hi Mike,

still I've only limited computer access.

mikeh wrote:

Possibly Bona identified her husband with the phoenix after his death. At least ... if the observation is correct, that Bona took the phoenix on a coin of Milanese money (in the short time, when she reigned), this seems plausible.

Now, Huck, here are some thoughts about some of your remarks on other subjects:

(1) If the thinner gold paint lasts longer, and it was used in the added PMB cards either later than the paint used in the original PMB or by a different workshop, what does that say about the Brera-Brambilla? I have not seen the actual cards, but from photos and people's reports, they really glisten, compared with the CY and the PMB, and close in shine to the Charles VI and some of the PMB-style partial decks. For color photos of examples see http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_ ... ID=5148235.

I would say, that the Brera-Brambilla is a different edition, long before the two others. The gold might be similar to PMB 2, but it wouldn't tell too much. The artists got gold leaves to work with, they couldn't control, if it was thicker or thinner, also it isn't clear, if the difference was seen immediately or developed with the time. We can assume, that the golden background between artist 1 and artist 2 from PBM differs, but it's difficult to win of it a comment for other decks.
And in this case (king of cups): Kaplan in 1978 knows not a king of cups of Brera-Brambilla (Kaplan p. 64), so this seems to a "new" old card ... why do we know, that it is from Brera-Brambilla? Actually the site, that you noted, says, it belongs to the Bonomi cards. Kaplan II (not I), p. 22-23 (which indeed show a king of cups)

It seems, you've an error there, though it's nice, that you found this picture.

(2) I have been examining Madonnas in Ferrara (by e.g. Tura, del Cossa, and the miniaturists Giraldi and Crivelli) to see if any resemble the PMB lady of the second artist. I find the receding hairline, but not the pursed lips.

(3) I have been looking at male figures, too, in hopes of getting more clarity about the man on the Fortitude card. I know that some people, including me, identify him with Francesco Sforza, but the image doesn't correspond to Francesco's portraits. I noticed a nice portrait of Borso and thought I detected a resemblance to the lion-beater:

Another portrait, showing him older, is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borso_d%27 ... of_Ferrara. Could the PMB Fortitude be a portrait of Borso as Hercules?

Neither it seems likely, that Borso would have loved himself as Hercules, nor I would assume, that he really looked in this way.

If so, I wouldn't think that it was done during Borso's lifetime. According to Wikipedia in the article just cited, Borso and Francesco were not on friendly terms. Here is Wikipedia:

He was generally allied with the Republic of Venice, and enemy both to Francesco I Sforza and the Medici family. These rivalries led to the indecisive Battle of Molinella. That battle was in 1467 (http://www.comune.molinella.bo.it/model ... aspx?ID=71)

. This animosity presents a problem for your idea that Borso was familiar with the PMB cards, so correct me if Wikipedia is wrong.

Wikipedia isn't always correct. Probably the relations between Ferrara and Milan were good till Francesco's death (for instance: Ercole was a guest at Ippolita's wedding, which is short before Francesco's death) ... the battle of Molinella wouldn't have taken place, if Francesco had still lived in 1467. Things went worse, when Galeazzo became ruler. He tried to trigger a Ferrarese rebellion against Borso in 1469.

However Galeazzo could have wanted a deliberate resemblance to Borso after his death in 1471, as a gesture of goodwill to Ercole (communicated through emissaries) and a tribute to Borso and Francesco both. In fact, as I understand it, Ercole did ally Ferrara with Milan after Milan helped in Ferrara’s 1482-1484 war against Venice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Ferrara). I am acknowledging your point about how the Hercules legend was adopted by the d'Estes, but still coming to my conclusion rather than yours, that the card was probably Galeazzo's late idea.

Venice - Ferrara - Milan developed together "most peaceful relations" (comparing it to other times in the same century) after the Ferrarese wars. ... ... I didn't say, that the d'Este developed a specific Hercules favour, but Lorenzo de Medici had one, and Alberti also in his comedy, so in his youth. Ercole d'Este was named "Hercules", but the stuff, for which his court became famous, was "Orlando" ... and this followed the example of Pulci's Morgante.

hi Mike,

you caused something rather good ...

