made in Florence bear virtually no discernible relation to each other. It is thus entirely possible that the game of Trionfi and the trend for Trionfi illustration both arrived in Florence at around the same time but nevertheless independently, with most or even all Florentines unaware of any association between them.

So we need to get away from this blinkered focus on the standard Florentine illustrations of Petrarch's poem cycle, and look more at the illustrations made in other places (and also at those few illustrations from Florence that diverged from the standard schema). Here again, we are impeded by the usual approach of art historians, who love to focus on artworks that form consistent patterns and schemas, and give relatively little attention to those that don't exemplify those patterns and schemas. For us, it is precisely among the less orthodox Trionfi illustrations that we find what is most useful to us, yet they are much less likely to be reproduced or discussed in the books and essays written by art historians on the subject.

My current study goes a very long way away from Florence indeed: My findings are based mainly on illuminated manuscripts of the Trionfi poems from 16th century France. This may seem absurd at first, but bear in mind that all the French illustrations of the Trionfi at that time were based to a greater or lesser degree on Italian models (with the sole exception of one of the very earliest: an extremely French Triumph of Love in Cod.gall. 14 at the Bavarian State Library).

One of those Italian-influenced French manuscripts (BnF ms. Français 22541) contains a Fame that looks remarkably similar to the Visconti-Sforza Chariot card, providing us with the evidence that it was conceivable to depict Fame in that way. This Fame could well have been based heavily on some lost Italian image, since strong Italian influences are visible in the other Trionfi illustrations in that French manuscript.

The principal source for my research, however, is BnF ms. Français 24461, a collection of images with short textual accompaniments, mostly of moralistic intent, produced by court official Jean Robertet and his son François in a series of stages between the 1490s and the early 16th century. Three of its six Trionfi illustrations, namely Love, Time, and Eternity, share a number of significantly unusual characteristics with early tarot cards, especially (but not only) the cards from the early Milanese tradition (which I take to include the Cary Sheet and also the Queen of Cups and Old Man/Hermit cards in the BnF, which are stylistically close the Cary Sheet, as evidenced especially by the headgear of the Queen of Cups). The Trionfi illustrations, which are at the very beginning of the Robertet book, are directly followed by a Wheel of Fortune which likewise shares an exceptional number of features with the Wheels in the early tarot decks (although the Robertets have augmented the image by adding other very different features, primarily the figures of Fortune and Reason). I know of no other non-tarot image of the Wheel of Fortune that shares so many features with early tarot cards as this one, despite my best attempts to find one: I have now seen a very great many, but nothing quite like this.

Such are the similarities between these images and their tarot counterparts that it surprises me that this manuscript has not received more attention. The Eternity figure is particularly striking in its resemblance to the figure on the Visconti di Modrone World card—that caught my attention immediately when I saw it for the first time three years ago (a few months after I discovered this forum and developed a serious interest in this business) in Michael Hurst's collection of Trionfi illustrations on wikipedia. Yet even Hurst doesn't seem to have remarked on it, although it provides support for his (in my view correct) interpretation of the iconography of that World figure.

Perhaps this is simply because the manuscript was regarded as too foreign and too late to have any bearing on the creation of tarot in mid-15th century Italy. But a bit of research reveals that those Trionfi images in the Robertet manuscript must have been copied largely unchanged from a now-lost Italian manuscript that was brought to France (and which was evidently seen by others in France too, in addition to the Robertets and their artist). And there is evidence that this Italian manuscript, or one copy of it at least, was made no later than the mid-1440s. I need to do a little more research to find out exactly how solid that dating is, but what I have seen so far supports it.

The evidence does not give any indication of whether the Wheel of Fortune image was also in that Italian manuscript, but given the Wheel's position in the Robertet book and its resemblance to early tarot imagery (like the Trionfi that precede it), it seems highly likely that it would have been.
(It is also possible that the same Italian manuscript contained the Tarocchi di Mantegna images that the Robertets used for the next series of images in their book, but that is more conjectural, and of no real significance for the purposes of this discussion.)

