Nightmare Alley

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The greatest book ever written about Tarot.

One of the key features of the past 40 years or so of Tarot has been the movement, on the part of the clique or class of users who sought to take it over as a trade or profession, to clean up Tarot's reputation. The general idea, as one still sees expressed, even in forums like this, is "throw out the gypsies, and bring in the psychologists". People actually go to college (well, schools of some sort anyway) to authorize their Tarot opinions and make getting true believers and paying customers (especially a better-paying class of them) much easier. Basically, this group of business folk wanted to de-carnivalize Tarot. And the great thing about that is 1. That is still so carnival! and 2. Doing this, making the scam respectable, was explained in some detail in a book published in 1946 called "Nightmare Alley".

Yeah, I know, you probably saw Del Toro's movie and you think you know the story. But you don't. For one thing, there is a lot of Tarot in "Nightmare Alley", the book. And I have spelled out the basics for everybody (because who really wants to read a book FFS) in my new article:

https://pathologypoet.substack.com/p/nightmare-alley

Re: Nightmare Alley

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Really nice read Glenn; forwarding that to some friends.

My druther:
Are most post-literate woke-to-sleep Tarot munchkins going to be comfortable washing their sacred cards in a literary bath of obscenity, pornography, racism, sexism, sadism and violence—all the best attractions of the carnival?

Probably just the Thelemites and other darksiders will dig on that, right? But Tarot was born in the carnival and it fits right in with a milieu of the very worst (or most honest?) human conduct.
This would be where Ross, at least, and I differ - I see tarot as created by the literati for the elite (I've proposed Leonardo Bruni for various reasons, but for the general idea see James Hankins' Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy, 2019) , and when it hit the street/common card-playing milieu it devolved into what it became. But in the end, everything ends up in the carnival (especially in a world stamped by Trump).

Phaeded

Re: Nightmare Alley

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Phaeded wrote: 22 May 2022, 17:18
This would be where Ross, at least, and I differ - I see tarot as created by the literati for the elite (I've proposed Leonardo Bruni for various reasons, but for the general idea see James Hankins' Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy, 2019) , and when it hit the street/common card-playing milieu it devolved into what it became. But in the end, everything ends up in the carnival (especially in a world stamped by Trump).
Certainly not Bruni, or that level of literati. I'm thinking of Brunelleschi's circle, artisans like Lo Scheggia and other Florentine bourgeois. The trump figures are borrowed from popular imagery anybody could see, and the procession modelled on festival processions, including Carnival, but also the main mid-summer one, Saint John the Baptist.

Re: Nightmare Alley

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Ross Caldwell wrote: 22 May 2022, 17:41
Phaeded wrote: 22 May 2022, 17:18
This would be where Ross, at least, and I differ - I see tarot as created by the literati for the elite (I've proposed Leonardo Bruni for various reasons, but for the general idea see James Hankins' Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy, 2019) , and when it hit the street/common card-playing milieu it devolved into what it became. But in the end, everything ends up in the carnival (especially in a world stamped by Trump).
Certainly not Bruni, or that level of literati. I'm thinking of Brunelleschi's circle, artisans like Lo Scheggia and other Florentine bourgeois. The trump figures are borrowed from popular imagery anybody could see, and the procession modelled on festival processions, including Carnival, but also the main mid-summer one, Saint John the Baptist.
IMO you're blurring he who executed the art with he who conceived of the subject - the invention or istoria. I'll eventually post more on it another time, but, for instance, it is very unlikely that dal Ponte's complex seven virtues and exempli - which is a "Triumph of Charity" - was conceived by him (and that was apparently the first time that appeared in art - paired canonical 7 virtues/exempli). Taddeo Gaddi, to give another example, did not conceive of the seven virtues writ large on the Loggia dei Lanzi, nor did he even do all of them (no one is even sure who did the three theological ones facing the Palazzo Vecchio).