... your statement and link to the Brera-Brambilla card (which was a Bonomi card) caused, that I found another Bonomi card (the card "world") and more valuable than this, a card, which should be more or less unknown to our small ciurcle of selfdeclared historians. It seems, that there was an auction and a sale of

"Scuola lombarda, secolo XV ?
Il Sole; La Stella; il Cavaliere di Coppe, e altre sei
tempera e oro su pergamena applicata su cartoncino, retro testa di moro
170 x 85 mm."

... from which a Dottoressa Cristina Quattrini seems to have the opinion, that 2 or 3 cards have been from 15th century. "Il Sole" is shown, La Stella and il Cavaliere da Coppe not and the other 7 cards are from 19th or 20th century. That all went out for a rather humble price, about ca. 17.000 $ , after it was estimated much less at 25 November 2008 (4200 - 6800 $) ... (and why do we hear so late about it ? ... the scene is rather sleepy)



The new Sun
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_ ... 48239&sid=

The Bonomi World
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_ ... 48238&sid=

The Bonomi King
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_ ... 48235&sid=

I didn't mean to imply that the Christie's pictures were Brera-Brambilla, in as much as that their website clearly refers us to Kaplan vol. 2, pp. 22-23, which is of the Bonomi. I meant them as examples of the "PMB-style partial decks." I, too, was wondering about the Sun card, which I have never seen before. It is vaguely similar to the card in the Rosenwald Sheet (http://trionfi.com/0/j/d/rosenwald/). Yes, somebody got a good buy there. I think they got an even better deal on the "secolo XVI" World card, which Kaplan says is from the same deck, the Bonomi, as the King of Cups, which apparently sold for three times as much.

Thanks for your clarification on gold leaf. If they buy it in lots prepared outside the shop, that's another reason why it's unlikely the two artists were in the same shop at the same time.

I am wondering if you have any other comments on my previous post (Nov. 8), which I did right about the time your computer broke, besides the explanation about the Book of Hours you gave via the links. That was the one in which I critiqued Dummett's article. I didn't come to a definite conclusion myself, but there seemed to be simlarities with Benedetto Bembo's later work (in so far as that determination makes sense for an artist with so few attributible works) and also Butinoni. A problem that we don't know what Benedetto actually did. For example, perhaps he did the Roccabianca frescoes. And Steffi Roettgen attributes the St. Augistino portraits of Bianca Maria and Francesco Sforza to Benedetto rather than Bonifacio (Italian Frescoes--The Early Renaissance p. 365)!

Bembo's workshop still seems to me the simplest and likeliest account of the six cards. But I am looking for evidence on the other side. I am trying to locate the Ferrarese style that the cards, and Bembo, are suppposed to be similar to. A friend of mine suggested a similarity of the added cards to Piero della Francesca, who was active and influential in Ferrara during the 1440's. So I am researching which artists did work in Piero's style and when. That is none too easy, Del Cossa, for example, has totally different styles assigned to him early (1450's) and late .(1465 on)

There is a similarity of the added cards to some of the "Mantegna tarocchi." But finding out what Piero-inspired work might have influenced these engravings is another murky area. The clearest examples are three paintings of the muses. Art reproduction websites attribute at least two of them to Francesco del Cossa; I can't find the third on the web (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Franc ... sa_001.jpg; http://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Francesc ... terpe.html). George Gombosi attributed the first of these to Gelasso Gelassi and the other two to Angelo Pessario (http://trionfi.com/0/m/00/). Venturi attributed all three to Gelasso Gelassi (North Italian Painting of The Quatrocento: Emilia, pp. 29ff).

The three "muse" paintings are quite different from anything else attributed to Crossa (see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Categ ... _del_Cossa). The art reproduction people solve that by giving them very early dates, before anything else. Gombosi and Venturi agree that del Cossa didn't paint any of them.Pessario, Gombosi's favorite, painted in Ferrara and died in 1456. Gelassi, Venturi's candidate, trained in Ferrara, moved to Bologna in 1451, and died there in 1470 (or 1480 according to art websites today).

