Phaeded wrote:

• “NAIBI SOLD BY SILK-DEALERS” (Pratesi, 03.03.2012) . 1-23-45 the first trioni deck sold in this group was in Ancona [in Sforza’s Marche], with several other decks there going back to 1442. …Of particular interest outside of Tuscany: Pelligrini family from Bergamo [Colleoni’s hometown] who move to to Ancona and are active in the whole Marche region.
• “NAIBI ON SALE” (Pratesi, 27.01.2012). Puri family: “On the cover of the book that will be used below we find a sentence that is noted also in the catalogue of the archive(4) clearly indicating that the owner left Florence and moved to Milan [precisely around the date the PMB would have first appeared:]. "A dì 12 novembre 1451 si partì Maso da Firenze et andò al nome di Dio a Melano."”

hi Phaeded,

Bergamo had been Venetian territory since 1419/28 and it seems plausible to assume, that people from Bergamo organizing trade in Ancona had a function for a traffic way between Florence and Venice, avoiding land ways through regions controlled by Visconti. So I would assume ...

For the Puri family it seems, that they just took the opportunity to trade playing cards in a short period of increasing playing card interests (1447) and stopped the idea and the business soon later. So we cannot assume, that they still traded with them, when they went to Milan in 1451. Likely there were a lot of short-time-engagements in this business.

Ross wrote,

But my main problem with your reasoning is why you continue to think that the Church had anything to say about a private commission of an intimate game for the Sforza family. Do you imagine that there was an inquisitor casting a watchful eye over everything the noble families did, censoring material he didn't like? This is the sort of scenario that your comments, along with those of Huck and Phaeded, often evoke. That the Church was up in everybody's most intimate business all the time.

You misread me. I was using papal pressure after 1507 as an explanation for why Bologna got rid of the Popess and kept the deck fairly constant throughout the centuries, and perhaps also for the rise of Minchiate in Florence. I said that Milan, like France, Ferrara, and Venice, was an example of a place where papal pressure would have been much less.

Ross wrote, about the Popess:

But the personification already existed intact long before Tarot, in Giotto's Fides, and we must assume that there are other instances, evolving in the context of the 14th century, that we haven't seen yet. You can find surprising things in obscure churches and manuscript illuminations that remain unpublished or uncommented on by people not necessarily interested in what we are interested in. And of course much has been lost. But the point is that that Roman Catholic Church WAS "the Faith", the only faith for them, so the line blurs between the personification of the Theological Virtue and what would be a supererogatory representation of the Church. Before there was a legal alternative, the question of "what is Faith?" is answered by "the Christian faith, taught by the Church". So our Popess grows out of the representation of the Theological Virtue, because they were the same thing for so long and there was no need to make a distinction. This need came with the Protestants, and the doctrines of Trent.

There was just no difference between "Fides" and "Ecclesia".

I don't deny that the PMB borrows from Giotto's image. I also don't deny that there was more need to define the Church as the Roman institutional hierarchy after German sponsorship of Luther than before. But the need did exist before then, not only because of the Hussites but because of the numerous heretical groups that denied the authority of the Roman hierarchy, even without princely support (though often without princely suppression), and in times and places very close to those of Giotto. In that context Giotto's "Fides", "Faith", is just one of the virtues, like the other personifications in the chapel, no more or less identified with the Church of Rome than."Hope" or "Charity", and something even the heretics could agree with.

As to the "surprising things" that may be uncovered, that is like whether there are accounts of tarot cards yet to be discovered, and many other things in manuscripts and churches that can mean many things. If there are such, we'll see. I try to keep an open mind and base myself on the evidence. (For example, if there were no popes in memory--in the area of talk, I do not think we can restrict ourselves to "current" popes, as I initially said--who would have been held to have had children, then I take back my supposition that there would have been jokes about the pope's children's mothers. I will research that issue. Maybe I was confused and the popes had mistresses only later than the introduction of the Popess card.)

Ross wrote
I don't think there is any evidence that this particular deck circulated outside the family sphere, or was a gift with any political overtones.