Bruni proposed a series of images for the Baptistery doors (as his predecessor Salutati did for a "famous men" fresco cycle inside the Palazzo Vecchio), which was ultimately rejected for the most part, but even if it hadn't the execution of said series would necessarily reflect borrowings from "popular imagery", the repertoire, copybooks, etc. of the artist's studio who carried out the commission; that however does not mean the artist invented the subject(s). That Bruni would involve himself with a series of images related to the virtues (at least one inclusive of the virtues), which was central to his thought, is not a controversial proposal, and again, he was voluntarily/personally involved in the earlier baptistery project.

To quote from the fundamental study on early Renaissance art:
"The painter was typically, though not invariably, employed and controlled by an individual or small group."
Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in 15th century Italy (Oxford University Press, 1972: 5).

Even better, a contemporary source and friend of Brunelleschi:
"For their own enjoyment artists should associate with poets and orators who have many embellishments in common with painters and who have a broad knowledge of many things whose greatest praise consists in the invention." (Alberti, On Painting, Book 3)

The exceptions (e.g., Ghiberti in some instances) are far outweighed by the rule, before the likes of Da Vinci arrive on the scene. Even Botticelli followed the likes of Angelo Poliziano in constructing his allegories, all of which are arguably conceived top down from Lorenzo's humanist circle. In c. 1440 a novel artistic series was even more likely to be conceived by a humanist.

What you are proposing is not impossible, but highly unlikely.

Re: Nightmare Alley

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I'm not entertaining the possibility that a painter or woodworker like Lo Scheggia invented the sequence and chose the images for the new game.

But I think you underestimate Brunelleschi, who was close friends with Alberti (who dedicated the Italian (and probably first) version of Della Pittura to him). No smoking gun, but he became a person of interest once I learned that Lo Scheggia was his friend, and that he had been summoned to Milan twice by Filippo Maria himself, once in the early '20s, and once in the '30s, probably shortly after the consecration of the Duomo in 1436. This suggested to me that he might have seen and even played Filippo Maria's new game with him, introducing him to the concept of a trump suit. Thus there would be an organic link between the two decks with the concept of a permanent trump game with a special symbolic sequence, and not two separate inventions of the concept, Marziano and Tarot, as I had hitherto supposed.

À propos of the intellectual conception of complex programmes - the architecture of the game - here are some remarks on Brunelleschi by Paolo Ventrone:
Di lui scriveva il Vasari, nella biografia dove gli attribuiva la paternità dell'apparato dell'Annunciazione di San Felice, che era frequentatore di “persone studiose,” che aveva affinato le sue conoscenze di geometria grazie all'amicizia con Paolo Toscanelli, riuscendo spesso a stupirlo per l'arguzia dei suoi ragionamenti nonostante non avesse “lettere,” cioè non conoscesse il latino. Aggiungeva inoltre:

E così sequitando, dava opera alle cose della scrittura cristiana, non restando d'intervenire alle dispute ed alle prediche delle persone dotte; delle quali faceva tanto capitale per la mirabil memoria sua, che messer Paulo predetto [Toscanelli], celebrandolo, usava dire che nel sentire arguir Filippo [Brunelleschi], gli pareva un nuovo San Paulo.

Diede ancora molta opera in questo tempo alle cose di Dante, le quali furon da lui bene intese circa i siti e le misure; e spesso nelle comparazioni allegandolo, se ne serviva ne' suoi ragionamenti. Né mai col pensiero faceva altro che macchinare e immaginare cose ingegnose e difficili.

Si disegna, in tal modo, non più l'immagine di un artigiano ma di un artista che univa la perizia meccanica del mestiere alla finezza speculativa dell'intelletuale, accendendo, per esse, ai circoli più esclusivi della cultura cittadina. Non è solo la frequentazione degli umanisti e degli uomini di potere a rendere Filippo Brunelleschi l'unico possibile artefice degli spettacoli per il Concilio, ma anche il suo interesse per argomenti scritturali e teologici, la sua profonda conoscenza di Dante del quale indagava “i siti e le misure,” la continua progettazione di “cose ingegnose e difficili.” Sequendo le linee della biografia vasariana sono propensa a credere che proprio lo studio della Commedia abbia sfidato l'architetto alla visualizzazione dell'ineffabile con la costruzione dei paradisi per le feste nelle chiese, e che questi, a loro volta, gli siano serviti a sperimentare i macchinari con i quali pervenne all'arditissima soluzione della cupola.
(Paolo Ventrone, “La propaganda unionista negli spettacoli del 1439,” in Paolo Ventrone, Teatro civile e sacra rappresentazione a Firenze nel Rinascimento (Firenze, Le Lettere, 2016), pp. 118-140 (139-140))

