Tarot History Forum

There is an incomplete pack in the Bibliotheque Municipale at Rouen from the early sixteenth century, whose triumph cards bear numerals;
although a classicised pack, the figures can easily be equated with the usual subjects, unlike in the Sola-Busca tarocchi^ Count Leopoldo Cicognara knew a complete example of a very similar, though not identical, pack, and illustrated six cards from it in his book of 1831 ;57 in his pack, there were no numerals on the triumph cards. The triumphs of the Sola-Busca pack itself do bear numerals. Numerals do not seem to have been an original feature of any of the hand-painted packs: there qre numerals on three of the triumph cards at the Castello
56 The pack is part of the Leber Collection, catalogue number 1351 -XIV. Four cards are illustrated in colour in D. Hoffmann, op. cit., plate 23(b), and nine by Kaplan, op. cit., p. 133. Thirty cards survive, including the Fool and seven triumph cards. The latter are to be identified with the usual subjects as follows: Imperator Assiriorum, unnumbered (the numeral is presumably covered up by the turned-over edge) - the Emperor; Pontifex Pontificum, 5 -the Pope; Victoriae Premium. 7 - the Chariot; Omnium Dominatrix, 10 - the Wheel of Fortune;. Rerum Edax (Saturn), 11 - the Hermit (or Time); Perditorum Raptor (Pluto), 14-the Devil; InclitumSydus, 16-the Star.

57 See L. Cicognara, op. cit., pp. 163-6 and plate XIV; the cards are also shown in D. Hoffmann, op. cit., fig. 6. The cards illustrated by Cicognara are the Aces of the four suits, Cupid = Love, and Apollo = the Sun. Contrary to what is said by D. Hoffmann, op. cit., p. 68, the pack described by Cicognara was not the same as that at Rouen, though very similar. The Rouen set includes the Aces of Batons, Coins and Swords, and these differ considerably in design from those .shown by Cicognara. Also, Cicognara describes the Fool of his pack in detail, and it is quite different from that at Rouen: Cicognara's Fool was a drunkard lying bn his back, supporting, with his legs in the air, a jar marked 'Muscatello'; that at Rouen shows a man armed to the teeth, and dressed in armour, but with genitals exposed and urinating, and bears the inscription 'Velim fundam dari mihi'. The Cicognara pack is ascribed by A.M. Hind, op. cit., vol. V, London, 1948, pp. 139-40, to Nicoletto da Modena.

p. 163
Much beauty and interest is offered by a Tarot deck that we have the luck of owning. It is complete, with 78 cards, of which 56 in the suits of coins, cups, swords,

p. 164
wands, from one to ten with four court cards each. The 22 Tarocchi (trumps) are of the same form as described by Court de Gebelin, which has survived in all Italy.
The back of each card displays a black and white image of the best taste, in the middle there are two “putti” embracing each other, one upside-down with respect to the other; in this way the back of the cards always looks the same independently from how they are kept by the player holding them (see tabula 11).
These cards are of beautiful design, engraved on copper, as you can see, but they have been colored with water colors in various and beautiful colors. There is no inscription about the place and time and the author of the engravings.
All the coins are imperial coins from the age of Augustus, down to the last emperors, starting from the ace with the medal of Julius Caesar with the inscription “Divi Iulii Caesar. Augusti” (to the Divine Emperor Julius Caesar) and ending with the medal in the ten with Q. Sertorius.
The King of Coins sits in his throne in oriental dressing, on the bottom of the card it is written “Mydas Rex Lydorum”. The Queen, with naked arms and breast, bears the writing “Cleopatra Regina Alex. Aegypti” , she holds a medal of Lucretia from Rome, on the top there is another medal “Virgo Tarpea”. The horse is similar to the statue of Marcus Aurelius with a pedestal different from what you see in the Capitol (in Rome); there is a suspended shield with a crowned eagle with two heads and in the pedestal there are more coat of arms. The Page bears a medal with a Victory, the title at the bottom reads “Marcu Crassus