Venturi compared the artist of the "muses" paintings to the "Montegna tarocchi." Trionfi appears unaware of his writings. They do give part of Gombosi's article; he was responding to Venturi. And they don't mention del Cossa. They just talk about the engraver, plus some speculations on Lazarelli. But Lazarelli was a poet, not an artist, much less one who could design such graceful images in that out-of-fashion style. What was the origin of the prints that Lazarelli allegedly picked up in Venice--or more generally, of the art the engraver worked from? Knowing who painted the three muses when and where might also help in getting to the origin of the six added cards; unfortunately art historians disagree radically. The main thing the historians agree on is that the "Mantegna" images aren't in the style of Mantgena or his followers!

mikeh wrote: Bembo's workshop still seems to me the simplest and likeliest account of the six cards. But I am looking for evidence on the other side.

Well, it's not likely, if you know and understood the 5x14-theory. If you look with common eyes at the situation, it looks normal, that two brothers worked at the same object. There are more than one cooperation known.

The 5x14 theory had found its substance, before the note about 14 pictures in Ferrara (1441) was found (2003), before Marcello's trionfi-declaration (1449; even a deck with 16 cards could be a trionfi deck) was found (2003), before the 70-cards-note in Ferrara 1470 was known (2003). Also before the Lorenzo-de-Medici-involvement was known. All these objects were found by research, cause it was already clear (with a security of ca 99% and better) before, that the 5x14-deck had existed.

Why?

The binary number 1111111111101100000010 expresses the state of 22 cards, from which 14 cards were chosen as "existing" = 1 and "not existing or made at another time" = 0 (in relation to the dominant Marseille Tarot order).

This is simply in its form an unusual number and unusual number indicate "intended or logical action" instead of "accident action". 2^22 is a number of about ca. 4.000.000 (and some more) possibilities, the form 1111111111101100000010 is rather unusual and with that "rare". If the number would have been 1111111111111100000000, everybody would see, that this is an unusual number, cause it's an unbroken row of 14 elements (what would you say, if you've 14x "black" in a roulette game? Is that "normal"?)
Now there is with 1111111111101100000010 a "break" of one "1", but still the number is rather "rare". And 4.000.000 is a very high number - even when you would find 10.000 numbers in the 4.000.000, which somehow would fulfill a similar unusual state, you still would have to compare it with the other number and you will get a relation of 1:400, which would mean 0.25 % for the possibility of an "accident result". Which means, that there are 99.75 % for the alternative "result of intended or logical action".
Now you've the number "14 out of 22" ... this fact already should generate the suspicion "possibly a 5x14-deck", cause only ca. 350.000 of the ca. 4.000.000 possibilities (= 8.75 %) fulfill the condition.

From these 350.000 possibilities you've 9 unbroken rows and for each unbroken row you've usually 6-8 cases with one "jumper", which makes roughly 70 possibilities or so. 70 possibilities against 350.000, that's a solid chance of 1/5000. Even if I take a dark zone of "other" unusual constructions, I'll have difficulties to reach a relation above 1/400

Then you've the condition, that the cards 0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10 .. +12+13 ... + 20 .. are inside the 14 Bembo cards, if we assume the Marseille order.

If one assumes, that ...
A. 0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13 = 91
or
B. 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14 = 105
had been once the "original order", we discover, that none of the numbers 91 or 105 look attractive, but the change of 11 to 0 and of 14 to 20 generates the number 0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+12+13+20 = 100 ... well, "100" is a nice number and looks perfect and "intended". So we found the reason, why they changed to another form.

Reflecting this all in theory and only abstract (without thinking of any content) and go then to content questions and see, that the one group of six cards builds formations like "3 cardinal virtues + sun-moon-star" and the "14 cards as a unity are not impossible" ... then it's enough to be sure, that the 5x14-theory is the better explanation for the phenomenon of this deck and his two different artists against the "accident-theory".

It is naturally for historical analysis, that you never can reach 100% security about the truth and that always your conclusion stays limited. So what I can do about the stupid story, that big brother Bonifacio said to his younger brother Benedetto: "I got a commission for Trionfi cards" and small brother Benedetto cried: "That's wonderful. May I paint the cardinal virtues and the star, moon and sun, I'll love them so" and Bonifacio grumbled "Alright, but you don't need to do Justice, cause I already made it."
Well, that's a possible solution, but a somehow stupid solution, which doesn't hinder, that such things occasionally really happen.
And for such stupid possibilities you need things like the 70-cards note of Ferrara, which make the point clear: there were 5x14 decks.

People usually get a headache, when one talks about numbers, so it was not appropriate to present that as the one and only "real basic argument" (many bad experiences, one has to learn, that occasionally one becomes too complicated for the public), so we left its representation at one point away, keeping the discussion about it very small. "70 cards note in Ferrara", that was better understood ... ... who can understand such big numbers like 4.000.000 ...
Occasionally there are exceptions. Are you an exception?

It's the truth, if you believe it or not: to detect the 5x14-theory you only need to know the fact of the two artists and some iconographical knowledge about Tarot, the book of Kaplan Encyclopedia I and 2 weeks. And not very much knowledge about 15th century history. ... and it's 99% secure.

There is also a similarity of the added cards to some of the "Mantegna tarocchi."

5x14 theory and Mantegna Tarocchi are two different matters. Lazzarelli bought pictures in Venice. It's not said, that they all were from the same artist. The pictures were used for two manuscripts, which were found in Urbino's library.
The final engraving artist was probably the printer Sweynheim, who worked in Rome. He partly copied Lazzarelli's pictures. In the case, that some of the pictures were Ferrarese, he might have copied Ferrarese style. Probably that happened 1474/75.
... .-) ... but that's not a matter for this thread.

Hello,

sorry Huck but I frankly believe this pseudo mathematical approach is flawed.

Huck wrote:The binary number 1111111111101100000010 expresses the state of 22 cards, from which 14 cards were chosen as "existing" = 1 and "not existing or made at another time" = 0 (in relation to the dominant Marseille Tarot order).

why not, thats one among many posible numerical representation.

the form 1111111111101100000010 is rather unusual and with that "rare".

it isn't more rare than any of the 4 194 303 numbers you can represent on 22 binary digits. Many numbers when using binary notation may look "unusual" because the brain easily identify patterns or "nearly" patterns, as in the case you point out. But representing the very same number to its decimal representation, 4 193 026, it doesn't look any more unusual.
Take for instance 1010101010101010101010, you easily see a regular pattern, but it's simply 2 796 202 in its decimal representation.

than the If the number would have been 1111111111111100000000, everybody would see, that this is an unusual number, cause it's an unbroken row of 14 elements (what would you say, if you've 14x "black" in a roulette game? Is that "normal"?)

this is IMHO wrong too, it would be the 4 194 048th possibility among the 4194303. Regarding the roulette, the alternance of red and black is considered the normal state, any different disposition would appear "unnatural".
The fact that you find it significant is because you made it significant in the first place, using a binary representation (which naturally "reveals" lots of patterns), affecting a digit to each card in a certain order (there's no justification to decide whether each digit would better represent this or that card), you make it significant in the first place.

Which means, that there are 99.75 % for the alternative "result of intended or logical action".

indeed you can find a logical action, but it's only the action you made by choosing this representation.

Now you've the number "14 out of 22" ... this fact already should generate the suspicion "possibly a 5x14-deck", cause only ca. 350.000 of the ca. 4.000.000 possibilities (= 8.75 %) fulfill the condition.
From these 350.000 possibilities you've 9 unbroken rows and for each unbroken row you've usually 6-8 cases with one "jumper", which makes roughly 70 possibilities or so. 70 possibilities against 350.000, that's a solid chance of 1/5000. Even if I take a dark zone of "other" unusual constructions, I'll have difficulties to reach a relation above 1/400

Again, something is flawed : your hypothesis is that the 5x14 design is a decision à priori, you then choose a mathematical representation that reflects this human designed construction, and then you use probabilisitc computations as if it was a random event, to prove it is not random - which was the hypothesis from the begining.

Not that I disregard the 5x14 theory at all, and no offense meant, but you definitely can't rely on mathematical representation choosen on purpose to support it.

regards

Bertrand

hi Bertrand,

maybe you think about this trivial problem:

You have a house with 10 x 20 meter (so 200 square meters) front and this house has a door (2 square meters) and you have a man running towards the house (we exclude the condition, that he might run elsewhere) with the probability, that once in 100 cases the man will meet the door and in 99 others he will ram his head against a wall.

Empiric research now leads to the insight, that in spite of the above logical exspectation it's very rare, that the man rams his head against the wall and probably the man in 99.99 % cases finds the door - even if you arrange the door near the roof of the house ... he probably will find a ladder.

So you've to change your theory about the world, for instance with ideas like "the man has insight", "the man has eyes" "the man has a ladder" etc. You find out, that the result of the empirical statistic is formed by a dominant condition, which you haven't thought of, when you were focussed on the relation 2 and 200 square meters. It's not an accident, that the man finds the door, the observed action has system outside the values 2 and 200 square meters.

Similar trivial like the relation between 2 and 200 squaremeters is the insight, that each binary value has the same probability as any other. This wasn't disputed. But the mind interprets numbers and other signs.

The value "khkljlalabum" has the same probability as "kindergarten" (both have 12 letters of a predefined set of alphabet with a limited number of letters) ... there's the difference, that I understand kindergarten and have difficulties with khkljlalabum. Most accident results with 12 signs of a limited keyword I wouldn't understand, but some rare combination I understand, I'm trained in this way, I speak languages, in which kindergarten means something - and khkljlalabum not.

Well, and I understand also 1111111111101100000010 ... and there are other "not rare" combination, by which my mind doesn't think it's interesting to keep an eye on it, recognizable "accident results".

Well, and my declaration is, that your mind doesn't act properly, when it meets a 1111111111101100000010 and doesn't realize it's rarity. You mind then simply misses information of some worth. It's not a problem, as most people don't understand to read such things. But if it happens to me, that I overlook such things, then it is a "rather stupid mistake" in the evaluations of my private world observation studio.

Not that I disregard the 5x14 theory at all, and no offense meant, but you definitely can't rely on mathematical representation choosen on purpose to support it.

Thanks for your interest in the 5x14-theory, but nonetheless you've to live with the contradiction, that I consider this strange number 1111111111101100000010 as more worthwhile as for instance the 70 cards note of Ferrara. And we've had some persons with talents in mathematics around us, for instance Gert Mittring ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Mittring
"He won the MSO mental calculation gold medal in every year from 2004 to 2009. In 2004 he held 24 recognized world records for calculation."

... ... he knew the theory quite well in its beginnings and didn't consider it especially stupid ... ... we discussed then also his mental escapades to get the 137th root of a 1000-digit-number in about 5 minutes or so ... - naturally without computer. ... .-) ... It isn't so difficult, as it looks.

Like Bertrand, I don't think purely probabilistic calculations are a valid way to do history. You need to know the variables to know what is rare or not, what can be expected or not. History isn't mathematics, it's interpretation. Interpretation of evidence, and the historical constraints on it.

With the PMB, we already have an unknown - we don't know the date.

The Charles VI's profile, by the binary scheme, is (starting with Fool) 1000111111101110101111 (that's 1000111111011110101111 in Tarot de Marseille). How rare is that? I don't know. Given that there is a Court Card, the Jack of Swords, I think the best way to interpret this is to say that the "0" are lost cards, rather than "never existed" cards (Just as the Jack shows the entire rest of the deck has been lost (unless a recently discovered Jack is authentic).

We don't know the exact dates of any of these decks. The Charles VI might be *earlier* than the PMB. It fills in all the cards missing from PMB except for the Devil.

The Cary Yale is earlier than the PMB, and it has a card that can only be interpreted as the World. It has extra cards too, the Theological Virtues, but that is a different discussion (it also has extra court cards).

Surviving triumph cards, and all the lists, stay within a very small range of variation. The weight of interpretation falls on conformity of variations to a previous pattern, rather than coalescence into a pattern from an infinitude of variations. Especially since the chronology works against so much time for those infinitudes.

The question is, what are the chances that an original pattern suffered variations, against a variation of originals coming together into a standard? You can't answer that by pure probability - it is a historical question, constrained by the chronology and evidence (you might compare the Alphabet - over a greater period of time. How many times was the Alphabet invented? Not writing, but the Alphabet. I think the uniform answer is, despite the multitude of difference scripts and alphabets - ONCE).

My method has been to look at the evidence and quantify and qualify it, and to put it on the chronology. The sources of the evidence being equal - no more nor less chance of historical preservation or destruction - the conclusion is that the date is within 5 years before 1442, and the form of the deck is what we take now to be standard - 21 trumps and a Fool.

Of course I'm willing to dare a more exact conclusion, but that involves interpretation of the series, and cannot be proved (unless persuasion is proof).

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:How many times was the Alphabet invented? Not writing, but the Alphabet. I think the uniform answer is, despite the multitude of difference scripts and alphabets - ONCE).

.. .-) ... there were various attempts to write. Some of the experiments survived till nowadays, some very successful (European alphabet, Chinese scripture), some less. As writing was a useful tool, it's not a surprise, that some became very successful. It's also not surprising, that also these successful forms were invented - ONCE.

In the case of the alphabet we relative clearly know, that the very successful form in our time (European alphabet with its variations in French, Spanish, German alphabets), was not the first alphabet.

So - why should the most successful sort of Tarot have been the first? In the alphabets probably the English form is most successful: 26 letters. If I count the German specials as letters, I've 30. The original major stream probably had 22.

Why shouldn't have early forms of Tarot 14 or 16 trumps? What's troublesome with this idea? We've evidence for 70 cards in Ferrara. We've evidence for 16 trumps in the Michelino. We've late evidence with the Minchiate (41 special cards), that the number-of-trumps-question could have been handled with easy hand, that's not a religious matter. We've the result, that later the successful deck had 22 special cards. But would it really change much, if it would be 20, 25 or 30? Not really. Just, that then probably a movement of the fans of this deck form would exist, that would declare, that Tarot had always 20, 25 or 30 cards. And also in this case it would go the way: "Okay, let's look at the evidence ...".

Huck wrote: So - why should the most successful sort of Tarot have been the first? In the alphabets probably the English form is most successful: 26 letters. If I count the German specials as letters, I've 30. The original major stream probably had 22.

Why shouldn't have early forms of Tarot 14 or 16 trumps? What's troublesome with this idea? We've evidence for 70 cards in Ferrara. We've evidence for 16 trumps in the Michelino. We've late evidence with the Minchiate (41 special cards), that the number-of-trumps-question could have been handled with easy hand, that's not a religious matter. We've the result, that later the successful deck had 22 special cards. But would it really change much, if it would be 20, 25 or 30? Not really. Just, that then probably a movement of the fans of this deck form would exist, that would declare, that Tarot had always 20, 25 or 30 cards. And also in this case it would go the way: "Okay, let's look at the evidence ...".

Of course, it doesn't matter at all how many trumps there might have been in the original standard Tarot. My own position is based on the speed of transmission to a large part of Italy - from Siena to Monselice (South-North axis), and (possibly Rimini) Ferrara to Milan (East-West axis), in a decade (we can assume this is just the tip of the iceberg, and that it was actually more widespread); combined with the name referring to something new and something everybody would know (a standard), and finally with the fact that traditions emerged or arranging the *same* subjects in slightly different orders.

If the choice of subjects were arbitrary and chaotic, and looked so different from the recognizable standard series, whatever its order (A B or C), and there were many kinds of tarots with all these different kinds of subjects and orders, I think we would see more variations in the surviving early cards. As it is we have few. Instead we have three forms of the standard subjects.

By the way, I think that my position is conservative, perhaps the most conservative - if you could sample the experts like Thierry Depaulis and Michael Dummett, if they had to bet, I think you would find that they think the earliest tarot looked different from any surviving example, and might have had more cards and/or some different subjects. They see a process of early evolution that is completely unknown.

The alphabet as example - I said explicitly that I wasn't referring to writing, which was invented independently three or four times. I meant that all *alphabets* - not syllabaries or ideographs - come from a single invention, and that invention still exists. It's like saying that concept of trumps was invented a few times independently, but "carte da trionfi" (=alphabet in my example), whatever its variations, only once.

The analogy breaks down in detail though, not least because of the massive time-scale of alphabetic development and vastly greater number of different alphabets coming from that single first one.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: The Charles VI's profile, by the binary scheme, is (starting with Fool) 1000111111101110101111 (that's 1000111111011110101111 in Tarot de Marseille). How rare is that? I don't know. Given that there is a Court Card, the Jack of Swords, I think the best way to interpret this is to say that the "0" are lost cards, rather than "never existed" cards (Just as the Jack shows the entire rest of the deck has been lost (unless a recently discovered Jack is authentic).

For this point: exact, we have 2 decks only, for which the relation to another order makes sense as an control instrument, the 14 Bembo special cards and the 16 special cards of the Charles VI. We've no more, where this form of calculation is relevant, as far "really surviving" decks are concerned.

