Tarot History Forum

Huck wrote: Well, I fight to determine, what was known and done before 1439 with the Trionfi poem ... well, cause I think, that we should know this. Any detail is welcome.

I have never seen a comprehensive list of manuscripts, with date and provenance, of the poem before it was first printed (even that I don't know off hand - 1473 perhaps).

The only use of it I have come across before 1441 is in a letter of Guiniforte Barzizza, from Milan in March 1439, to a Francesco Scitigles (otherwise unknown, I believe).
The book is a collection of writings of Gasparino and Guiniforte -
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/ ... itali.html

The letter begins here -
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/ ... /s122.html

Barzizza quotes extensively from the Trionfo d'Amore, parts 3 and 4, as well as from the Canzoniere, sonnet CXXXII.
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/ ... /s128.html
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/ ... /s129.html
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/ ... /s130.html
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/ ... /s131.html

The only abiding impression I get from my readings is that the Trionfi did not become popular until the 1440s. There seems to be more recent literature on the subject, if you look around the web for bibliography, but it will take a determined effort to find these studies. The most recent I have that discusses the question is Gian Carlo Alessio, "The 'lectura' of the Triumphi in the Fifteenth Century", in Konrad Eisenbichler and Amilcare A. I annucci, eds., Petrarch's Triumphs, Allegory and Spectacle (University of Toronto Italian Studies 4, Doverhouse Editions, 1990), pp. 269-290. He refers to evidence about the Portilia commentary, published in 1473, and suggests it was written after 1426, because it mentions the author Celsus, who was only becoming known after that date. It is not completely clear what the origins are, but they stretch from Rimini, through Florence, to Naples.

Prints of the subjects, in the their "canonical" artistic form, invented in Florence, begin appearing in the 1460s.

So Guiniforte Barzizza had a copy of at least the Triumph of Love (the Trionfi are not listed in Visconti's library), and the poem obviously had a devoted underground following, but the lavish illustrated "canonical" editions seem to have begun appearing in the 1440s.

Ross,

your source looks very interesting, especially the date, begin of March 1439. The triumphal events at Florence were ...

27th of January (Pope)
11th of February (patriarch Joseph)
15th of February (Emperor)
(all triumphal entries)

..., so the letter might be a reaction on some use of Petrarca motifs during these events.
I see in the introducing sentences (3rd line of text at page 122) the word "concilium". Might this be a reference to the Council of Florence?
The addressed person Scitiglis might have been in Florence and has written a letter, which was answered in the given letter? Is this a possible interpretation? As there were in Scitigli's letter something about the Trionfi poem, the writer of the letter referred to the Trionfi poem in the text?

Here's the biography of the author.
http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/gui ... rafico%29/
He was in the service of Filippo Maria Visconti in 1439. He had married in March 1438, and wrote in the favour of the matrimonium ("ciò gli diede occasione di scrivere più di una lettera in favore del matrimonio")

And :

Oltre alle orazioni e alle lettere, molte delle quali tuttora inedite, e all'esposizione dell'Inferno dantesco, che fu rintracciata a principio del sec. XIX in due manoscritti francesi, l'Argelati (Bibl. script. Med., II, Mediolani 1745, col. 2065) nomina due codici, non rintracciati finora, contenenti l'uno le tragedie di Seneca con note autografe del B., l'altro un'esposizione dei sonetti del Petrarca. Ampie citazioni dal Canzoniere e dai Trionfi sono nella più lunga tra le lettere in difesa del matrimonio, del 1439 (Furietti, II, pp. 122-131): è questa quasi un trattato sull'amore, con cui il B. si inserì nella disputa umanistica de re uxoria: Giovanni Pontano ribattè in difesa del libero amore.

.
Here gets the letter of March 1439 special attention.

He accompanied young Galeazzo Maria Sforza to Ferrara 1457 (as teacher naturally ... the 70 cards note in the Ferrarese account books) and he went with him to Florence in 1459.

I have found it Huck.
Cosimo De medici had his own copy of The Trionfi by 1418. A splendidly illuminated humanist edition of the text was his son Piero's first commission for an expensive manuscript, and the other son Giovanni used his Father's copy when he went to his villa at Fiesole. (which I read about when at Fiesole and saw 3 copies of the 12 line Triumphs by different hands apparently as letters from Petrarch to his friends) So, it was just like Petrarch's other fragments or trifles- his sonnets- he sent them out peicemeal to his friends. Some people must have received complete sets- because Cosimo had one.(Like Pandolfo Malatesta)
Anyways...as to the letter from Matteo de'Pasti- he was gilding a an image of the Triumphs for Piero(1440/41) and he was checking up on the 1418 version; and later in 1449 Fame was chosen for a 'desco de parto' for the birth of Cosimo's Grandson Lorenzo.
So the letter that Ross quoted is about Piero de Medici's first commission for a manuscript- illuminated or at least gilded by Matteo de Pasti.

~Lorredan
Information comes from Fraser-Jenkins 'Patronage of Architecture andTheory of Magnificence.'

Huck,
Belated reply (was away for the recent American holiday).

