I think the Turks would have known about planar projections and the distortions they introduced. All they had to do, to correct the distortions and assess the desirability of adding Greenland to the Turkish domains,was to buy a copy of the 1482 Ulm. They could also have bought manuscript copies of individual maps, the same sources de Laurentii used, on the open market. As it happened, Berlinghieri ended up dedicating the 1482 Florence atlas to the Duke of Urbino. It turned out that the Duke was on record as saying he "would be ashamed to own a printed book." So Berlinghieri had to make a special manuscript copy for him. Some of the coordinates for the contemporary maps were improved (perhaps using the 1482 Ulm, Skelton speculates), but they had the same planar projections. Somehow I don't think the Duke would have been fooled any more than the Sultan.Actually it's said, that Berlinghieri made the map for the Osmanic sultan - what looks rather curios. Generally later maps were regarded as "secret" ... perhaps there was an early idea of similar intention to fill the Osmanic mind with wrong data about the nature of the world. No Groenland, and the Northern cities (possible objects to the hungry expansive interest of the Osmans) seem to have greater distances between them as they actually had - so they looked more difficult to approach and attack.
Huck wrote
Yes, it could go either way. Without further information, the probability is no less one way than the other, considering that the engravings went in two stages, as we have seen with the four virtue cards: main figures first, then the accoutrements. (That's my new word for what was added to the engravings from their state in 1468 to their state in 1469, on my theory, or 1475, on yours. It's more than "landscapes" because it includes background trees; and more than "background" because it includes foregrounds; and more than either, because the added animals are neither foreground nor background. So I say main figures--mostly in a 1450 Ferrarese style, which Galasso would have extended to Bologna--and accoutrements, in a style that started out as Florentine. I'm not sure what style the animals are in, or the lettering.)if I don't count the trees as landscapes, then we have 4 planets, 2 artes liberales + 9 Muses as landscape pitctures from totally 50 images (15/50) and 14 of these we find again in Lazzarelli additionally a further art liberalis (Musica) and 3 of the gods, so 18/27. This seems to say, that the landscapes come from Lazzarelli ... well, it's not impossible that it had been the other way around.
In pursuit of the Truth, I have been reading Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, 1973, by Levenson, Oberhuber, and Sheehan. I extract the following relevant bits.
They have a footnote about Lazarelli's picking up the cards in Venice {p. 83):
Presumably the reason the mention of the bookstore is significant is that the authors are surmising that the prints were already considered a book when Lazarelli bought them, similar to the volumes in which many of the extant copies are still found.According to Lamberto Donati, "Le fonti iconographische di alcuni manuscritti urbaniti della Bibliteca Vaticana...." La Bibliofilia, 60, 1958, p. 50) Lazzarelli's nephew described the author as having obtained in a Venetian bookstore a collection of figues of the antique gods and also the Liberal Arts, which led him to compose his poem: "Ivi [Venezia] ritrovo in una Bottega di Librajo una raccolta di bellissime figure di Deiti de' Gentili, con molte immagini rappresentati le Arti liberali, la quale servigli di motivo per comporre un operetta distinta in tre libri, intitolandola de Imaginibus Deorum Gentilum."
The "raccolta di figure" was presumably the Tarocchi prints. It is particularly interesting, from our point of view, that Lazarelli found them in a bookstore.
Later they cite Donati again. After mentioning the four additional gods, whose images they reproduce, the authors add (p. 84):
It would appear that Trionfi's "Lazarelli hypothesis" was originated by Donati, as described by Levenson et al, who also supplied the pictures of the four gods that Trionfi uses. I wonder if there are more pictures in Donati's text itself, since it is so long. I looked on WorldCat, but so far I can't find it. I guess I need the help of a librarian.It is quite possible that these additional illuminations are of Lazarelli's invention. On the other hand, it is conceivable, as Lamberto Donati has suggested, that Lazarelli had access to a more extensive series of images, perhaps a set of miniatures, on which the Tarocchi engravings are themselves based. (Footnote: We cannot, however, agree with many of the details of Donati's complex and highly speculative theory (pp. 66-125 regarding the hypothetical prototype of the Tarocchi.)
Levenson et al also have interesting things to say about the individual cards. They notice the similarity between the Servant and the PMB Pages of Coins. Iliaco is also similar to the Page of Coins, and there is some similarity betwen Cosmico and the PMB World card. The Artisan is similar a scene in Baldini's Planet Mercury, which I show below. Oddly enough, the standing figure at the right is rather similar to the Servant.
For the Gentleman, they note a comparable hunting scene in Baldini's Jupiter. The King is similar to the Kings of Coins and Staves in the PMB. The Emperor is somewhat similar to the PMB Emperor, and similarly for the Pope.
On the Muses, they note that the globes derive from Capella (the musical instruments do, too).
For the planets, they note that the specific imagery of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn comes from the Libellus de maginibus deorum, an anonymous work of c. 1400 deriving from classical sources. However Jupiter, unlike in the Libellus, is not seated on an ivory throne, but rather on a rainbow, an image which comes from 14th century illustrations of Ovid.
As far as these classical texts, I don't know how we would tell whether they were accessible to one rather than another of Sweynheim's circle in Rome, the humanists of Bologna , or those of Ferrara or Florence. The PMB, however, probably wouldn't have gotten to the circle in Rome, and would most likely have been in Bologna, as a gift to Ginevra Sforza. There could also have been one in Ferrara, a gift from Galeazzo. The similarities to Baldini suggest an engraver from that workshop in Florence-- and Florentine engraver/goldsmiths were more likely to be working in Bologna than Ferrara.