p. 165
Comsul” (sic).
The wands are represented by little trees planted in the ground with little animals at their roots and birds between the leaves. The Ace is an oak tree with a shield with no emblem, at its root swines eating acorns. On the two there is the fable of the fox and grapes which it cannot reach. In the court cards, Nino, Ippolita, Castor and Pollux.
The cups present a number of vases, cups, urns of different kinds. The ace is a large vase, on which two little satyrs sit, on the top a target with SPQR. The figures are Sardanapallo, Semiramide, Marcantonio and Apicio. In the swords you see a variety of handles and sheaths of different kinds of swords and different shields of ancient style.
... The names of the figures are Alessandro, Tamiri, “M. Sicio Dentato ob virtutem Achilles Ro.” who as on his shield an eagle in white field and three horizontal red bars and three black.
The Tarocchi (trumps) contain only a few particular features, but they are beautiful in their design. And as the last card, the Fool, drunkness has been appropriately represented, as the vice that is most enemy of reason.
We show a few of these cards to give an idea of their beauty. Their style is similar to the earlier engraver from Tuscany: the cuts are horizontal, without crossing, close to each other, and very similar to the works of the first age of this art. There are no other inscriptions but those already mentioned,

p. 166
except the drunk man, that is a fallen young man, with his legs in the air, holding a vase from which wine is pouring: on the vase “Muscatello” is written.

Durazzo relations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_of_Durazzo

Margaret of Durazzo (Italian: Margherita di Durazzo 28 July 1347 – 6 August 1412) was Queen of Naples and Hungary and Princess of Achaea[1][2] as the spouse of Charles III of Naples, and later regent of Naples during the minority of her son.
She was the fourth daughter of Charles, Duke of Durazzo (1323–1348) and Maria of Calabria, but the only one to have children; her legitimate line of descent, as well as the century-old Capetian House of Anjou, ended with her daughter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_II_of_Naples

Biography

Joanna was born at Zara, Dalmatia (present-day Zadar, Croatia) on 25 June 1373, as the daughter of Charles III of Naples and Margaret of Durazzo.[1]
In 1414, she succeeded her brother Ladislaus to the throne of Naples;[2] at that date she was 41 years old and was already the widow of her cousin Hedwig's rejected fiancé, William, Duke of Austria. She married twice, but had no children.[2]

Marriages

Joanna married her first husband, William, Duke of Austria in Vienna in the autumn of 1401 when she was 28 years of age.[1] He had been rejected as a husband by her cousin, Hedwig of Poland. Joanna did not have any children by William, who died in 1406 after five years of marriage. It was sometime after his death, that she acquired a lover by the name of Pandolfello Alopo, whom she appointed Grand Chamberlain.[1] Alopo was the first in what would become a series of lovers and male favourites. He later caused the downfall of the influential condottiero and grand constable Muzio Sforza, provoking much jealousy.
In early 1415, she became fiancee to John of Aragon, a son of King Ferdinand I of Aragon, and twenty-five years her junior.[3] The betrothal was annulled shortly after, which left Joanna free to choose another husband. On 10 August 1415, she married a second time, to James of Bourbon, Count of La Marche,[1] in order to gain the support of the French monarchy. The marriage contract stipulated that upon his marriage to Joanna, James would be granted the title of Prince of Taranto. Not having received the promised title, he had Alopo killed and forced Joanna to name him King of Naples. In an attempt to assume complete power, James imprisoned Joanna in her own apartments in the royal palace; however, she was later released by the nobles.
In 1416, a riot exploded in Naples, and James was compelled to send back his French administrators, and to renounce his title. In this period, Joanna began her relationship with Sergianni Caracciolo, who later acquired an overwhelming degree of power over the court. On 28 August 1417, she reconquered Rome, and the following year (1418), James left Naples for France.