As for the photo of the Euganean Hills from Petrarch’s house in Arqua that wouldn’t load from Flickr– here’s someone else’s photo showing the same, but presumably from the garden (too bad as my photo included the long window frame so the image more properly aped the dimensions of a PMB trump card with the similar mountains on the horizon at the bottom – compare “the Star” for instance):


As for your focus on 1440 (mine as well since the Giusto diary reference came to light – I’ve been lurking about this webpage for some time and have been enjoying the fruits of yours and everyone else’s research), I’m not sure how Petrarch’s Trionfi matters in terms of being a template for the earliest trionfi cards, not the least of which is that a series of 6 does not follow any known tarot deck series or subset thereof. Your comment - “My logic dictates, that there should have been persons, who made this new popularity of Petrarca. Marcello might have been one of them” – misses in both time and place: Marcello was in the East of Italy, not Florence, and the first mention of him in association with Monselice is in 1441 (King, 1994: 61). Like the production of Petrarchan-related works of art, this comes right after the earliest known deck of 1440 but one could still posit that the Anghiari triumphal celebrations (or earlier Council of Florence as you would have it) and perhaps related trionfi deck paid for by Giusto inspired the subsequent Petrarchan works. However the very fact that Piero de Medici had to commission a Venetian artist (Matteo de Pasti) in 1441 - while Giusto specifically mentions commissioning his deck in Florence - militates against the idea that Petrarch’s Trionfi were in any way a common production in Florence before 1440 (and there is nothing to suggest anything happened in the intervening period from the time Cosimo acquired his copy in 1418). The auction house listing for one of those works clearly illuminates why Florence became interested in Petrach: “The Visconti were likely to have regarded themselves as having a particularly close association with Petrarch for the poet was for many years the friend and protégé of successive Visconti lords of Milan.” After the 1440 defeat of the Visconti-backed Albizzi exiles at Anghiari it became a point of civic pride to reclaim one of the “three crowns” for the Medici regime (that influential Florence helped spread the fashion for Petrarch in the Quattrocentro to other cities is unsurprising but still not relative to the earliest 1440 deck).

Finally, to get back to your original point, Marcello, despite the large corpus of literary and artistic works commissioned and gifted to him, only had one work associated with him that is (very loosely) connected to Petrach’s Trionfi. But this is a literary gift from a Fortebraccio celebrating Marcello’s deeds and merely alludes to his life’s achievements as a series of “triumphs” a’la Petrarch and dates from after 1458 (King, 1994: 51).

"Cosimo De medici had his own copy of The Trionfi by 1418."

"...Cosimo acquired his copy in 1418."

Do I have to take your word for it, or would either or you, Lorredan or Phaeded, care to provide documentation of this assertion?

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:"Cosimo De medici had his own copy of The Trionfi by 1418."

"...Cosimo acquired his copy in 1418."

Do I have to take your word for it, or would either or you, Lorredan or Phaeded, care to provide documentation of this assertion?

What I have found is that Cosimo had 63 books in his 1418 inventory. This was published from the manuscript for the first time in 1902, by Fortunato Pintor, in a brief pamphlet titled "La libreria di Cosimo de' Medici nel 1418". It is on the web at Internet Archive -
http://archive.org/details/lalibreriadicosi00pint

Line 64 of the inventory lists "Sonetti di Messer Francesco".

There is no mention of Trionfi in this inventory, either in Cosimo's own library of 63 books, nor the others from his father Giovanni's library (the first three books on the list, "In camera di Giovanni").

From Pintor - Cosimo's are those under the heading "Nello scriptoio di Cosimo" -





The fact that there were 63 is reiterated, for instance, by E. B. Fryde in Humanism and Renaissance Historiography (1983) pp. 162-163 -






Do either of you know more information than is provided in this 1418 inventory of Cosimo's books?

Good finding, Ross.

But the list seems to be from March 1418 (see 3rd line of the Fryde article), so Lorredan's "Trionfi poem acquired in 1418" still had time to happen.

Pope "Martin left Constance at the close of the council (May 1418), but travelled slowly through Italy and lingered at Florence."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Martin_V

The council of Constance was a splendid opportunity for text exchanges ... so likely with the arrival of pope Martin also "new texts" appeared in Italy and the manuscript and copy market should have been more intensive as usual in 1418. For instance the Manilius poem arrived in Italy, which later caused the Palazzo Schifanoia Trionfi scenes.

It's interesting, that Cosimo has only one Petrarca text (No. 64) and its late number in the row (1-66) possibly indicates, that it was acquired recently.