"Vasari wrote of him, in the biography where he attributed to him the authorship of the apparatus of the Annunciation of San Felice, that he frequented "scholarly people," that he had refined his knowledge of geometry through his friendship with Paolo Toscanelli, often managing to amaze him with the wit of his reasoning despite the fact that he had "no letters," that is, no knowledge of Latin. He further added:

And thus following,he worked at the things of Christian scripture, not hesitating to intervene in the disputes and sermons of learned persons; of which he made so much capital by his admirable memory, that messer Paulo predetto [Toscanelli], celebrating him, used to say that in hearing Filippo [Brunelleschi] argue, he seemed to him a new St. Paul.

He still gave much attention at this time to the things of Dante, whose sites and measures were well understood by him; and often in comparisons attaching him [Dante], he made use of them in his reasonings. Nor ever with thought did he do anything but scheming and imagining ingenious and difficult things.


"One thus draws, no longer the image of a craftsman but of an artist who united the mechanical skill of the trade with the speculative finesse of the intellectual, accessing, by them, the most exclusive circles of city culture. It was not only his frequentation of humanists and men of power that made Filippo Brunelleschi the only possible creator of the spectacles for the Council, but also his interest in scriptural and theological subjects, his profound knowledge of Dante whose "sites and measures he investigated," his continual design of "ingenious and difficult things." Following the lines of Vasari's biography, I am inclined to believe that it was precisely the study of the Commedia that challenged the architect to visualize the ineffable with the construction of the paradises for feasts in the churches, and that these, in turn, served him to experiment with the machinery with which he arrived at the daring solution of the dome."

Re: Nightmare Alley

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We seem to be in agreement about Lo Scheggia at least for the ur-tarot, but I'm not sure Brunelleschi sharing his immediate orbit connects the latter to the subject of the trumps. I would at least like some work tied to those subjects and Brunelleschi for such a theory. Notwithstanding the notion I've broached that Brunelleschi's dome may have had a hand in the earliest depiction of the "World" as a dome silhouette/arch-shaped vs a tondo (assuming the CY aped the Florentine ur-tarot since it likely followed so closely in time). But even there I assume that was meant to primarily connote a triumphal arch, which even seems to be suggested on Cardinal Trevisan's medal from the same time period (the 'restored church', its army in triumphal procession). The dome itself was lit up (by what means I can't really imagine) for the celebration after Anghiari; nothing else would have more clearly signified Florence than the dome after its completion in 1436, its "shadow cast over Tuscany" as some poet said at the time.

Both artists, after 1434, were essentially doing the Medici's bidding, or at least the Medici took a firmer control of the body dishing out projects associated with the duomo, both artists of course being tied to that church. And of course Bruni was now doing Cosimo's bidding as well after that date, however impartial and seemingly also tied to the Albizzi faction previously (in fact in my theory Bruni's guilt-by-association with the Albizzi - Arthur Fields going to excessive lengths to say Bruni was even aligned with the Albizzi - needed to make a gesture towards the Medici; ergo, the series of what he probably thought was triumphal ephemera - the trionfi).

Its too hard to be brief in explaining why dal Ponte's virtues/exempli have suddenly become a key for me in regard to the background of the ur-tarot, but I'll address that here eventually. Scheggia doesn't do a version of that theme until much later - and arguably tailored for a specific commission - but that doesn't rule him out from having done an earlier version (and hence why a later commission going to him).

Bellosi/Haines say this piece is more likely Apollonio (101) but for a Scheggia-esuqe virtue he would have at least been familiar with (birth tray in VA Fine Arts Museum in Richmond: Judgement of Solomon on the obverse and Hope on the back) and some related speculation on that in regard to the CY, see this older post (bottom of the thread): viewtopic.php?p=24153#p24153

The conception of virtues with exempli is a bold step forward from a single virtue example; I can't see anyone other than a humanist being behind that, especially given the dal Ponte precedent.

