Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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Prudence is shown with her usual attribute, the book. Trampling on Sardanapalus is also standard. The spear, if that's what it is, and that the book is inside a circle derives from Niccolo da Balogna; probably the usual staff is changed to a spear to indicate the her martial character, over Sardanapalus. I do not understand what point you are trying to make, Phaeded.

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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Mike,
Literally was just looking for the translation to see if it cast any light on the circular object held by Prudence - shield/mirror/what? The references to the ages of man/time, suggest a temporal component to go along with the spatial intimation of the traditional representation of the 'world' as circular (i.e., she encompasses both space and time, although she is typically just past-present/future...but all of those actions play out in space, in the 'world').

I have found two trecento Milanse large-scale sculptural Virtue series we seldom discuss here that oddly show Fortitude with the round shield:

Tomb of Augustine in San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, Pavia (significant as the most holy relic there in the Visconti's ancestral retreat away from Milan), 1367. On the rarely shown back side of the Arca di Sant'Agostino are the four Virtues - Prudence with 3-faces, pointing to which with her right hand and holding books in her left, Justice-standard, Temperance-standard, and a lion-draped Fortitude (lion head over head like in Giotto) holding a shield on which is apparently shown little cities as upon a 'world' but the dim photo is unclear:
Arca_di_S._Agostino_(1362),_Pavia,_S._Pietro_in_Ciel_d'Oro_Fortitude detail.jpg Arca_di_S._Agostino_(1362),_Pavia,_S._Pietro_in_Ciel_d'Oro_Fortitude detail.jpg Viewed 8355 times 47.42 KiB
line drawing detail: The other is the Milanese monument to St. Peter Martyr in the Portinari chapel of the Church of S. Eustorgio. Prudence is depicted the same as in Pavia, but this time the shield held by Fortitude is clearly a 'world' - an encircling sea from which wind gods blow from the cardinal directions: What complicates matters is that it was Giotto who gave Prudence her compass (which implies the world/circular shield shape) as evidenced in the Paduan Scrovegni chapel (look at the horizontal line in her "stylus") and in Assisi (clear there), and Giotto was in Milan to paint the Vainglory for Azzone Visconti near the end of his life, c. 1327. So why didn't Giotto's innovation of the compass influence either sculptural program (no compass in either) and why does Fortitude hold the circular shield/world instead? This changes in the Visconti Hours at the end of the Trecento and early Quattrocento as Prudence is now shown with compass, while Fortitude holds more traditional attributes. For comparison's sake is the Giotto-inspired seven virtues series in the Palazzo Minerbi, Fererra, where Prudence holds the compass to the world, c. 1360-70, so a rival representation existed contemporary to the sculptural programs in Milan, at least the Pavia one.

All of this matters if the Milanese CY World is conflated with Prudence.

Phaeded

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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I do not understand what you are saying, or how it relates to the CY "World" card. The lady at the top has trumpets, no book, no three faces. She looks like Fama. The scene at the bottom looks like it might be a quest for fame, but the meaning is obscure. I fail to see anything relating to Prudence. A circular shield on a Fortitude depiction does not help, even if there happen to be castles in it, or an island surrounded by water. I don't know if you have a point or not. That you draw a circle with a compass, and the compass was used on representations is quite a stretch, too, if you want to argue (and perhaps you don't, I am just trying to see some logical train of thought) that therefore a card with a rectangular scene of castles is Prudence. If so, the Fortitude depictions you showed are Prudence, too, or a conflation of virtues. But I would not guess that from the pictures. You will have to say more.

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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Mike,
What I'm trying to discuss are the alternate versions of Prudence, regional and otherwise, and how/why they changed, especially in Milan (especially in light of the previously undiscussed world with Fortitude). Understanding that is a prerequisite before entertaining any Fama/Prudence/Gloria/'World' conflations. But I see you want to focus on the CY World...so I'll leave the discussion of Prudence proper for elsewhere.

In Florence, the location of the ur-tarot, until (if ever) earlier evidence surfaces from elsewhere, had a fairly standard portrayal of Prudence, particularly in her most public spaces, so this was well-known: Given the above, IF Florence's ur-tarot 'World' were Fama conflated with Prudence it would have necessarily featured a snake, no? Whatever was depicted below would have been something allegorical along the lines of the fame of prudent Florence, the virtue elevated to the highest by Bruni in his reappraisal of Cicero and what he and others found most characteristic of his adopted city. Hold on to the snake for a minute.

Fama sometimes holds a book, the scales of justice and sword, and eros, etc. If she holds a victor's laurel/crown, she distributes them to a multitude (as in the early Gloria Mundi: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Petr ... detail.jpg). In the CY she holds an 'actual'-size crown and below her is a large crown on the arch above the landscape vignette (arguably depicting a domain - say Cremona on the Po, with Ravenna on the Adriatic in the distance)...thus a princely domain and a smaller crown for a singular hero to rule her. The CY is a singular fama, not a generalized fame. Even Lorenzo's birth tray shows a multitude of heroes; The CY 'world' is clearly different from all other fama.

So I don't see how anyone can wiggle out of the conclusion that this is the fama of someone, and who that someone is has his coat of arms all over the rest of the deck of cards, mixed in with the Visconti.

The other, exactly contemporary, visual information we have are the two Pisanello medals, one each made for Filippo Visconti and Sforza in 1441. The Visconti's reverse shows a standard 3 person mounted lance, with the lead wearing the Visconti viper on his helm. A lance is the basic mercenary unit the likes of Giusti would have recruited and signed to a condottiero. Such small transactions were obviously beneath Visconti, so this medal could of course celebrate a major condotte (the lance signifying a condottiero), and there was no bigger fish than Sforza, whom Visconti signed in 1441 with the lure/betrothal of his only daughter, however illegitimate. Sforza's medal's obverse inscription explains it all: FRANCISCVS·SFORTIA·VICECOMES·MARCHIO·ET·COMES·AC·CREMONE Sforza has virtually been made a Visconti (the Latin, Vicecomes), and recognized as such with the domain of Cremona. The reverse of Sforza's medal features the prime implements of war, already seen on Visconti's medal reverse: horse and sword (and lance-weapon, on which is the pennant in the CY World). But these martial items are tempered by an object placed in front of them - Prudence's learning, symbolized by the books (which again, Fama also is shown with on occasion).

There are no books in the CY world! Yes, that's right, so there must be some other attribute of Prudence present. So let's get back to the snake of Prudence we are holding. If Florence would have proclaimed the fame and prudence of her city, surely the CY 'World' is proclaiming the same for the only knight beneath Fama. It is badly obscured by wear, just the faint outline remaining in blue with one section still filled in, but a white pennant with a sinuous/serpentine object on it could be only one thing in a Visconti artistic production: An Anghiari cassone, showing the same viper pennant:
Image


And more than one object in a trump has polyvalence. The viper-as-imprese connects the knight to Visconti, who has just deserted Florence and signed a condotte with the carrot of marriage to Visconti's daughter (depicted across the stream, on which two monks row out to greet the knight) and - as the centered object located beneath the ducal crown of Fama/Prudence - could stand for Prudence's snake as well (i.e., the knight is worthy of the chaste maiden [depicted as such with Chastity's shield on the 'Chariot'] due to his prudence, also reflected on the medal).

Phaeded
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Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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Let me get this straight. You are saying that there is a Visconti viper on the flag carried by the knight in the CY World, i.e.
Image

which makes the card represent Prudence?

I have some problems in accepting that idea.

1. I would expect at least a splotch of red on the flag, to indicate the man being swallowed. As it is, I see nothing to indicate any man-eating viper. I see nothing to indicate that such a splotch of paint has somehow fallen off the card. There is a snake-like squiggle, in blue, but there are other squiggles on other sides of the blue rectangle in the middle.

2. Somehow, even if it is in the center of the card, the little squiggle that might be a snake is too tiny to make the card as a whole represent Prudence.

3. Do you have any evidence anywhere (apart from the card, which is the point at issue, and apart from snakes in Florence) to indicate that the man-eating viper was for the Visconti a symbol of prudence?

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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mikeh wrote:
Image

You are saying that there is a Visconti viper on the flag....which makes the card represent Prudence?