Lorredan's source
Fraser-Jenkins 'Patronage of Architecture and Theory of Magnificence.' is a jstor-article, which I unluckily don't get.
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/7 ... 1167631101

But a Medici possession of the Trionfi possession in 1418 makes sense ... Cosimo and Pandolfo Malatesta (Lorredan said, that he also got a Trionfi edition) had been both at the council of Constance, and in Constance appeared emperor Sigismondo. Sigismondo got during the council close to Pietro Paolo Vergerio, who had worked in Padova for the Carrara till 1405 and had then access to the Petrarca material. He is the most remarkable early biographer of Petrarca ... there's an edition of Angelo Solerti, ed. Le vite di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio scritte fmo al secolo decimosesto, (1904) p. 294-304, so something of 8-9 pages, and this is not so much. (but it is called the best between all the others; I didn't get an online edition).
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=858&start=10

Pandolfo Malatesta was father to his illegitimate son Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, who got the Giusto Trionfi deck in September 1440 (the earliest Trionfi deck, about which we know). If Lorredan's information is correct, than the son had a private reason to be interested in Trionfi decks (if he had this Trionfi poem in his possession). And Sigismondo appeared a second time in 1452 as interested in the Sforza decks. Perhaps he is the first Trionfi card collector ... just cause the mentioned Trionfi poem version.

He got the name Sigismondo and was born 1417, still during the council. Father Pandolfo was only in 1415 in Constance and he was of importance, cause he declared the resignation of one of the three popes. It seems relative clear from the context, that the son Sigismondo got the name Sigismondo cause of the Emperor Sigismondo.

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

Well, Pietro Palo Vergerio is of interest. I found a biography of him ...
http://www.archive.org/stream/pierpaolo ... t_djvu.txt
Pierpaolo Vergerio the Elder : the humanist as orator (1996) by McManamon, John M

I'm just studying it.

btw ... it would be nie to get the relevant passage about Cosimo and Pandolfo and their Trionfi poem versions. It might be a keypoint in our questions.

Well first things first…..

Matteo de’Pasti
The letter addressed to Piero in 1441, concerning the young man’s personal commission of a representation of Petrarch’s Triumphs, is perhaps the most straightforward of Artist’s letters to the Medici.
The text and the theme on which the work was based was close to the Patron’s heart; the work itself has been identified by Ames-Lewis as the first important manuscript commissioned by Piero for his magnificent collection. Matteo’s letter from Venice is brief and to the point, announcing that “since I have been in Venice I have learned something that could not be more appropriate for your work” This proved to be a new technique for painting on ground gold “like any other colour, and with it I have started to enrich it, so that you have never seen the like” Describing enthusiastically in detail what he had already done with “the ladies” in the Triumph, presumably of Love, he begged Piero “urgently to send me your notion of the others, so I can visualise them, and if you like, I will send you these” he apparently enclosed a sketch with the request to Piero to “complete it as you wish, and if you like it, send me word to do the other one of Fame, for I have the concept, except that I don’t know whether you want the seated woman in a short gown or in a mantle, as I would like.” He particularly called upon Piero “to let me have something to see” This letter is clear testimony to the liveliness and precision of the verbal and visual exchange between Patron and artist over the application of materials and techniques recommended by the latter, concerning the subject matter, chosen by the patron, but well known to the Artist, who had his own ideas about it. As Matteo continued of the Triumph of Fame “For the rest I know all that is to go into it, that is, the chariot drawn by four Elephants” The issue in question was Piero’s personal preference concerning whether the ancillary figures following should be “shield bearers and girls, or famous men of the past” obviously a choice between the previous model for the representation of the Triumphs known to the Patron and the artist. While the artist also apologised for something he had done, or not done, the main points which emerge from Matteo’s letter are that he is enthusiastic about the commission and his technical discovery, eager to please his patron in every last detail of a project were details mattered, and confident in his ability to produce “something you never saw in the world before”

The letter was published by Milanesi Lettere d’artisti 78-9 and republished by Ames Lewis,
it appears in translation and with comment by Gilbert, Italian Art 6.
~Lorredan

Pandolfo Malatesta, learning what was passing in the Paduan territory, and the danger to which Petrarch was exposed, sent to offer him his horses, and an escort to conduct him to Pesaro, which was at that time his residence. He was Lord of Pesaro and Fossombrone. The envoy of Pandolfo found our poet at Padua, and used every argument to second his Lord's invitation; but Petrarch excused himself on account of the state of his health, the insecurity of the highways, and the severity of the weather. Besides, he said that it would be disgraceful to him to leave Padua in the present circumstances, and that it would expose him to the suspicion of cowardice, which he never deserved.

Pandolfo earnestly solicited from Petrarch a copy of his Italian works. Our poet in answer says to him, "I have sent to you by your messenger these trifles which were the amusement of my youth. They have need of all your indulgence. It is shameful for an old man to send you things of this nature; but you have earnestly asked for them, and can I refuse you anything? With what grace could I deny you verses which are current in the streets, and are in the mouth of all the world, who prefer them to the more solid compositions that I have produced in my riper years?" This letter is dated at Padua, on the 4th of January, 1373. Pandolfo Malatesta died a short time after receiving it.

Taken from Petrarchs works/biography and translated by various? With the life of the Poet by Thomas Campbell 1869.
There is also a Malatesta form(spoken of in the Christie catalogue with four images of triumphs) in the vatican Library the Songs and Triumphs both- with some sort of disagreement whether the manuscripts are in the hand of Petrarch himself or a copyist as there is a signature which belies the date taken as usual. It would seem that the manuscripts have been dated at the time of receiving, rather than the date they were produced.
~Lorredan