Rupture with the papacy

With James now powerless, Joanna could finally celebrate her coronation on 28 October 1419, when she was crowned Queen of Sicily and Naples. However, her relationship with Naples' nominal feudal suzerain, Pope Martin V, soon worsened. Upon the advice of Caracciolo, she denied Martin economic aid to rebuild the papal army. In response, the Pope called in Louis III of Anjou, son of the rival of King Ladislaus and himself still a pretender to the Neapolitan throne. In 1420, Louis invaded Campania, but the Pope, trying to gain personal advantage from the menace posed to Joanna, called the ambassadors of the two parties to Florence.
Joanna rejected the ambiguous papal proposal calling for help from the brother of her erstwhile betrothed, the powerful King Alfonso V of Aragon, to whom she promised the hereditary title to Naples. Alfonso entered Naples in July 1421. Louis lost the support of the Pope, but at the same time the relationship between Joanna and Alfonso worsened. In May 1423, Alfonso had Caracciolo arrested and besieged Joanna's residence, the Castel Capuano. An agreement was obtained; Sergianni was freed, and fled to Aversa with Joanna. Here she met again with Louis, declared her adoption of Alfonso to be null and void, and named Louis as her new heir. Alfonso was forced to return to Spain, so that she could be returned to Naples in April 1424. Sergianni's exceeding ambition pushed Joanna to plot his assassination in 1432. On 19 August 1432, Sergianni Caracciolo was stabbed in his room in Castel Capuano. He was buried in Naples in the church of San Giovanni a Carbonara.
Years of peace[edit]
The remaining years of Joanna's reign were relatively peaceful. Louis dwelled in his fiefdom, the Duchy of Calabria, waiting for the call to the throne, but died in 1434. The aging Joanna named René, Louis' brother, as her heir. She died in Naples on 2 February 1435 at the age of 61, and was buried in the Church of Santa Annunziata. With her death the entire Capetian House of Anjou became extinct.

It's definitely clear, that the Durazzo family had the Rothschild cards in 18th century.

Eitelberger noted around 1860, that some playing cards had been once in the possession of Leopoldo Cicognara, but this might be easily a wrong information. Or the sentence was possibly related to another playing card deck.

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1143

A "moorish relation" from Jeanne II we get with the adoption of Alfonso of Aragon (1421 ?) ... or already from her fiancee, John of Aragon (1415).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zadar

That's the (modern) city heraldry of Zadar = Zama in Dalmatia. The city is relative far to the South at the Balkan.
Jeanne II was born there. The saint George cross is there, also a St. George (I suggest).

From earlier researches I remember, that Alfonso of Aragon searched for influence also in this region.

Stemma di Re Carlo III di Durazzo [Carlo II d'Angiò] 1285-1308] --- Historia civitatis Troiane, Colonne, Guide delle, 1287 [Bibliotheque d'Espagne]

Charles I (21 March 1227 – 7 January 1285), known also as Charles of Anjou, was the King of Sicily by conquest from 1266,[1] though he had received it as a papal grant in 1262 and was expelled from the island in the aftermath of the Sicilian Vespers of 1282. Thereafter, he claimed the island, though his power was restricted to the peninsular possessions of the kingdom, with his capital at Naples (and for this he is usually titled Naples after 1282, as are his King of successors).

Charles was the seventh child[2] and youngest son of Louis VIII of France and Blanche of Castile, and hence younger brother of Louis IX of France and Alfonso II of Toulouse. He conquered the Kingdom of Sicily from the Hohenstaufen and acquired lands in the eastern Mediterranean. However, the War of the Sicilian Vespers forced him to abandon his plans to reassemble the Latin Empire.

By marriage to Beatrice of Provence, heiress of Raymond Berengar IV of Provence, he was Count of Provence and Forcalquier from 1246. In 1247, his brother Louis IX made him Count of Anjou and Maine, as appanages of the French crown. By conquest and self-proclamation, he became King of Albania in 1272 and by purchase King of Jerusalem in 1277. By the testament of William II of Villehardouin, he inherited the Principality of Achaea in 1278.

During the Sicilian Vespers, he was captured by Roger of Lauria in the naval battle at Naples in 1284. When his father died in 1285, he was still a prisoner of Peter III of Aragon.

In 1288, King Edward I of England mediated to make peace, and Charles was freed on condition that he retain Naples alone. Sicily was left to the Aragonese. Charles was also to induce his cousin Charles of Valois to renounce, for twenty thousand pounds of silver, the kingdom of Aragon, which had been given to him by Pope Martin IV to punish Peter for having invaded Sicily, but which the Valois had never effectively occupied.