I have some problems in accepting that idea.
I did not say this card was a simple allegory of Prudence;
I wrote:
The CY is a singular fama, not a generalized fame. Even Lorenzo's birth tray shows a multitude of heroes; The CY 'world' is clearly different from all other fama. So I don't see how anyone can wiggle out of the conclusion that this is the fama of someone, and who that someone is has his coat of arms all over the rest of the deck of cards, mixed in with the Visconti.
To state this plainly: The allegorical figure holding the winged trumpet and ducal crown is Fama, but the knight below, deserves this fame (and future ducal crown) because of his virtue, prudence (the snake) in this instance. Again, his contemporary medal shows another of Prudence’s attributes, books (such as we find in the subject of this thread), in front of and tempering the tools of his bellicose trade: a horse and a sword. This virtue as one that gives “bon droit” goes back far in Visconti custom, as the court poet Braccio Bracci wrote of Bernarbo’ Visconti:
Bernabò … Non perde mai tempo
visita sue castella e sua città
giusti decreti fa …
Egli è signor prudente oltre misura [The prince prudent beyond measure]
e ante vede con occhi mortali …
http://www.storiadimilano.it/arte/imprese/Imprese05.htm
Prudence is thus a signal attribute of a Visconti ruler, to which Fame is drawn. Per another poet, used by both Visconti and Sforza, Filelfo, in his Sphortia, book 1, v. 109, has Jupiter stir up war (sending Mercury to Pluto to release Discord and Tisiphone) but Sforza is informed of this by Fama. So Fama actually appears with Sforza, just as we see in the CY. Closer in time to the PMB at least, Filelfo, as was typical of him, also wrote in Ode II.10: “But who could enumerate enough the glorious deeds in which you, Prince Sforza, surpass all those whom time-honored fame (fama) celebrates?”

But the CY actually devotes more trumps to Bianca – she shares the stage (or bed rather) in the Love trump, is featured on the Chastity/Chariot card, and previously not identified as such, is present in the very CY ‘World’ card as well:
CY Woman-rod-bucket and Pavia stemma.jpg CY Woman-rod-bucket and Pavia stemma.jpg Viewed 8311 times 23.44 KiB
The “fishing rod” with the half-submerged pail attached is in fact a version of the Galeazzo II Visconti imprese of water pails attached to an inverted burning torch (note her dress is red where the flames should be), which the Storia di Milano explains thusly: “…ha imparato a controllare l’ardore del proprio temperamento con la freddezza della ragione (l’acqua contenuta nei secchi)” http://www.storiadimilano.it/arte/imprese/Imprese04.htm. She continues to check the passions, as in the Chasity/Chariot card, but for matrimony to a virtuous knight. The image to the right is a ceiling fresco in the blue hall of the Visconti palazzo in Pavia, showing the same imprese. Accordingly, Visconti’s chaste daughter Bianca is holding an appropriate family imprese indicating temperance among her other virtues (i.e., she is famous for her chastity and related virtues).

Just to clarify that is indeed a woman with the torch/pail imprese – compare the identical decolletage of Venus’s dress in Besozzo’s genealogy of the Visconti (left), the maiden/ monks on skiff/knight in the middle CY detail, and a detail of monks with robes with cowls from a Visconti Hours leaf, matching the same dress of the monks on the skiff. The monks as intermediaries ensure the chastity of the maiden; the stream recalls that which Dante must ford at the end of his Purgatorio in order to meet Beatrice (who greets him with the virtues).
Image
Appropriately in the CY, Fama hovers over both Bianca and Sforza, each holding a Visconti imprese doubling as virtues to which Fama is drawn. But it is Sforza who must prove himself as the worthy in essentially becoming a Visconti, and it is thus him at the center of the card; ergo, not really Fama-Prudence, but Fame of (his prudence (Filelfo even reverses that corollary as equally meaningful: “Nor should a prudent man dismiss entirely the fame that many men have earned”, Ode I.7; fame and prudence go hand in hand in Filelfo’s worldview).

