Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

11
mikeh wrote:I did not in my exposition explain with specifics how particular pairs corresponded to particular chess pieces. Emperor and Empress are obvious. Cards with horses correspond to chess Knights. The card with castles corresponds to a chess Rook, sometimes called a Tower or Castle, so therefore the other card with trumpets also corresponds to a rook. The cards with old men correspond to the bishops, because those are the only ones left, and bishops are senior church officials. This is mostly straight from Huck, except for the part about the bishops.

Also, the power of the chess pieces at that time corresponds roughly to the power of the corrersponding cards. The weakest pieces were the King and Queen; likewise the Empress and the Emperor were the lowest cards. The strongest pieces were the rooks, which correspond to the Fame and Angel cards. The others are in both cases in the middle. (I am simply repeating what you have often said.)

So do we agree or disagree? I'm not sure. I am still puzzled about what you have as the 16th card. 6 from Petrarch + 7 virtues + 1 Emperor + 1 Empress = 15. It seems to me that Wheel of Fortune is the only possibility. In your picture, you have Time twice, both with a question mark. There is still another card to account for.

Another question: how modern are the words for the chess piece that don't mean "bishop", i.e. alfiere, läufer?
"6 from Petrarch + 7 virtues + 1 Emperor + 1 Empress = 15."

6 from Petrarch:

1. Amor = 8 pawns
2. Chastity = 1 queen
3. Death = 2 knights
4. Fame = 2 towers
5. Time = 2 bishops .... (that's why I've Time twice)
6. Eternity = 1 Emperor
----------------------------
6 Petrarch figures = 16 chess figures

"6 from Petrarch + 7 virtues + 1 Emperor + 1 Empress = 15" ... this attempts to add apple + oranges.

11 cards of these 16 are given, 3 missing virtues we might fill in. That's 14 known cards. Two cards (Death + Chariot) have horses (knights). Two cards (Fame + Judgment) have towers (rooks). Empress + Emperor are likely King + Queen. 7 Virtues + Love are the pawns. 2 cards are missing, 2 bishop positions are free. It might be pope or popess, but then Father Time (which is necessary for the idea, that Filippo Maria followed the six allegories of Petrarca) would be missing. If we take Father Time as the "good advisor" ("Man" in Courier) and the 15th card, then we have as possible "negative advisor" the cards ...

1. Fool ... cause of the French "Fou" = Fool for the bishop, or the Courier "Schleich" figure (presented as Fool).

2. The Hanging Man" as the treacherous traitor ... The word "Schleich" associates a spy.

3. Fortune, cause Fortune and Father Time appeared occasionally as a pair (Albert 1424) and cause Fortune appeared in the Brera-Brambilla Tarocchi.

4. ... a possibly completely unknown figure (still a possibility)

Image


Image

see ...
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=460&start=80#p15428
figures of the Ströbeck Courier chess set, reported by Silenus.

There is no way to decide this question, I guess. So one better stays with the position, that one cannot decide, which figure it once should have been.
Another question: how modern are the words for the chess piece that don't mean "bishop", i.e. alfiere, läufer?
Renner, Courier and Läufer, that's somehow all the same thing. Courier chess is clearly old (oldest reference in the Wigalois, begin 13th century. A Ströbeck legend dates it already to begin 11th century.

Alfiere meaning elephant is very old and an imported expression from Eastern sources. The elephant still has the bishop position in Eastern chess variants.
In Western chess the elephant moved from bishop position to the rook position (it's still a question, when).

Image


Courier chess has Man+Schleich, the Curierer or Courier and a Bow shooter (Schütze), somehow all at the bishop position:

Image


Image


In extant old chess sets occasionally bow shooters are recognizable as chess figures.

"Bishop" seems to be more an English expression. Fou (similar to Schleich) is French. The bishop position has the most changes.
The cards with old men correspond to the bishops, because those are the only ones left, and bishops are senior church officials.
Cessolis brought up the "advisor" for the bishop position, mostly shown in a sitting position ...

Image


.. sometimes with a table ...

Image


... and then we're somehow near to the PMB-Magician.

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

At AT ...
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=251432
... you wrote:
However I have learned from both Franco and Huck. From Franco I learn that the suit cards' subjects parallel those of chess, including the individual court cards. From Huck I learn that the triumphs parallel the pieces in the way they are designed. The result is that for me chess permeates all 80 cards of the CY pack.
... :-) ... you could have learned it also from the observation at ...