B9. Giovanni, Duke of Durazzo, Pr of Achaia, etc, *1294, +Naples 5.4.1336, bur there; 1m: III.1318 (div 1321) Mathilde d'Avesnes (*29.11.1293 +1336), dau.of Florenz of Hainaut, Pr of Achaia; 2m: 14.11.1321 Agnes (+1345, bur Naples) dau.of Elvas VII de Périgord

C1. Carlo, Duke of Durazzo, etc, *1323, +executed at Aversa 23.1.1348, bur Naples; m.30.4.1343 Pss Maria of Naples (*ca 6.12.1328 +20.5.1366)
D1. Louis, *XII.1343, +14.1.1344, bur Naples
D2. Giovanna, Duchess of Durazzo, *1344, +Apulia 1387, bur Naples; 1m: Italy 1366 Inft Louis of Navarre, Cte de Beaumont (*1341 +1372, bur Naples); 2m: ca 1376 Robert IV d'Artois, Cte d'Eu (*1356 +poisoned 20.7.1387)
D3. Agnes, *1345, +Naples 7.7/8.1383, bur there; 1m: 6.6.1363 Cansignorio della Scala, Signore di Verona (*5.3.1340 +19.10.1375); 2m: 1382 Jacob de Baux, Pr of Tarento and Achaia (*1353 +7.7.1383)
D4. Clementia, *1346, +Naples 1363, bur there
D5. Margarita, *28.7.1347, +Mela 6.8.1412, bur Salerno; m.II.1368 King Charles III of Naples (*1345 +1386)

C2. Lodovico, Cte di Gravina e di Morrone, *1324, +of poisoning in Naples 22.7.1362; m.1343 Margherita, dau.of Roberto Sanseverino, Cte di Corigliano
D1. Louis, *1344, +young
D2. King Charles III of Naples and Jerusalem (1381-86) and Hungary (1385-86) as Károly II "the Small" -cr 31.12.1385, *1345, +murdered at Visegrád 24.2.1386, bur there/Belgrade; adopted and named heir by Queen Joanna I in 1369; m.II.1369 Margherita of Durazzo (*1347 +1412)
E1. King Ladislas "le Magnanime" of Naples and Jerusalem (1386-1414), Hungary and Dalmatia, etc, *Naples 14.7.1376/11.2.1377, +of poisoning at Naples 6.8.1414, bur there; 1m: 1390 (div 1392) Costanza, dau.of Manfredo de Clermont, Cte di Motica; 2m: 12.2.1403 Marie de Lusignan (*1381 +4.9.1404, bur Naples); 3m: 1406 Marie, Cts di Lecce (*1370 +9.5.1446), dau.of Jean d'Enghien, Cte di Castro
F1. [illegitimate] Rinaldo di Durazzo, titular Pr di Capua, bur Foggia
G1. Francesco di Durazzo
H1. Rinaldo di Durazzo, *1469, +1.9.1494, bur Foggia; m.Camilla Tomacelli
G2. Caterina di Durazzo
G3. Camilla di Durazzo
G4. Ipolita di Durazzo
F2. [illegitimate] Maria di Durazzo, +young
E2. Maria, *1369, +1371, bur Naples
E3. Queen Joanna II of Naples (1414-35) and Jerusalem (1414-19), *25.6.1373, +Naples 2.2.1435, bur there; 1m: Vienna 13.10/11.1401 Duke Wilhelm of Styria and Carinthia (*1370 +15.7.1406); 2m: shortly before 18.9.1415 Jacques II de Bourbon, Cte de la Marche (*1370 +1438). Joanna II helped cause the subsequent battles over southern Italy by 1st adopting in 1420 King Alfonso V of Aragon, and then in 1423 Louis, Duc d'Anjou
D3. Agnes, *1347, +young

C3. Robert, Pr of Morea, *1326, +k.a.Poitiers 19.9.1356

C4. Stephen, *1328, +in Portugal

Huck wrote:

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1105&start=30#p18416

Phaeded wrote:
I'm not sure what you are looking for here Huck, and a dog chasing a hare is a common enough motif, but you might also consider Orion's Dog (Sirius / Canis Major) chasing Lepus, the hare constellation, as a possible source for the chosen animals (as the stars - or rather the earth - rotate, the dog "chases" the hare across the sky). Renaissance celestial atlases will show them fleshed out in color - versus constellation diagrams - but here the outlines are overlaid on the latter: