Among the decks printed in Bologna in the eighteenth century are those produced by the workshop “Al Leone” (At the Lion) located in Piazza del Carbone. The following prices can be read from the shop inventory: Primiera or Cucù decks were sold for fourteen soldi, while the Tarocchini would cost twenty-two. [52] The shop was run by the cartaio Giulio Rossi, who in 1714 entered into partnership with Girolamo Cavazza, owner of the paper mill “del Moro” (of the Moor), from which he started also to run a shop located in the Palazzo del Podestà (Mayor’s Palace), “All’insegna del Moro,” marked by a sign with a Moor made of papier-mâché. Rossi also ran the print shop “Alla Rosa” (At the Rose), located under the arcade of the Scuole (Schools, i.e., the university).
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52. Gianna Paola Tomasina, “Carte da gioco a Bologna nel secolo XVIII,” in Pietro Alligo,
Giuliano Crippa, and Alberto Milano, eds., Le carte da gioco in Emilia e Romagna. Secoli XVIII e
XIX, (Turin: Lo Scarabeo, 2007), pp.13-36, on p. 16.

To the famous engraver Giuseppe Maria Mitelli we owe a splendid Tarocchino deck created between 1663 and 1669 for the Bentivoglio family; since this deck was cataloged in 1677 as a Tarocchi, the two terms must have been used interchangeably for the reduced deck. [82]
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82. Museo Cospiano, annesso a quello del famoso Ulisse Aldrovandi e donato alla sua Patria dall’Illustre Signore Ferdinando Cospi, Patrizio di Bologna e Senatore, Libro III - Cap. XXVIII
(Bologna, Giacomo Monti, 1677), online in HathiTrust], p. 307, item 14: "GIUOCO di CARTE di TAROCCHI di nuova, e capriciosissima invenzione, & Intaglio in rame di Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, Pittor Bolognese..."

The earliest extant Bolognese example of a deck with Tarocchi subjects and the accompanying suit cards is probably the non-standard Tarocchini produced by Giuseppe Mitelli sometime between 1663 and 1669 [Figs. 16-21 – ed.]. It was dedicated to Filippo Bentivoglio and took the form of a booklet, Giuoco di carte con nuova forma di Tarocchini (Card game with a new form of Tarocchini), consisting of six sheets of printed cards. The players themselves had to glue the sheets to cardboard and cut out the individual cards. Mitelli reinterpreted the figures of the triumphs according to his personal vision, which reflected aspects of everyday life of his time.47
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47. The reference bibliography on this topic is extensive and should include at least Costume e società nei giochi a stampa di Giuseppe Maria Mitelli (Milano, Electa; Perugia,Editori umbri associati, 1988), p. 158; Andrea Vitali and Terry Zanetti, Il tarocchino di Bologna. Storia, iconografia, divinazione dal XV al XX secolo, with introductory essay by Franco Cardini (Bologna: Martina, 2005), pp. 19-20; Berti, Storia dei tarocchi (Milan: Mondadori, 2007), pp. 58-59.

On September 12, 1725, the city guards, [57] sent by the Uditore del Torrone (magistrate of the criminal court), searched Dalla Volpe’s studio and print shop and seized a Tarocchini deck [58] as well as four copies of a booklet
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57. Giovanni Battista Comelli, “Il governo ‘misto’ in Bologna dal 1507 al 1797 e le carte da giuoco del canonico Montieri,” Atti e memorie della Reale Deputazione di Storia Patria per le provincie di Romagna, terza serie, XXVII (1909), pp. 1-39, in particular pp. 8-9; Alberto Beltramo and Maria Gioia Tavoni, I mestieri del libro nella Bologna del Settecento, (Sala Bolognese: Forni, 2013), pp. 212-14. In 2018 Bologna’s Biblioteca Archiginnasio dedicated an exhibition to the Montieri affair and the Bolognese Tarocchino, under the title 1725. Quando a Bologna arrivarono i mori. Il tarocchino tra gioco e politica. Please visit its online version (exhibition, texts, graphics and website by Marcello Fini) at http://bimu.comune.bologna.it/biblioweb ... bolognese/ (last accessed March 28, 2020).
58. This deck, called the Tarocchini Montieri, was a variant of the traditional Bolognese Tarocchini: besides the usual symbols, it included geographical tables and coats of arms. The copper matrices bore the signatures of the two engravers Canossa and Moretti.

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printed by Giovanni Battista Bianchi at the printing workshop “All’insegna della Rosa” (At the sign of the Rose) entitled L’utile col diletto o sia Geografia intrecciata nel Gioco de’ Tarocchi (Combining benefit and pleasure, or Geography intertwined with the Game of Tarocchi), written by Luigi Montieri, a canon of the Church (Figs. 73-77).