Image

http://trionfi.com/0/c/35/
(2003)

In the upper part of the picture you see 16 suit cards and sorted according the chess board. If one should give the Aces and Tens to the rooks (as it was done in this article) or for instance to the bishop pair doesn't change the world, a 1-to-1-identification is recognizable and plausible (even when in details some things stay insecure).

Also the expectations about the Love card (then in 2003 set in front of Emperor) have changed meanwhile, now it's clear, that this belongs to the Queen.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

12
Huck wrote
2 cards are missing, 2 bishop positions are free. It might be pope or popess, but then Father Time (which is necessary for the idea, that Filippo Maria followed the six allegories of Petrarca) would be missing. If we take Father Time as the "good advisor" ("Man" in Courier) and the 15th card, then we have as possible "negative advisor" the cards ...

1. Fool ... cause of the French "Fou" = Fool for the bishop, or the Courier "Schleich" figure (presented as Fool).

2. The Hanging Man" as the treacherous traitor ... The word "Schleich" associates a spy.

3. Fortune, cause Fortune and Father Time appeared occasionally as a pair (Albert 1424) and cause Fortune appeared in the Brera-Brambilla Tarocchi.

4. ... a possibly completely unknown figure (still a possibility)
Well, we aren't dealing with certainties in any of this, only probabilities. Of the four you mention, number 3 is by far the most probable, because it relates to what we actually see in Milan at that time, not Germany or France. Besides the BB, there is also the PMB just a little later, and the fact that Boccaccio featured the Wheel as one of his triumphs in his own version, the Amarosa Visione. There was also the suggestion, in a Playing Card article in French a couple of years ago, I can't remember the author but we both discussed it, that Filippo had a personal attachment to some large image in his palace of a Wheel of Fortune.

Also, your number 3 is the only one that follows the principle of a visual element in common between the two cards of the pair, in this case two old men. The others use different principles. The PMB Fool isn't old, nor any other 15th century Italian Fool cards.

Huck wrote,
Alfiere meaning elephant is very old and an imported expression from Eastern sources. The elephant still has the bishop position in Eastern chess variants.
"Alfiere" doesn't sound like an Arabic, Persian, etc. loan-word into Italy, and anyway it didn't mean "elephant". It means, at least currently, "standard bearer". I wanted to know about the word, not the piece. Likewise for the German "laufer". I would still like to know.

And about http://trionfi.com/0/c/35/. Yes, if I'd remembered it from when I read it years ago. You should cross-reference your different articles on the same subject, at the end of each of them, so we can find them. Franco surely didn't know about, or at least remember, it either. I read one thing from 2003, directed there by Google (http://trionfi.com/0/c/30/), and didn't realize there was more, updated in 2009 (even though, yes, there's a link on the left side of the page).

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

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mikeh wrote: Huck wrote,
Alfiere meaning elephant is very old and an imported expression from Eastern sources. The elephant still has the bishop position in Eastern chess variants.
"Alfiere" doesn't sound like an Arabic, Persian, etc. loan-word into Italy, and anyway it didn't mean "elephant". It means, at least currently, "standard bearer". I wanted to know about the word, not the piece. Likewise for the German "laufer". I would still like to know.
It is a case of two words which are now spelled the same, but have different etymologies.

http://www.etimo.it/?term=alfiere

Search with "alfiro", "alfino" and "alfido" if you want to find sources which discuss the evolution of the word and its assimilation with alfiere.
Image

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

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Yes right, also at ...
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfiere_(scacchi)
Nel gioco degli scacchi l'alfiere (♗, ♝) è uno dei pezzi a disposizione dei giocatori. Assieme al cavallo è uno dei cosiddetti "pezzi leggeri" in contrapposizione a donna e torre chiamati "pezzi pesanti". L'alfiere viene spesso rappresentato con il copricapo da vescovo dato che nei paesi anglofoni è chiamato appunto Bishop (vescovo); il nome è invece di origine arabo-persiana. Il nome "Alfiere" deriva infatti da "al-fil" che significa "l'elefante" (al=articolo determinativo; fil=elefante) in quanto nei paesi del Medio Oriente questo pezzo raffigurava tale animale[1].
At Alfonso's chess book c. 1280 (translation) ... alffiles
And of the other pieces which are greater one resembles the king, who is the lord of the army and
he should be in one of the two middle squares.2
And next to him in the other middle square, is another piece which resembles the fers (alfferez)
who carries the standard of the king’s colours. And there are some men who do not know the
name and call him “fersa” (alfferza).3 And these two pieces each one plays alone and does not
have another in all the sixteen pieces that resembles them.
And in the two other squares beside these there are two other pieces which resemble each other
and they call them fils (alffiles) in Arabic which means the same thing in our language as
elephants, which the kings used to bring into battle and each one brought at least two so if one of
them died, that the other one would remain.

And in the other two squares next to these there are two other pieces which resemble each other
and everyone commonly calls them horses but their proper names are knights, which are placed
as captains by order of the king, for the purpose of leading the ranks of the army.
And in the other two squares on the end [f. 3v] there are two other pieces which also resemble
each other and they call them rooks and they are made wide and stretched because they resemble
the ranks of the soldiers.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/nenjj ... 283%29.pdf

Shatranj (old Persian chess variant)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatranj
Pīl, alfil, aufin, and similar (elephant; from Persian پيل pīl; al- is the Arabic for "the") moves exactly two squares diagonally, jumping over the square between. Each pīl could reach only one-eighth of the squares on the board, and because their circuits were disjoint, they could never capture one another. This piece might have had a different move sometimes in chaturanga, where the piece is also called "elephant". The pīl was replaced by the bishop in modern chess. Even today, the word for the bishop piece is alfil in Spanish, alfiere in Italian, "fil" in Turkish, "fīl" in Persian and слон ("elephant") in Russian. The elephant piece survives in xiangqi with the limitations that the elephant in xiangqi cannot jump over an intervening piece and is restricted to the owner's half of the board. In janggi, its movement was changed to become a slightly further-reaching version of the horse.
The interesting question is, how and when the Eastern elephant (at the position of the bishop) mutated in Europe to an elephant with castle (at the position of the Rook).

Another important change is, that only European chess had a Queen, the others had a male figure or an animal. The expression "fers" (= Queen; used by Alfonso's chess book) is said to have developed from the word Wezir.
mikeh wrote: And about http://trionfi.com/0/c/35/. Yes, if I'd remembered it from when I read it years ago. You should cross-reference your different articles on the same subject, at the end of each of them, so we can find them. Franco surely didn't know about, or at least remember, it either. I read one thing from 2003, directed there by Google (http://trionfi.com/0/c/30/), and didn't realize there was more, updated in 2009 (even though, yes, there's a link on the left side of the page).
In the history of Trionfi.com it was so, that the first articles developed at a geocities-site. Later some of these early pages were transferred to Trionfi.com.

Nowadays a lot of the Trionfi.com installments are "too old". It would need a lot of energy to update them. And the general interest has slowed down, as we know all.

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

I don't think, that the Wheel is the most promising 16th trump (if one accepts the Father Time as the necessary 15th). The Wheel of Fortune stood for "games of luck", not for "games of skill". Games of luck were prohibited, games of skill had their chances to be allowed. Chess did run as "game of skill".
Since recently we know, that two men were punished for playing Trionfi in 1444 (in Florence; one of Franco's new findings in 2015). In 1450 Trionfi was allowed in Florence (naturally we don't know, which version was allowed ... 14 trumps, 16 or 20 or 22 ?).

Brera-Brambilla (which has the Wheel of Fortune) must not have had the same trumps as Cary-Yale (actually it had only 14 cards in its suits, not 16) ... a 4x14+16 structure wouldn't make much sense. Actually it's a possibility, that Brera-Brambilla with only 2 extant trumps was an Imperatori deck, possibly with only 4 or 8 trumps.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

15
Thanks for the etymology and the quote from 1280. In other words, these terms were very old, not modern. "Bishop" is what is modern.

Huck wrote,
I don't think, that the Wheel is the most promising 16th trump (if one accepts the Father Time as the necessary 15th). The Wheel of Fortune stood for "games of luck", not for "games of skill". Games of luck were prohibited, games of skill had their chances to be allowed. Chess did run as "game of skill".
Since recently we know, that two men were punished for playing Trionfi in 1444 (in Florence; one of Franco's new findings in 2015). In 1450 Trionfi was allowed in Florence (naturally we don't know, which version was allowed ... 14 trumps, 16 or 20 or 22 ?).

Brera-Brambilla (which has the Wheel of Fortune) must not have had the same trumps as Cary-Yale (actually it had only 14 cards in its suits, not 16) ... a 4x14+16 structure wouldn't make much sense. Actually it's a possibility, that Brera-Brambilla with only 2 extant trumps was an Imperatori deck, possibly with only 4 or 8 trumps.
The difference between chess and tarot is that there is an element of chance in tarot, i.e. how the cards are dealt. The Wheel is an indication of that difference.

The game of Emperors was actually called "VIII Emperors". Franco, in the table in his recent note at http://www.naibi.net/A/501-COMTRIO-Z.pdf, which I translated at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1074&start=70#p16636, second row from the bottom, suggests that there were 8 special cards distributed among the 4 suits. If so, the name "VIII Emperors" suggests that they all would have been Emperors. Pehaps it was an Eastern and a Western in each suit. If so, there wouldn't have been a Wheel of Fortune.
Image

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

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mikeh wrote:Thanks for the etymology and the quote from 1280. In other words, these terms were very old, not modern. "Bishop" is what is modern.

There are very old extant chess figures, which indicate, that they were interpreted as bishop. It must have been a very old variant, possibly or even likely an "English version".

Image

http://imgur.com/KvlN2
There is more than one figure like this. At this place it is said "900 years old, found in Scotland". Possibly they came from Scandinavia.

There is more than 400 proven years of chess in Europe in c. 1440, possibly even 600 in reality (some sources insist. that Islamic states in Spain knew chess). That's a lot of time ... it makes logic, that local variant patterns existed. "Bishop" is an English word, Läufer a German, Fou a French, Alfieri an Italian (also influenced by Moors) and Spain had a similar word. Somewhere (? Bohemia ?) bow shooters must have existed.

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

The Imperatori cards are a complex question, not easily handled with a few words.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

17
Thanks Huck. I was wondering about the shape of the piece. We can still discuss chess, and Imperator cards (I'd like to know your thoughts.) And actually, I do have something more to say about the "chess model" as it pertains to the suits. But I need to get to a scanner first.But in the meantime I am going to post some other things about Franco's "note". I have a few criticisms of it, perhaps minor. I've already posted these on ATF.

One issue is the question of whether each triumph has to somehow triumph over the one before it. Franco derives two principles from Marziano's example:
The sixteen additional cards must first of all correspond to a triumphal series, with a hierarchy that presents itself logically and easy to remember, and perhaps if possible organized like the series of the Trionfi of Petrarch, with a clear justification for why each triumphs over the previous card and is overtaken by the subsequent. If the succession in trick-taking power is not clear, it would be necessary to add the sequential numbers on the cards, as was done in the tarot later. The requirement indicated may be the only one necessary, but if following the example of Marziano is desired, there is a second to be fulfilled: the sixteen additional cards must also be able to be situated [dovrebbero essere situabili] into four groups of four triumphal cards, each at the head of one of the four suits of the 64 card deck identified earlier.
I want the second condition, of course. I disagree with the first. While it might be true that each god is somehow more important or powerful than the one before it in Marziano's sequence, I don't agree that this first requirement has to be followed for a game, and pack, of triumphs to be successful. For a pack to be carte a trionfi some of the cards have to depict triumphal themes. Also, since it is a trick-taking game, some cards should allegorically triumph over other cards. Petrarch's triumphs do that in relation to each other. But virtues do not have to triumph over other virtues, or even the card before it in the triumphal series. They are triumphal by virtue of their praiseworthiness in regard to the corresponding vice. If there is the sequence faith, hope, charity, it is enough that the sequence be not difficult to memorize, not that one virtue dominate over or be more important than another. In my proposal, the theologicals appear in just that order, the same as St. Paul in I Corinthians. So it is easy to remember. In Franco's, there is something similar, but it goes "hope, prudence, faith, charity" (below, my order on the left, his on the right).
Image

I do not see how each triumphs over the one before it. And it is a harder sequence to remember. Not only is the order different, but there is a cardinal virtue in the middle, prudence. The only reason I can imagine for it to be there is that it had to go somewhere, having been removed from the tarot sequence. It is probably a development after prudence was removed from the tarot sequence, but here put in the same general part of the deck.