The authors of the National Gallery book also give us an engraving with very similar trees to those of the three cosmic powers in the "Mantegna," leading them to say that the engraver was the same (p. 88). It is housed in the Albertina, Vienna:
These trees were one of the features that led Hind to identify the "Mantegna's" engraver with that of the 1478 Ptolemy. But who is he? The National Gallery authors reproduce a drawing that is like the engraving but without the trees (p. 88, not posted here; it is in the Gabinatto Nazionale delle Stampe, Rome). They mention but do not reproduce another engraving which they say is by the same engraver, a Death of Orpheus. They say it is in Hind; I will try to post a copy tomorrow. But they do show us another engraving (p. 158) that seems also to have copied the putti we have just seen. They call this engraving "Ferrarese," but for no stated reason, other than that its putti resemble those in the first engraving, which resembles the "Mantegna" in its trees. This engraving is initialed "F.B." They suspect that it is a niello made from a plate that was not originally intended to produce prints.
Another place that has similar trees, but not as similar as the ones with the putti, is in Baldini's "Planets," 1460-1465. Examples are in his "Sol."
So who might be the engraver of the "cupids with trees" (which I will call it to distinguish it from the others)? Well, they are rather odd: middle-aged faces on children's bodies. Looking in several books of early Italian engravings, I have found only one engraving with similar putti: Plate 35 of Donati's 1944 Incisioni Fiorentine del Quattrocento. It is another on the same theme, cupids and grapes, this one housed in the Ufizzi. Donati called it Florentine, c. 1470.
In painting, I find no similar putti except in miniatures. The National Gallery authors, as much as Hind, see the Ferrarese miniaturists as possible candidates for engraver of the "Mantegna." In The Painted Page, I found only three miniaturists with similarly odd-looking putti.
One (p. 85) is Leonardo Bellini, Venice 1462. According to Giordiana Mariani Canova, author of the commentary on this miniature. the borders of this work for the newly elected Doge (of the Moro family whose coat of arms we see) resemble those of a Virgil illuminated in 1458 by the Ferrarese miniaturist Georgio d'Alemagna (another German for you to track down, Huck?). The Virgil had been done for a Venetian diplomat for whom Leonardo is known to have done a Lactantius in 1457. The animals around the putti supposedly represent virtues or vices. I have not found any reproductions from the Virgil.
The other two miniaturists whose putti have middle-aged faces are the two main collaborators on the Borso d'Este Bible (Ferrara 1455-1461), Taddeo Crivelli and Franco de' Russi. Crivelli has one such putto in the detail from the Borso Bible that I posted earlier, viewtopic.php?f=12&t=463&start=30#p6144; it also has the similar trees. He also has similar putti elsewhere in the Borso Bible, most strikingly in his depiction of Cain.
Some putti in the margins are similar as well (below left), and also some in a book of hours, late 1460's (below right), as documented in The Gualenghi-d'Este Hours, by Kurt Barstow (where I also get the black and white Borso Bible illuminations). It is known that Crivelli was in Bologna in the 1470's and may have learned engraving.
De' Russi's odd, middle-aged putti are from his time in Padua, where he moved in the 1460's, doing illuminations of manuscripts (pp. 83, 218) according to Canova (Painted Page p. 218). The putti below are from 1463 (only the left one, of course) and 1465-1470. The first is for an Oratio Gratulatorio composed by Bernardo Bembo, then a student at Padua and later to become a great humanist and politician. Yhe occasion was the election of Cristoforo Moro as Doge of Venice. His coat of arms, which we saw in the Bellini, is on the page below the inscription, of which I reproduce only a part. The other illumination, Canova tells us, was probably for an academic at the same University, whom we see sitting in the chariot being pulled by Minerva's owls.
De' Russi's trees, like Crivelli's, are similar to those of the "Mantegna." I posted an example earlier (viewtopic.php?f=12&t=463&start=30#p6149), from illuminations he did for a book printed in 1470 Venice by Vindelinus de Spira. His putti in that work don't look so odd, as you can see in that post.
According to Painted Page, illuminators in Northern Italy, unlike those of Florence, frequently changed cities. I have found no evidence that any besides Crivelli did engraving. But considering that Crivelli probably did, perhaps de' Russi did, too. The skills are somewhat transferable, as both media use pens.
I conclude that for the "Mantegna"'s engraver, this evidence weakly favors the part of Italy from Bologna north and east, 1465-1470, in a Florentine style. For the trees, we can also say that the designer might have been an illuminator who was part of the Borso Bible project that finished in 1461.
Well, I will be in Los Angeles for 10 days starting March 2. I won't have much time for posting, but I hope to fit in libraries and museums, which are a lot better there than here in Oregon. The Getty has Crivelli's book of hours. I don't need to see it, but that they have it suggests they might have more from that time and place.
P.S. I found a whole monograph on the printing industry in Bologna in the 15th centuryThe University and the Press in Fifteenth-Century Boplogna[/i}. bu Curt F. Buehler, 1958. It confirms what could already be guessed: that printers mainly served the university. The first presses were the result of a contract drawn up on 25 October 1470 between Francesco dal Pozzo, Baldassarre Azzoguidi, and Annibale Malpigli. Dal Pozzo was the tutor of the children of Giovanni II Bentivoglio; Azzoguido "belonged to a family prominent both in the city and in university circles." Malpigli was on the university faculty teaching logic and moral philosophy; it was he who was in charge of the press--work. For me the only surprise is that Germans aren't mentioned until 1482. Perhaps in 1470 Bologna they just did the work.