To quickly address your other 3 objections:
Mikeh wrote: 1. I would expect at least a splotch of red on the flag, to indicate the man being swallowed. … I see nothing to indicate that such a splotch of paint has somehow fallen off the card.
It happens – even on larger scale versions (much less the minute area of a miniature):
Image
Mikeh wrote: 2. Somehow, even if it is in the center of the card, the little squiggle that might be a snake is too tiny to make the card as a whole represent Prudence.
I never said the whole card was solely a general/abstract Prudence (see above).
Mikeh wrote: 3. Do you have any evidence anywhere (apart from the card, which is the point at issue, and apart from snakes in Florence) to indicate that the man-eating viper was for the Visconti a symbol of prudence?
Do you have any evidence anywhere of the seven virtues where Prudence is completely absent, leaving just the other 6 virtues? This card and the CY as a whole are a novel creation for specific circumstances (hence the many changes to a subsequent general/standardized tarot deck), which is the point at issue.

Phaeded

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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I do not deny the importance of Prudence in the CY deck, as an important attribute in one who would have Fama, Bon Droit, and the girl of his dreams. However that does not imply that the card you have analyzed well (in some respects, such as the fisher-lady, substituting for the fisher-king) itself represents Prudence, as opposed to the reward of Prudence. I do not deny that all seven virtues are represented in the CY, including Prudence; I only hypothesize that it is the title of a card that is now missing. I do not deny that Prudence could be on the card, conflated with Fama (even though it is not my hypothesis). But you have yet to show either that there is a viper on the flag, or that the viper could represent Prudence. That seems to me essential. Even if you did show these things, it is a rather minor detail and would not preclude there being a separate card representing that virtue, in a 16 card sequence. In my proposed reconstruction based on the Beinecke suit-assignments Prudence is in fact the card just before this one in the series.

In the BB's sequence, if of 14 cards, while I do not know what the Fama card would have looked like, I have no problem with a conflation of Prudence with Fama, if, as with the Charles VI's halo, something on the card suggested that. My only reasons for hypothesizing, alternatively, that Prudence might by then have been dropped are (a) at 14, the series would have to be two cards fewer than the CY (the other omission might be the Old Man); and (b) we know that Prudence was in fact dropped, at least as the title of a card, not long after.

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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mikeh wrote:I only hypothesize that it is the title of a card that is now missing. I do not deny that Prudence could be on the card, conflated with Fama (even though it is not my hypothesis).
I agree the early name is unknown but became 'world' - but note that an armillary sphere was a Tuscan attribute of Prudence (which also explicates the compass attribute - as an armillary sphere is nothing if not intersecting circles), which is not only the world but what we would call the 'universe'. The first image is from a ceiling in the most important guild in Florence, the Arte della Lana, while the second is from San Miniato, closer to Pisa:
Image
San Miniato (Pisa, Toscana) - Municipio Sala delle Sette Virtù - Maestro della Madonna Lazzaroni - Prudenza, particolare della Vergine che allatta il Bambino circondata dalle Virtù cardinali e teologali - XIV secolo.jpg San Miniato (Pisa, Toscana) - Municipio Sala delle Sette Virtù - Maestro della Madonna Lazzaroni - Prudenza, particolare della Vergine che allatta il Bambino circondata dalle Virtù cardinali e teologali - XIV secolo.jpg Viewed 8297 times 25.4 KiB
Of course nothing gets more graphically explicit as the Palazzo Minerbi Prudence, in a series otherwise largely derived from Giotto, with a compass held up to the world as in God's creation of the world:
Prudence Minerbi.jpg Prudence Minerbi.jpg Viewed 8297 times 323.52 KiB
Image
But back to the real issue at hand - what shall we call the CY 'world'? I've used the word 'conflation' before in regard to Prudence and Fama, but as I've clarified above, this is really the fame of the prudent Sforza. As such, there is no precedence, per se, but again Filelfo's having Fama speak to prudent Sforza in his Sphortias comes as close as you can to the meaning of this card. Filelfo was in Milan as of 1439 and was thus available to have a hand in designing/describing the trumps, just as Marziano once did for F. Visconti.
mikeh wrote:But you have yet to show either that there is a viper on the flag, or that the viper could represent Prudence.
The CY has two sets of familial arms shown repeatedly - the Sforza and Visconti. And I'll concede to those who disdain in calling the CY a "wedding deck" and instead I'll refer to it as a condotte deck, showing an accord between the two houses (in Visconti's view, no doubt absorbing Sforza, like the little red man usually held in the viper's mouth). Visconti's daughter simply cemented the arrangement (along with the pivotal dowry cities of Cremona and Pontremoli), in which Sforza agreed to bear Visconti's arms as a VICECOMES, per the obverse of the medal made at the same time as F. Visconti's when Pisanello was in Milan in 1440. In that context, a sinuous blue line on a white pennant borne by a knight can only be the blue Visconti serpent (and I failed to previously point out that within the CY deck itself - on the 2 of coins and the ace of cups, within the "chalice" - the blue viper appears without the red man in the mouth). The calza on the World's knight's left leg in the Love card is red, just as it is on the knight under the white/blue-viper pennants on the tent. It's clearly Sforza in both instances, as those are his livery.