The cardinal virtues, unlike the theologicals, were listed in numerous different ways during the Middle Ages. That is one reason they appear in numerous places in the order in different places and decks. In my proposal they go: justice, fortitude, temperance, prudence. This is precisely the order in which they appear in the Nicolas da Bologna c. 1355 illumination (below, the top row of that illumination).
Image

I am not sure of the provenance of this illumination, but Bologna at that time was ruled by the Visconti, and somehow it ended up in the Ambrosian Library of Milan. Probably it was in Milan at the time of the CY as well. This order, also in the cards, arranges the virtues in an order that puts prudence as the highest, because it governs all the others; in Plato, wisdom was the highest, but the point is the same. Temperance is second, probably because the principle of the mean between extremes, moderation, is another basic principle of virtue, as Aristotle had argued. Otherwise, justice should triumph over love, in the sense that the jealous extremes of passion need to be controlled by one's sense of justice. Also, faith and hope should triumph over the Wheel, when it brings misfortune. And Temperance, in the sense of proper governance of the appetites, can temporarily defeat Death. However the domination of the cardinal virtues is not simply over the card before it, as I read the allegory, but over all the cards in its foursome.

Franco's proposal, based on minchiate later, has the order "temperance, fortitude, justice". This is the order of presentation in Plato's Republic, once wisdom is removed. Temperance is presented there as governing the appetites, fortitude as governing the "spirited part" of the soul, and justice the soul as a whole. While the appetitive part is lower than the spirited part, which is lower than the rational part, it still isn't true that one virtue triumphs over another, because all are imposed by the rational part.

What is important, in my model, is that the sequence of cardinal virtues be memorized and as well what other cards belong in each foursome and in what order. Knowing the allegorical connection between the cardinal virtue and the other three cards would help in remembering these groups. Franco's order has a different principle. However it is not simply that of each card in the series triumphing over the one before it, because there are many possibilities.

In Gareth Knight 's book cited in my previous post, p. 201, I was pleased to see that he divided the triumphal cards according to precisely the same principle of one group for each of the four cardinal virtues (https://books.google.com/books?id=uraHx ... on&f=false). His exchange in the order of Fortitude and Justice seems related to the Golden Dawn's exchange of the positions of those two virtues in the sequence. It is nice to see that this principle can be applied even to the Waite-Smith, however much it differs from that of the CY. After introducing the four virtues, he relates each of the 22 cards to one of four corresponding "Halls": I cannot tell from Google Books' selection what the first one is, but the second is the "Hall of Strength", the third is the "Hall of Temperance" and the last is the "Hall of the World". Knight identifies the World card with Prudence.
Last edited by mikeh on 11 Feb 2016, 03:42, edited 3 times in total.

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

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Another disagreement I have with Franco is about the uniqueness of the CY. Most commentators on the CY emphasize that we do not know whether the CY was one of a kind or represented a type with many less exquisite examples. Dummett says (Il Mondo e l'Angelo, p. 52, quoted by Franco),
It is impossible to determine if the Visconti di Modrone pack was an isolated experiment, which was detached from a standard already established, or if it is the only surviving example of a primitive stage in which the tarot pack had not yet acquired the structure that was to later become canonical.
There is also Bandera and Tanzi (I tarocchi di Bembo 2013, p. 11). After listing the 22 special cards that at one time were called "trionfi", they go on to say:
Nella medisima tradizione, che fa tipica della Lombardia del Quattrocento, esiste poi un altro tipo di tarocchi, composto da un maggior numero di figure: sei anziche quattro, per ogni seme, con l'aggiunta del fante e del cavallo femmina per ogni seme, e, nel gruppo dei Trionfi, delle tri Virtù Teologali, Fede, Speranza e Carità.

(In the same tradition, which is typical of the fifteenth Lombardy, there is another type of tarot, composed of a greater number of figures, six instead of four for each suit, with the addition of the feminine page and knight for each suit, and, in the group of the Triumphs, the three Theolgical Virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity.)
This is rather extreme, simply calling the CY representative of a "tipo". However they may be thinking that even if unique, it is one of a type, just one with one member.

Most recently, there is Timothy Husband, The World at Play 2016, p. 80 (for what it is worth):
It is uncertain if this pack was uniquely structured or if it represents an earlier stage before the tarots were standardized.
Even though we have no documentation of any other of its type, there are reasons for thinking that the CY was not the first deck with features resembling the Marziano in Milan. There is the distance in time between the Marziano and the presumed date of the CY. In 15 or more years, the Marziano structure would likely have been forgotten. That is probably why Dummett in 1993 made the "conjecture" that the tarot was born in Milan around 1428-1430 (in Il Mondo e l'Angelo, for a quote giving c. 1428, see viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1019&p=15152&hilit ... ure#p15152). There is also, of course, the 1427 or 1428 marriage, a fit subject for a Love card: There was a Visconti tradition of commissioning illuminated manuscripts to commemorate their marriages (Edith Kirsch, Five Manuscripts of Giangaleazzo Visconti, 1991, cited at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=917). However it would not necessarily be Marie of Savoy and himself, because there had been other Savoy brides to Visconti husbands in the past: Caterina of Savoy and Blanche/Bianca of Savoy (Lorredan at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=917#p13405). The latter is the namesake of the bride in 1441.

Also, Filippo was engaged in a major illuminated manuscript project in 1428, uniquely in his life, that of finishing an illuminated manuscript begun by his father (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=917, again from Kirsch). He did not engage Michelino for this work, but a younger and less expensive artist, named Belbello (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=917&p=13420&hilit=belbello#p13420). It is not hard to imagine Filippo engaging him or some other to make a pack of cards as well. It would not have had Sforza heraldics on it, but then neither does the Brera-Brambilla. It may have been a game which at first only he played, perhaps with his mistress and daughter, and slowly descended to members of his court, including his condottiere.

The clothing then becomes possibly relevant in fixing the time of the type. It is true that playing cards later sometimes dressed their personages in clothes of an earlier time. Later art did so as well. But later practice is not to the point. What we need to know is the practice at that time, the 1440s. For that other works of art in the same period and geographical region are relevant. I have not myself done a thorough examination. The clothing, much of it, is clearly of an earlier time, around 1430 or earlier (see my blog post at http://mtocy.blogspot.com/2008/06/in-th ... n-why.html ; find "Tolfo". After that time, there was a mood against ostentation. There were even laws against it, called sumptuary laws. I don't have the dates for Milan, but for Venice 1433 was notable (http://sumptuarylaw.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... alian.html).

If the CY is one of a type, it may have been a commemorative, commemorating not only the Sforza-Visconti marriage but also a type no longer fashionable. In other words, far from being a forerunner of decks to come, it might have been a representative of a type long since superseded. We have no idea. In any case, the precise dating of the CY is now not so important, as long as we recognize that its type is of a certain period. Since the style conforms very precisely to work done by the Bembo workshop in the early 1440s, that is probably when the CY was made. The type may have gone back several years earlier. We simply don't know. We cannot say the CY is unique unless we do know, at least with some probability.

Another issue (not a disagreement, just an unresolved issue) is the temporal priority of my proposed order of the 16 triumphal cards vs. Franco's. Here are the two proposals again:
Image

In favor of mine are three points already made. First, the positioning of prudence looks ad hoc, as though once it had been eliminated from the tarot sequence, the longer sequence had to put it somewhere. Another point is that by bunching the three other virtues together, the structure of the sequence as four groups determined by the four cardinal virtues is lost. Unless some other principle governing the four groups can be found, we can at least say that Franco's proposal is more distant from the Marziano model than mine is. Another point is that if the source of the theologicals is St. Paul, his order departs from it.

A fourth point, also rather obvious: if the source of the triumph of Time is Petrarch, putting it before Death departs from it.

Finally, it is hard to identify the Minchiate/Florentine Chariot card as Chastity. Chastity is an especially feminine virtue, because men needed to be sure that their heirs were theirs. With the Temperance card right after Lover, it would seem that it is this virtue that triumphs over Love; if Petrarch is being followed, Temperance is this sequence's version of Chastity. What the Chariot triumphs over is Fortune. If so, the Chariot is simply a symbol of victory in general, and not chastity. And in fact in all the type A Chariot cards, including that of the minchiate, the person on top is male, a Triumphator in the Roman tradition, in which military victories were celebrated by triumphal parades where the victor rode in a chariot. It is a person like Mars in the so-called "Mantegna Tarocchi", who sits on his triumphal chariot. This is another deviation from Petrarch.

To be sure, such deviations are not proof that mine is earlier, because later versions of works sometimes seek to restore things that earlier versions, wanting to be improve on their model, somehow departed from. These are merely considerations that suggest a temporal priority. It is more likely that someone using a source would follow it than depart from it.

Two last points: I am not suggesting that my proposed order for the CY, one that strictly follows that which was given to the Beinecke Library, is exactly right. It is only the division into groups that matters. Second, my proposal should not be construed as an "ur-tarot", that is, the original version of the tarot sequence. If the CY is representative of a type, we have no idea what the original order was. The numbers were not on the cards; so it could easily have been a matter of experimentation. Also, we have no idea what else was around, including at earlier times and other places. Since there are suggestions elsewhere of a 14 card sequence, the ur-tarot might have been 14 cards, corresponding to suits of 14. Or 13 or 12, corresponding to suits of that number. We have no idea.

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

19
If we transport the Michelino deck ideas to the Cary-Yale ...

16 = Jupiter = Emperor = ETERNITY
15 = Juno = Empress = CHASTITY
14 = Minerva, virgin = triumphal chariot with a bride = Chariot = one of the chess knights
13 = Venus = Love = one of the pawns, the opening pawn
...
that's the begin. But the star virgin in the Michelino deck is Daphne, second lowest trump

King-Queen-Knight-Page is the basic model

so

16 = Jupiter = Emperor = ETERNITY = King
15 = Juno = Empress = upper CHASTITY = Queen
02 = Daphne, another virgin = triumphal chariot with a bride = Chariot = somehow (with horses) related to knight
.... lower CHASTITY (?)
01 = Amor, very young, the child = AMOR

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In the usual Tarot we have ...

4 = Emperor = King
3 = Empress = Queen
2 = Papessa = virgin = related to Knight
1 = Magician = Page
0 = Fool = funny Page

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6 Court cards in the Hofämterspiel:

4 kings, not numbered
4 Queens, not numbered
4 Hofmeister, number 10, somehow = Ober
4 Marschall, number 9, somehow = Unter
4 Junckfrawe (virgins), number 6
4 Fools, number 1 (perhaps also = Unter)

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5 court cards in the John of Rheinfelden deck, somehow relatable to Hofämterspiel

4 kings, connected to number 15
4 Queens, connected to number 14
4 Ober (Marschall), connected to number 13
4 Virgíns (court ladies), connected to number 12
4 Unter (Marschall), connected to number 11

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Trumps in the Karnöffel poem (Mysner, c. 1450), possibly with special cards

Emperor
Devil
Pope
Karnöffel
4 (4?, not numbered) heilje lerer (holy teachers)

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Trumps in the later Karnöffel, no special cards

2 first Emperor
3 second Emperor
4 third Emperor
5 fourth Emperor
6 Pope
7 Devil
Karnöffel beats all

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Decks observed by Meister Ingold, with 4x13 structure (1432). Ober and Unter are replaced by ...

A. Queens and Virgins

B. 8 funny professions, one of these female [structure as the 8 officers in Chess; 1 Queen and 7 others; the Queen seems to be a prostitute (Toypelweib) and the King is her Ruffian (pimp)]

At least the 8 funny professions seem to have a hierarchical sorting, likely used for a trumping rule.

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Ringmann around 1509 used 8 playing cards to teach Latin grammar. 4 are from wordly courts (King, Queen, Mundschenk (cup-bearer, looks like the Tarot Magician a little bit), Fool), 4 have lower churchly ranks (monk, priest, vicar and sacristan)

Image

... shows all 8 figures in one pictures

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Ferrarese developments:

1422: a document, which (only possibly) speaks of 13 cards, which were possibly added to a usual 4x13 deck to form a 5th row and a new deck with 5x13 structure.
1423: 8 very expensive "Imperatori cards" imported from Florence ... possibly intended to add them to another 4x13-deck to form a new 4x15 deck(also the JvR-deck had 4x15 structure) and also the Michelino deck.
1423: a very expensive card production, which costs 40 ducats (the second most expensive playing card deck behind the 1500 ducatos for the Michelino deck).

The notes of this time seem all relate to the presence of the young Parisina, wife of the signore of Ferrara Niccolo d'Este.

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German developments:

A. Council of Constance (1415 and later): with 100.000 participants and many international visitors; it caused cultural exchanges on many levels. Possibly it caused an increased interest in card playing in Italy, which caused San Bernardino to preach against it.

B. The German Quaterionen-Eagle



This sort of political system developed in the early 1420s by a poem of an anonymous, parallel to the first "Imperatori cards" note (1323) and to Karnöffel (1426), which also was addressed as Kaiser-Spiel (a German way to formulate Imperatori-game). Different nobility ranks were presented in groups of 4 (as a card deck has 4 suits). The system became rather popular and existed a long time.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternio ... verfassung

A first appearance of the system shall have been in the Römer in Frankfurt in the Kaiser-Saal around 1414, so short before the council of Constance (King Sigismondo was already reigning), possibly based on an earlier model, which already existed in the time of emperor Charles IV.

It seems logical to assume, that there might have been once these heraldry details also on playing card decks, but - if it existed - no deck or any report about it has survived. Later there were other heraldry decks, one is very early by Thomas Murner. The Hofämter game uses shields for 4 countries, shields were used in Switzerland as a suit signs, Tarot cards often used heraldry of their owners.

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That's all somehow about the questions of the Imperatori phase
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: New Pratesi note on the Cary-Yale

20
All,
Mike’s translation of Pratesi, who states the following after recognizing Depaulis’ bringing attention to Giusti’s 1440 first-ever mentioning of tarot:
But if in 1440 "normal" triumph packs already exist, it must be deduced that the CY pack, precisely because of its exceptionality, coexisting among objects of more common use, is of secondary historical significance.
The fundamental sea-change in tarot research is precisely that: everything now points to tarot’s roots as Florentine - not Milanese [and thus so much for Marziano] - and yet became something else in the city of its origins: minchiate. There is no reason to do the reverse and look for tarot’s origins in minchiate when there is no historical evidence that places it before tarot.

The issue of the number of trumps: If making the trumps equal the suits was such a pivotal idea then the emergence of the PMB is somewhat inexplicable. On the contrary, if suits were one thing and the trumps another, then there is no problem in viewing the CY exactly as the PMB, with a different number of trumps and suits. In my view, the CY’s 16 card suits’s six court personages follow the original Florentine Love trump card of which we have a surviving exemplar in the CVI where three couples dance below Eros; the court cards are courting. The 16 card suits represent the social milieu, something inferior to the trumps, a wholly separate class of abstractions, not representations of man.
mike h. wrote
It makes some logic to assume, that the popularity of the Petrarca poem triggered the choice of the name "Trionfi" for specialized playing card decks. In the same time the interest in "triumphal processions" increased and the Florentine fashion evolved to decorate cassone and other materials with motifs of the Petrarca Trionfi poem.
Where is the contemporary interest in connecting the 7 Virtues and Petrarchan Triumphs into a larger/merged series? And you have to throw Boccaccio in to boot (“Wheel of Fortune….was one of the triumphs in Boccaccio’s Amorosa Visione. That would make 16”). So there are three sources being cobbled together.

I’ll stick with the singular source of Dante whose Paradiso’s seven spheres of the Virtues/planets, through which the Church Militant ascends (writ large in the Florence’s “Spanish Chapel”, in whose church Pope Eugene was staying during Anghiari). Ultimately the Paradiso culminates in the Church Triumphant – the source for the name trionfi – in the symbol of a white rose, found on the very lips of the herald celebrating the triumph of Anghiari:
“O Lord, we praise you, all of us singing, / together with your Mother the glorious Virgin, / and praising all the apostles / and especially the great Baptist /with all the court of heaven / portrayed in the form of a white rose, / since it is the day when he who opens the portals / of Paradise admits the Florentine people, / who were victorious by just Fortune / against the evil Niccolo Piccinino / and his followers…. (translation in Dale V. Kent, Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: the patron's oeuvre, 2000: 280).
I need no bricoleur for my theory, and the evidence is plain: Dante was of penultimate interest to Florence at the time of the earliest mention of tarot and it was Dante – not Petrarch – put to verse to celebrate the great triumph over Visconti Milan and the Florentine traitors.

As for 1428 – unless one undertakes to prove how the Sforza pomegranates and fountains were a later addition, this early date is an impossibility…like chess, currently in checkmate by the bishop (or was it an elephant?).

Phaeded
cron