One of this 2 gives a very unusual result, which doesn't look like an accident, the other not.

Now we've to think about the context of the two decks ... the unusual result is from Milan, which for some historic reasons had an order near to the Marseille Tarot (Dummett's order), so in this case a comparison to the Marseille looks appropriate.
The Charles VI is given by us both to Florence, and from Florence we have the Minchiate order and this is rather different ... at least there is reason to assume, that Florence took a special development. So, why should we have a speaking result by a comparison with the Marseille order?
As you probably know, the Charles VI deck is given to the year 1463 and relates the 16 cards to the 16 figures of the chess game (according the interpretation, which was presented in this thread). A card game which is related to chess game not natural is connected to a number row, at least it stays a riddle, if and how it was. We also don't see a number-row in the reconstructed Cary-Yale, which also is suspected to have had 16 special cards and had been probably also related to chess.
We know, that the Michelino deck had 16 cards AND a number row, but we also know, that this deck form didn't get a prolongation in its future (at least we don't see it reappear). A dominant relation to chess - in this game - is not very obvious, we miss, that the inventor expressed his chess love by giving the set 64 cards (numbers of fields at an 8x8 chess board) ... instead he took as total number for the cards the number 60, which was already observed by Johannes of Rheinfelden nearly 50 years before, so had been a traditional pattern and a Matrix-deck.

The 14 Bembo trumps instead have not the confusing chess relation, they clearly decide to be together a Matrix-deck and it has only 14 trumps instead of 16 - so it doesn't fit with 16 chess figures, but is dominated by a common suit structure.
In this type of deck the number row plays - probably - an important role (we have the evidence of number row to playing card decks already from Johannes of Rheinfelden). As a result of this relation we have a mysterious connection to the later very successful Marseille order, which is indicated by the rare number 1111111111101100000010.

The practical attempt to correlate chess and playing cards shouldn't surprise. Already Johannes of Rheinfelden reflected the relation between the two forms of games and later many others. When we meet this feature between the early Trionfi cards, then it should probably be interpreted as an attempt to bridge between "prohibited playing cards" to "allowed chess", making at least it possible, that these special cards belonged to the "allowed games" (which we with no knowledge about this speciality would experience as a contradiction in the observation of the city laws, which allowed Trionfi decks, but prohibited playing cards).
So in disregard of all manifested opinions about an early deck form with 22 special cards games with 16 special cards in a chess mask fulfill the general historic situation better, than these decks with 22 cards, which even use the "very prohibited" dice results as a basic pattern.

We have the 5x14-deck in Milan (a location, which according our researches was less hampered with playing card prohibitions), and the appearance of a 16 trumps deck in Florence in 1463 (a location, which much more had forms of playing card prohibitions) ... I don't see, that this is not logical.

As "not logical" seems, that ...

1. a deck with 22 special cards existed in a large distribution and left in ca. 50 years of existence no definite evidence of its real structure - or at least some indications in contemporary art.
2. that the development from a normal Matrix playing card deck to a deck form with additional trumps with a different number of trumps than the number in the suits happened in one single step - in regard to the many playing card experiments, we know of in 15th century

Our both positions in this question have curious differences:

You wish to tell that there were many cards with less differences between the deck versions.
I wish to tell that there were less cards with much differences between the deck versions.

More cards should produce "more evidence" ... but the evidence for the 22 cards version is missing. Less cards produce "less evidence" ... but the evidence for the creative differences is not missing.

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From the general development we have, that the Milanese/French pattern became the most successful version ... as we know from history, Milan was occupied by France in 1500 and we have it, that the term "Tarot" (alias Taraux or Tarocchi) appeared first in 1505, so after the occupation. The name change from "Trionfi cards" to "Tarot" and "Taraux" and "Tarocchi" probably indicated, that something had changed with the deck. What ... ? Perhaps only, that the deck was produced in France. Perhaps, that the general form was changed, now with 22 cards.

We've evidence of two unusual card decks produced before 1500, which confirm the existence of the deck form 4x14+22, Boiardo Tarocchi poem (probably 1487) and Sola Busca Tarocchi (1491) ... evidence for the use of the complete later successful trumps series in 4x14+22-form before 1500 is missing totally. For the Milanese situation we've 20 trumps, probably since 1465, but the conditions are not really clear.

That's the situation.