Ultimately there is a discernible symbolic logic throughout the CY that amply explains what is going on in the 'World' trump. The eros who flits above Bianca and Sforza in the Love card throws a dart at each (unlike the CVI trump of general love with 2 cupids shooting at 3 couples); Bianca and Sforza are intimately linked, with the matrimonial bed awaiting them under the tent. Likewise, they are linked in the 'World', where the mounted Sforza approaches thje kneeling Bianca across the river (the Po, in my opinion). As I have shown above, Bianca holds a Visconti imprese (the torch/water pail) that speaks to her virtue, so if Sforza likewise holds a Visconti imprese why wouldn't that also speak to his virtue? If the designer of the deck were Florentine, where the snake attribute is more pronounced as Prudence, that would make that Visconti imprese pressed into a double-meaning more likely (and indeed Filelfo had spent years in Florence before coming to Milan...and I would necessarily argue, was in fact modifying a Florentine creation in designing the CY, to be more palatable to F. Visconti).

But back to Sforza's medal, created by Pisanello in Milan in the same year as the CY, for corroborating evidence of an attempt of the ducal court to associate the betrothed son-in-law with the highest virtue of Prudence. Presumably Sforza's prized mount is shown over a a sword that faces away from 3 books; the horse and sword are understandable, but the books - for someone even Filelfo lamented was no scholar (and Sforza could not read Latin)- beg the question as to their symbolism. Below is a detail of the marble Prudence from St. Peter Martyr's monumental tomb (commissioned in 1336 from Giovanni di Balduccio), a detail of Prudence standing behind the Virgin as she crowns Gian Galeazzo Visconti in his coronation illumination, and finally Sforza's medal. Its not a coincidence that all three of these objects manufactured in Milan feature 3 books, as they all indicate the same thing - Prudence (or in the medal's case, the prudence of Sforza - Renaissance medals are renowned for such conceits):
Image

Phaeded

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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Well, you certainly make the reader work, Phaeded

First I needed to understand what makes Peter Martyr's tomb figure Prudence. Well:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... r-2007.jpg.
There are also 3 faces, I assume, a good tip-off. Also, it is one of four ladies, always a good sign. So one book for each face. I won't bother tracking down the other images in your collage. But it would help if you gave links to where you got the pictures, and the whole work of art, establishing your interpretations.

However finding things does help me to appreciate the effort you've gone to, and was very enlightening. I never knew that Prudence would have 3 books, or even be signified by the 3 books alone.

But I don't see 3 books in the CY World card. Nor do I see 3 books (or 3 faces) with a viper anywhere. How does the Visconti viper represent prudence? It is not just a snake, of the kind shown in Prudence images: it not only eats people, it swallows them whole; the prudence-snake is not known for either. Anyway, I still do not see a viper or even a snake on the flag, of any color. It's not a sinuous line, it's a rectangle with sinuous lines coming from the corners.

A scene with castles by itself is not Prudence. It takes the calipers, so that it is God's prudent creation of the world, by Wisdom, sophia, as the Bible says. A lady without the calipers, with a globe, or circle, of the world, is Fame, as in the Amorosa Visione, and the representations of Fame in the Petrarch manuscripts; it indicates how far she resounds.

