hi Philippe,
Kwaw told me about this thread.
Recently jtdemers was asking in another thread which sense could be given to the minors of this mysterious deck and was referring to a thread on forum.tarothistory.com discussing the heraldry on the pentacles cards.
All the members seemed to take for granted the arguments advanced by a certain M. Popoff in the well known M. Depaulis' booklet "Tarot, jeu et magie" from 1985. I disagree with several of his assignments hence this thread.
I wasn't totally confessed by Popoff's analyses, but at least it was then (2012) an existent opinion without any other opinion to the coin suit of Tarot des Paris.
And I don't claim to understand French heraldry very much, so I had not much interest to doubt Popoff's identification.
For my dating of 1559 for the Tarot des Paris only 3 cards were really relevant.
1. The 2 of coins, which Popoff identified as containing Strozzi and Gonzaga heraldry
2. The 9 of coins, which contained at one coin a sign of Diane de Poitiers
3. The 10 of coins, which contained at one coin a sign with an "H", which Popoff recognized as related to King Henry II
I could recognize the 3 crescents on the card as belonging to Strozzi then, but I couldn't identify, how Popoff came to the conclusion, that the other sign should relate to Gonzaga.
The 3 Strozzi crescents are usually arranged horizontally, on the card the crescents decrease in height from left to right.
The person, that you suggest, has the crescent also decreasing in height from left to right and that's closer to the card motif. That seems better, but ...
the card
Antoine II de Viste
Strozzi (usual)
Strozzi (usual)
Strozzi (variant) ... or simply "too modern" ???
http://www.poggiugo.it/shop/en/prodotto.php?id=300
... a commercial website ...
So that's an open question. Generally I saw a lot of French heraldry with 3 crescents, but I noticed not, that one decreased in height from left to right.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cate ... n_heraldry
I found no connection of Antoine II de Viste to playing card documents. For the Strozzi and the Gonzaga this is given, however, and that counts something in my considerations.
You seem to suspect, that the "Gonzaga sign" relates to Emperor Charles V.
This remembers me on an older playing card document ...
https://archive.org/stream/collectionde ... earch/juan
... I found that a longer time ago, but nobody reacted on it.
Now I find the following work (written 2015) ...
from
https://issuu.com/conjuringarts/docs/sa ... ol_10_no_1
... as it seems, that's perhaps in our interests not of relevance.
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Chiffre for Diane de Poitiers (9 of coins)
http://www.apmep.fr/IMG/pdf/annexe5.pdf
Chiffre for Henry II. (10 of coins)
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogramme
Henry II played with the letter H and a double DD for Diane. Diane (as the goddess Diana) had 3 crescents, cause the goddess Diane was a bow-shooter.
Strange enough, this created some nearness to the 3 crescents in the Strozzi heraldry.
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I've difficulties to take Diane of VERY high importance before 1447 (death of Francois I) ... so from this the suspicion, that the deck was not made before 1447.
Louis Gonzaga was quite young in 1447 (and not in France) in 1447. Considering his age and the overall political situation it seems plausible to assume 1559, cause Diane de Poitiers lost her importance in 1559 with the dearth of Henry II.
Anyway, I'm happy, that this fixed and not really sensitive "Tarot de Paris c. 1600" found some general criticism.