Does the presence of a very tarot-like Wheel of Fortune next to the Trionfi in the Robertet manuscript mean that the Wheel must also have been present in the original proto-tarot? No, not necessarily. What the Robertet images tell us is that in the place in Italy where those images were first made, Love, Time, Eternity, and the Wheel of Fortune were sometimes depicted in much the same way as images we see on certain tarot cards from that era. The Wheel might have been present in a Petrarchan proto-tarot, but Français 24461 cannot be taken as evidence of that, and I am still very much inclined to doubt it, because the Wheel does not seem like a natural fit for a trump sequence based on Petrarch's Trionfi (unlike the Last Judgment, or the cardinal and theological virtues).

The Trionfi images copied by the Robertets from that lost Italian manuscript had their greatest impact on other Trionfi illustrators in France, rather than in their native Italy. But even in Italy, strong echoes of those images can be found in several Trionfi manuscripts, made in various places. It is also possible to trace the earlier Italian origins of some of the Trionfi images in the Robertet manuscript, which is to say, we can see how earlier Italian images of the Trionfi subjects contributed to the creation of the Robertet images. These Italian connections (both before and after the Robertet images) apply not only to the images of Eternity, Time, and Love which have apparent links to tarot cards, but also to the images of Fame, Death, and Chastity, which do not have any such links to tarot.

The fact that the latter three images do not resemble any tarot cards might prompt you to doubt the tarot connections of the other three. But as I noted above, the depiction of Petrarch's Trionfi in places outside Florence varied a great deal, notably in Milan in particular. So it ought not surprise us to find a set of Trionfi illustrations where three of the six images resemble the tarot depictions of their subjects while the other three do not. Moreover, in those other Italian manuscripts with Trionfi images that bear some resemblance to the Robertet images, none display the Robertet features in all six Trionfi; usually, they have one or two images that share some notable characteristics with the Robertet ones, and everything else is different. Generally speaking, we should not expect the same consistency in Trionfi illustrations outside Florence that we find in Florence, and we should certainly not expect the consistency that we find in tarot cards, which, by their nature as playing cards, were naturally highly conservative in their designs. There may, in fact, never have been any manuscript anywhere in which all six Trionfi illustrations looked like their tarot counterparts, even at the very place and time when the first proto-tarot deck was designed.

Are the similarities between early tarot cards and Français 24461 (and Français 22541) enough to put the Petrarchan provenance of the earliest tarot game beyond reasonable doubt? When taken together with the other evidence that I mentioned in my last post, especially the name of the game, I think the answer is yes. We were already halfway there; this takes us the rest of the way. I think we do finally have enough now to put this debate to rest. Nevertheless, I can understand if people still have doubts at this stage, given that I have not gone through and pointed out all the important details in the Robertet images that are also found on tarot cards (and it is not always obvious which ones are important, if you have not seen hundreds of other Trionfi illustrations for comparison). I have also not presented the evidence that those images were copied from an Italian manuscript from the 1440s. But that would unfortunately take more time than I have to spare at present.

Obviously several major modifications must have taken place to get tarot from that early Petrarchan game to the standard sequence which then spread far and wide. These include the radical reordering of Death and Time, the complete elimination of the Chastity card from the deck, and most important of all, the total loss of awareness in tarot players' minds of the connection between the game and the poems of Petrarch. Without that disconnection, we cannot easily explain things like the addition of the Sun, Moon, and Star to accompany the "World" (no longer known or identified as Eternity), the re-identification of Fame and Time as the "Triumphal Chariot" and the "Old Man"/"Hunchback" respectively, and the Florentine reversal of the top two trumps.

Re: Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks

80
Once near the end of 2016 ...
viewtopic.php?p=17682#p17682

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... 1465-1.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... 1465-2.jpg

Image

Image
... it's taken from this:
Image
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Petr ... 1465-2.jpg
... with the comment
"Triumphs of Fame, Time, and Eternity
Attributed to Domenico di Zanobi. - Scanned from Virtù d'amore. Pittura nuziale nel Quattrocento fiorentino."

There are female figures with a sword and with scales, which look like the cardinal virtue Justice, but actually they are meant to present Fame, the fourth of Petrarca's 6 Trionfi.

*************

Nathaniel,
you restarted a thread, which was inactive since 2013. In 2016/2017 some other new observations started at other places, which possibly would have been better placed in a thread with the title "Petrarca Trionfi poem motifs in early Trionfi decks" as this one. Well, this happens occasionally in the dynamic of Forum discussions.
Huck
http://trionfi.com
cron