The armillary sphere is not the same as a sphere with castles in it: the armillary sphere is of the heavens. What the heavens have to do with Prudence I am not sure. Wikipedia says (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armillary_sphere):
Renaissance scientists and public figures often had their portraits painted showing them with one hand on an armillary sphere, which represented the height of wisdom and knowledge.
Well, perhaps astronomy was the highest science, I don't know. Anyway, it has nothing to do with this card.

I have no objection to the CY card being described as "the fama of _______". It may well be meant here as Sforza. And we know from other associations that Sforza is prudent; so the card, if it is Sforza, might remind us of his wondrous prudence. But this is a card in a type of deck that is not just for Sforza; it is a game played with a generic card that somehow this derives from, enough to be recognizable. We have to look at what is there to represent a card in the game apart from a particular person on this particular special instance of the deck. It is like this: the d'Este Sun card shows Alexander and Diogenes. But that is not what makes it the Sun card. It is the Sun that does that. So what is on the card that makes it Prudence? Is it Sforza that does that? But he's on several cards; in each case, it is something else that makes it the tarot subject. What else is there? I don't see 3 faces, or 3 books, and would not guess that a blue rectangle with sinewy lines coming from its corners made it represent Prudence. The lady with the trumpet is rather obvious, and is in the right place, where the card's subject usually goes, near the top. The flag's insignia, and what it represents, still are not obvious. So: "Fama", maybe even, for this scene, "the fama of ________". To say it is "______of the prudent______" as well, is to strain credulity, so far. Maybe there is something else. I hope you will keep trying.

I agree that there should be a Prudence in the CY, if only because of the theological virtues and the need to make 16. So far, I see no reason to abandon the hypothesis that it was a card now lost.

Re: Panegyric of Bruzio Visconti by Bartolomeo da Bologn

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mikeh wrote:...I still do not see a viper or even a snake on the flag, of any color. It's not a sinuous line, it's a rectangle with sinuous lines coming from the corners.
I'm not sure where your rectangle is (the pennant is pointed), but a sinuous blue line on a white pennant held by a knight in a Visconti-produced artifact has to be the biscione. It even has the knot-like circular coil of the serpent on its left upper bend:
Image
Image

The Visconti white pennant battle standard as depicted at Anghiari on a Florentine cassone (the Florentine artist crucially missed the upper coil of the serpent - something a Milanese court artist would not have missed - but got the basics of the blue serpent on white pennant correct)
Anghiari Cassone di Dublino- national gallery of Ireland - detail of pennants.jpg Anghiari Cassone di Dublino- national gallery of Ireland - detail of pennants.jpg Viewed 8287 times 22.88 KiB
mikeh wrote:But I don't see 3 books in the CY World card. Nor do I see 3 books (or 3 faces) with a viper anywhere. How does the Visconti viper represent prudence?
Prudence’s attributes include the compass, 3 faces, mirror, “world” (as in Ferrara), snake or books. Any of these could indicate that virtue, given a compelling context (in the case of Sforza’s medal, it is books). The CY World context for the Visconti viper on a banner is a bust of Fama (who is NOT prudence and has no attribute of prudence) atop a ducal crown and holding yet another crown, presumably for the single knight below the large crown, deserving of the crown and fame. The larger crown is a domain – Cremona as part of the Duchy of Milan – and the smaller crown is for the knight-as-ruler who will exercise dominion, for Visconti, as a viceroy. But what universally allows Fama in the humanistic quattrocento? Virtue.
What better gift can be given to you princes than the glory that publicly proclaims your virtue? For he never dies whom sweet Fame memorializes for all time and all the world. (Filelfo, Ode V.9.70-75.
And the highest virtue in the humanistic quattrocento is Prudence. Given the context of a knight beneath fame, he must be deserving of it due to his virtue, but the only attribute we can associate with the knight is the biscione. The snake in this context would speak to the knight’s virtuous qualification as a ruler, his prudence.