All the items seized were publicly burned in a corridoio [passageway] of the Torrone (Criminal Court), as ordered by the Cardinal Legate Tommaso Ruffo, [59] who, in the public announcement issued on the same date of the seizure and posted on the city walls two days afterwards, explained that in the text and in the cards he had found “a thousand vain irregularities and improper ideas, which deserve the most exemplary punishment” which were “offensive to the government.” [60] Montieri was forced to move from the city, although only for a short time, whereas Dalla Volpe was imprisoned for some days but managed to get out thanks to the intervention of Count Filippo Aldrovandi, Ambassador of the Bolognese Senate to the Holy See, who came to his defense.

What had induced the high-ranking prelate to react in such a drastic way? The offense was focused on card 21 of the triumphs, which was dedicated to the various forms of government in the European countries. [61] On that card the government of Bologna was characterized as misto, “mixed” (Fig. 77, left), and this was considered an affront to papal rule. [62] Aldrovandi defended the accused by stressing that the city was in fact a mixed government, as established by the Capitoli of Pope Nicholas V, and that the responsibility for what had been printed rested solely with the representatives of the Holy Office and the Archbishopric, who had
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59. The announcement, dated Sept. 12, 1725, had the following incipit “Comandandoci . . . di procedere contro l’avanzata audacia di chi ha fatto dare, e ha dato alle Stampe le Carte” (We are ordered . . . to proceed against the high degree of audacity of whoever has had the Cards printed and has Printed the Cards). The document is reproduced at http://badigit.comune.bologna.it/bandi/ ... ando=14125, the online database of the Biblioteca Archiginnasio, in “La raccolta dei Ban di Merlani.”
60. Commeli, “Il governo ‘misto’ in Bologna,” [see here n. 58], pp. 32-33: “mille irregolarità vane ed improprie idee, degne del più esemplare castigo . . . offensive al governo.”
61. Using decks of cards to convey information and knowledge for didactic purposes had been an established practice since as early as the sixteenth century. In 1681 in Venice the parish priest Giovanni Palazzi published La virtu in giocco. Ouero dame patritie di Venetia. Famose per nascita, per lettere, per armi, per costumi (Virtue in games, Or Venetian patrician ladies. Famous by birth, letters, arms or customs). printed by Giovanni Parè. Along with the book was a deck of cards, which could also be sold separately. See Lucia Nadin, Carte da gioco e letteratura tra quattrocento e ottocento (Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1997), p. 200.
62. Paulo Colliva, “Bologna dal XIV al XVIII secolo: governo misto o signoria senatoria?” in Aldo Berselli, ed., Storia dell’Emilia Romagna vol. 1 (Bologna: University Press, 1977), pp. 13-34.

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authorized the printing. The cards continued to be printed in the same way, except for the following variations to the figures, ordered again by Cardinal Ruffo: the four Papi, as the Bolognese called the cards corresponding to the Popess, the Empress, the Emperor and the Pope, were replaced by the so-called Mori (Moors), which in the booklet were referred to as Satrapi (Satraps) (Fig. 78).

In questa carta, che conteneva l’elenco delle varie forme di governo degli stati europei, si definiva quello che reggeva Bologna come “misto”. Sebbene questo aggettivo fosse stato utilizzato proprio da papa Nicolò V quasi due secoli prima al momento di regolamentare i rapporti dello Stato della Chiesa con Bologna, l’autorità pontificia non poteva accettare che il suo potere assoluto venisse, anche solo apparentemente, sminuito dall’utilizzo del termine “misto”. In più, l’opera del Montieri era stata dedicata quasi provocatoriamente a un membro della famiglia Pepoli, casato che nel corso dell’età moderna si caratterizzò per un atteggiamento fortemente antipapale.

(In this document, which contained the list of the various forms of government of the European states, the one that governed Bologna was defined as “mixed”. Although this adjective had been used by Pope Nicholas V almost two centuries earlier when regulating the relations of the Papal State with Bologna, the papal authority could not accept that its absolute power was, even apparently, diminished by the use of the term “mixed”. Furthermore, Montieri’s work had been dedicated almost provocatively to a member of the Pepoli family, a lineage that during the modern age was characterized by a strongly anti-papal attitude.)

Diary or various news of Bologna from the year MDCCXIV to the year MDCCXXXVII
[paper manuscript, 18th century], vol. V, p. 204
Location: ms. B. 84

Googe translated from the transcription of Domenico Maria Galeati.