The Papess was not political per se, but the deck is a whole was. Huck, these comments apply equally to your casual dimissal of Bergamo being Venetian - ignoring the fact that Sforza must have been promising this hometown to his second in command at the conclusion of the war with Venice. Is it all really a coincidence that a portion of the PMB remains in the city for which that last letter stands? Or that Bergamo's coat of arms appear on some of the PMB's court cards (see the Stemmario Trivulziano, although I admit the silver on the card has to stand for white) and that later iterations of the PMB feature that city's ruler's coat of arms (Venice outdid Sforza and gave the former second in command his hometown as part of his condotte)? An image Ross posted elsewhere on this webpage:

Phaeded wrote:

Huck, these comments apply equally to your casual dimissal of Bergamo being Venetian - ignoring the fact that Sforza must have been promising this hometown to his second in command at the conclusion of the war with Venice. Is it all really a coincidence that a portion of the PMB remains in the city for which that last letter stands? Or that Bergamo's coat of arms appear on some of the PMB's court cards (see the Stemmario Trivulziano, although I admit the silver on the card has to stand for white) and that later iterations of the PMB feature that city's ruler's coat of arms (Venice outdid Sforza and gave the former second in command his hometown as part of his condotte)? An image Ross posted elsewhere on this webpage:

hm. I don't understand, what you want to say. I don't know about the detail, that Bergamo had been a second hometown to Sforza, if you know something about it, it would be interesting. When did Sforza promise that? After Lodi? In 1441? In 1450?

And this shown card is not from the PMB. In my humble opinion it's from a type of deck, which was made in 1512 under the influence of Isabella d'Este for the restoration of the Sforza in Milan. Nec spe nec metu, a motto adapted by Isabella in 1505.
The existence of the PMB deck in Bergamo might well explain from a later movement of family members.

And I've a slow computer in the moment, I don't search for the Stemmario Trivulziano.

Phaeded wrote:

Ross wrote
I don't think there is any evidence that this particular deck circulated outside the family sphere, or was a gift with any political overtones.

The Papess was not political per se, but the deck is a whole was. Huck, these comments apply equally to your casual dimissal of Bergamo being Venetian - ignoring the fact that Sforza must have been promising this hometown to his second in command at the conclusion of the war with Venice. Is it all really a coincidence that a portion of the PMB remains in the city for which that last letter stands? Or that Bergamo's coat of arms appear on some of the PMB's court cards (see the Stemmario Trivulziano, although I admit the silver on the card has to stand for white) and that later iterations of the PMB feature that city's ruler's coat of arms (Venice outdid Sforza and gave the former second in command his hometown as part of his condotte)?

It took me a while to figure out all of the allusions in this dense paragraph, but I think I have it now. First, just a technical question, how is a "fact" that Sfroza promised Bergamo to Colleone if you can only surmise that he "must have been" promising it? The "must" makes your statement an unreal condition, hence not a fact. Why use "must have" if you have proof that he was in fact making the promise?

Just nitpicking.

It may well be a coincidence that the deck ended up in Bergamo. These decks were valuable collectibles, and got sold, traded, stolen and lost over the centuries. The Bergamo (PMB now) deck is not particulary Bergamese, so why would it be significant for it to be there anyway?

I'm not sure what you mean by "Bergamo's coat of arms appear on some of the PMB's court cards." The only thing that resembles the current Bergamo stemma is on the Knight of Batons, but the colors are actually the reverse of what Bergamo uses.






(current Bergamo shield)


(the oldest one I could find, from 1817, a half hour search)

It doesn't seem like the colors would change sides from the 15th century to today. The difference between dexter and sinister is very precise in heraldry. I guess you'd have to show me a Bergamo stemma from the middle of the quattrocento that had the colors on the opposite side to make me take this identification seriously.

Michael Dummett couldn't find an Italian city that corresponded to this shield. In The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards (Geroge Brazillier, 1986), p. 74, he writes about the Knight of Batons shield (he also notes the much darker one at the front of the horse's caparison): "It doesn not appear to be the coat of arms of any Italian city, and the only family I have found with those arms is the Bon family, patricians of Venice, with whom there is no reason to suppose that Francesco Sforza had any particular connection. Since we do not know the history of the cards between the fifeenth and the nineteenth centuries, it is possible that they were once owned by the Bon family, who had their coat of arms overpainted onto the cards."

Whatever you think of that last speculation, Sandrina Bandera at least alludes to the history of the cards in the 18th century, when they were mentioned in the will of Antonio Maria Ambiveri (1725-1782). From the Brera catalogue of the 1999 exhibition of the cards I tarocchi: Il caso e la fortuna (p.64): "...l'Accademia Carrara possiede ventisei carte, di cui cinque trionfi e sette carte figurate; la collezione privata tredici carte numerali. Attraverso due precedenti lasciati testamentari (primo del canonico conte Ambiveri e poi della famiglia Donati) le carte parvennero al conte Alessandro Colleoni. Questo patteggiò con il conte Francesco Baglioni ventisei carte del mazzo da lui posseduto, in cambio di alcuni dipinti (...). Quando il conte Baglioni morì (1900), le ventisei carte in sua proprietà furono lasciate insieme al resto del sua collezione all'Accademia Carrara. Per quanto reguarda le carte in possesso della famiglia Colleoni, trentacinque di esse entrarono nel mercato antiquario e nel 1911 furono vendute dalla ditta parigina Hamburger Frères a John Pierpont Morgan..."

The Accademia Carrara possesses 26 cards, including 5 trionfi and 7 court cards; the private collection (which Kaplan (Encyc. II, p. 45) identifies as the Colleoni family) 13 number cards. After two preceding bequests (the first of the canon count Ambiveri and after that of the Donati family) the cards came into the possession of count Alessandro Colleoni. With count Francesco Baglioni he traded 26 of those in his possession for some paintings (Bandera gives here a couple of examples). When count Baglioni died (1900), the 26 cards in his possession were left together with the rest of his collection to the Accademia Carrara. As far as the cards in the possession of the Colleoni family, 35 of them went onto the antiquities market and in 1911 were sold by the aforesaid Hamburger Frères to John Pierpont Morgan..."

(Note that in the literature you might find "Colleoni-Baglioni" as a name for this deck (all 74 cards), which is what Bandera calls the set)

So it appears that all 74 were together with Ambiveri, some member of the Donati family, and Colleoni, until he split it up.

The real coincidence is that the deck has anything to do with Colleoni at all. But Ambiveri and Donati are old Bergamese families, so it is up to you to dig further than Ambiveri if you want to find a connection with Sforza.

Ross,
All of my claims certainly warrant additional evidence, but at all events the coat of arms in the court figures are not Sforzan, which contradicts your own claim that the PMB did not circulate outside of the Sforzan court.

I will offer this for now:

1. The Stemmario Trivulzio (16th C) shows the red on the left for Bergamo.

2. I believe even today the Bergamesque - the entire principality - is indicated as red on the left; the municipality red on the right. In my view Sforza would have been offering the principality; Colleoni already had Martinego, etc. outside of Bergamo; and with good cause: Bergamo is much closer to Milan than where much of the fighting had occured, further east around Brescia; Venice always selfishily insisted on Crema as its war spoil - directly south of Bergamo. Together Crema and Bergamo would have been quite troubling to Sforza as a stragic threat to Milan.

Bergamo Province:



Phaeded

Phaeded wrote:Ross,
All of my claims certainly warrant additional evidence, but at all events the coat of arms in the court figures are not Sforzan, which contradicts your own claim that the PMB did not circulate outside of the Sforzan court.

Of course I didn't make that claim, I said:

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: I don't think there is any evidence that this particular deck circulated outside the family sphere, or was a gift with any political overtones.

An unidentified heraldic on the Knight of Batons hardly counts as evidence of anything, let alone definitive proof that this deck was not made for the Sforzas' private use.

I will offer this for now:

1. The Stemmario Trivulzio (16th C) shows the red on the left for Bergamo.

A picture will help your argument. If you can't scan it, photograph it somehow.

2. I believe even today the Bergamesque - the entire principality - is indicated as red on the left; the municipality red on the right. In my view Sforza would have been offering the principality

I can't find that the province (or principality) of Bergamo existed as such in the 15th century.

Bergamo Province:

Phaeded

Of course this looks nothing like what is on the Knight of Batons' horse's caparison, and takes us very far away from what we are discussing.

Can you show that this heraldry existed around 1450-1470?

Look at this heraldry from the Sforza De Sphaera, from the Children of Saturn picture, nearly contemporary with the cards. One of the shields closely allied with Sforza (one of the two on the entrance wall flanking Sforza, for instance) has the yellow-red division just like Bergamo. Of course there are three black lines crossing it, which makes it NOT Bergamo (one editor of the text, Sergio Samek-Ludovici, thinks the scene is set in a place "vaguely reminiscent of Pavia", but he doesn't identify the heraldry).


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/visc ... detail.jpg

It is important to be as exact as possible with heraldic identifications, with contemporary or near contemporary examples to the one you are trying to identify.

(the pattern of the divided colors on the other side of Sforza, blue checkered and red, is recurring in the book, and must be easily identifiable.)

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: (the pattern of the divided colors on the other side of Sforza, blue checkered and red, is recurring in the book, and must be easily identifiable.)

Here is the checkered and red heraldry on an army invading a city over a bridge, under Mars in the De Sphaera -


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/visc ... detail.jpg

Here is a battle scene in the Children of Mars page, with the crown heraldry defeating another clearly defined one. The audience of this book must have been able to identify the referents here -


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/visc ... detail.jpg

Here is a fellow in the checkered heraldry exchanging money under Mercury -


http://www.rosscaldwell.com/images/visc ... detail.jpg

Can we identify the heraldry here, and perhaps on the Saturn page as well?

Phaeded wrote: 2. I believe even today the Bergamesque - the entire principality - is indicated as red on the left; the municipality red on the right. In my view Sforza would have been offering the principality;

I can't find that Bergamo was ever a principality, i.e. a state headed by a prince.