To quote at length from the foremost scholar of Leonardo Bruni, the most renowned humanist of his day, who elevated Prudence back to the highest virtue:
The Popolo needed in their turn to accept the guidance of the wise and the good. The passions of the many needed to be guided by reason. So the Popolo should heed the wise and the good, but they should also seek to educate themselves (as far as possible) in history, thus learning civil prudence, and moral philosophy, thus learning moderation. The ancient classics of Greco-Roman antiquity would provide the material for this civic education… Bruni’s implied target in all this is the competing value-system generated by French chivalry. The chivalric ethos was dangerous in cities because it taught powerful men that their private honor was more important than the common good. Their feudal rivalries tore the city apart, as Bruni demonstrated over and over in the Florentine History. Chivalry also made a fetish of romantic love, a disordered passion which led to the weakening of families—the building blocks of the state—and other civic discords. (Hankins, James. “Humanism in the vernacular: the case of Leonardo Bruni.” In Humanism and Creativity in the Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Ronald G. Witt, ed. Christopher S. Celenza and Kenneth Gouwens, 11-29, 18. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/hand ... sequence=1
This of course has a republican Florentine context, but even in chivalric Milan, in the CY world trump we see the knight approaching a female (Bianca) holding the torch/pail imprese, which means controllare l’ardore del proprio temperament – “control the passions of one’s own temperament” http://www.storiadimilano.it/arte/imprese/Imprese04.htm. Of course Filelfo was in Milan, after a prolonged stay in Florence, where he was friends with Bruni and saw eye to eye to him on the subject of Prudence-Virtue/Fama. In a letter to Ciriaco d’Ancona of 1927:
In civic life, then, prudence alone is the master over all the rest of the moral virtues. Prudence alone moderates and rules these. But prudence is but a broken and weak thing – a quality without strength – unless it abides by and is obedient to wisdom alone, as though to a prince or a queen.” (translated in Diana Robin, Filelfo in Milan: Writings 1451-1477, 1991: 54)
This rather precisely mirrors what is happening in the CY World – where the condottiero knight is prudent because he is approaching and beholden to a virtuous and tempering future duchess.

Even on the CY Chariot trump where the same maiden offers her shield of chastity (also embossed with a Visconti imprese), on the “good” horse her page holds up the ruler’s orb, so that her offer of the shield comes with the rulership implied by the orb; the “bad”/rearing horse has no rider (clearly referring to Plato’s Phaedrus myth).

Seguing to the horse on Sforza’s medal again – note that it’s ears are oddly pinned back like a cowering dog. Again, the sword is pointed away from the books, so in both cases the martial symbols – horse and sword – appear cowed/controlled before the books: prudence.

In another Pisanello medal from a few years later, a book appears embossed on another martial symbol – a helmet – on which is written "wise man" (vir sapiens) and the inscription below further explains “pacificus”, exactly what the woman in the CY and the books of Prudence on the Sforza medal are doing (nevermind that F. Visconti wanted Sforza to beat the Venetians into submission – it’s all P.R. in these courtly productions).
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mikeh wrote:I have no objection to the CY card being described as "the fama of _______". It may well be meant here as Sforza. … We have to look at what is there to represent a card in the game apart from a particular person on this particular special instance of the deck.
The CY is clearly a peculiar deck for a specific occasion and several of it’s trumps differ from a generic tarot deck; mass production for a game hardly seems to have been goal of this deck, although I do agree the ur-tarot had to have been conceived for mass-production, as well as the PMB (and the last has the evidence of several surviving cards of multiple decks). Again, I argue that the CY is a ducal gift to Sforza to celebrate the recent condotte.

Prudence was subsequently conflated with Fama, or more likely, Fama conflated with the idea of a prudently ruled dominion (“famous Florence”, etc.), as in the popular genre of a laude of a city (e.g., Bruni’s own Laudatio Florentinae Urbis. Yet virtue/prudence must have been implicit as again Fame was only given to a ruler or city who possessed virtue/prudence (and Bruni never tires of reminding the reader that Florentines are nothing else if not prudent). Yet the problem of identification of subsequent World trumps is compounded when the attribute of Fama disappears – we just have a vignette of a domain (as in the CVI and Catania) and even that reverts back to the universal (as a sort of gloria mundi - why I chose to share the armillary spheres of Prudence, as Prudence, Fama and Gloria all had that universal/world attribute, allowing permutations of shared meaning between them).

Phaeded