The scenario Alberti describes of artists mingling with humanists (bolstered by what you found in Vasari, however late) must have been an accomplished fact, and he was then simply recommending that for places other than Florence. But again, for Brunelleschi, what links him to the trump subjects?

Re: Nightmare Alley

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Phaeded wrote: 23 May 2022, 17:54 The scenario Alberti describes of artists mingling with humanists (bolstered by what you found in Vasari, however late) must have been an accomplished fact, and he was then simply recommending that for places other than Florence. But again, for Brunelleschi, what links him to the trump subjects?
No smoking gun, as I said. I'm not imagining that Brunelleschi single-handedly invented the game. It obviously required a group of people, to conceive, design a prototype, and test-play it until it was right to carve a plate to print and sell it. The latter scenario is what I imagine to have happened, in any case.

Brunelleschi simply opened the door to 1) the connection with Filippo Maria, and hence Michelino's deck; both men loved intellectual games and their clever toys (Filippo Maria with his fascination with Dondi's astrarium, for instance, and clever inventions that both Decembrio and Marcello mention; perhaps the elevator that he had designed to lower him to the cooler lower cellar during the hottest days was designed by Brunelleschi; Vasari says he "designed many things for the duke."); 2) the connection with Lo Scheggia, the blossoming of the Triumph genre in art, and the artisan's district of Santi Apostoli; 3) the humanists and other scholars, like Toscanelli; 4) the wondrous machines of the pageants, where I remembered Philine Helas' suggestion that it was Brunelleschi and Toscanelli who designed the turning globe on which Caesar stood in Alfonso's procession (since the Florentine expat business community in Naples was responsible for this part of the triumph, it is highly plausible they would choose the pre-eminent designer of such things; Piero de' Ricci, who wrote the speaking parts of Alfonso's triumph, knew Toscanelli and wrote a poem in praise of him, etc. ); 5) a second look at the pageants/processions themselves, as a model hierarchy that would have been instinctively familiar to Florentines. Nerida Newbigin, in her new two-volume study of the sacre rappresentazioni, notes that precise descriptions of the order of San Giovanni floats are rare, but it is clear that the Last Judgment was the last tableau vivant, although the Three Living and the Three Dead occurred after that in earlier ones, which recalls the Resurrection imagery on the Trump card, as if combining the Judgment and the Three Living/Dead. In any case there are many parallels, but the trump series is not based on any particular pageant.

The main point is the point of contact with the idea of a trump sequence, which is otherwise quite exceptional, and would be moreso if invented twice independently. In all places where cards are played traditionally, only Italy, in the first half of the 15th century, invented this particular kind of game. Everyone from Pratesi onward has wondered if there was some connection, first by imagining that Marziano encountered such a game in his studies in Florence, but that is far too early; then by imagining that Filippo Maria had a hand in both, inventing Tarot after he helped invent Marziano's game. But with the move to Florence, it became harder to find such a connection, so with Brunelleschi's trips to Milan, I found one.

The game they invented was simpler than Marziano's, not erudite, and not a complete reworking of the standard deck of normal playing cards. The trumps were just like a "dome" on top of the four-sided regular deck.

Re: Nightmare Alley

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Ross .....
But I think you underestimate Brunelleschi, who was close friends with Alberti (who dedicated the Italian (and probably first) version of Della Pittura to him). No smoking gun, but he became a person of interest once I learned that Lo Scheggia was his friend, and that he had been summoned to Milan twice by Filippo Maria himself, once in the early '20s, and once in the '30s, probably shortly after the consecration of the Duomo in 1436. This suggested to me that he might have seen and even played Filippo Maria's new game with him, introducing him to the concept of a trump suit. Thus there would be an organic link between the two decks with the concept of a permanent trump game with a special symbolic sequence, and not two separate inventions of the concept, Marziano and Tarot, as I had hitherto supposed.
If I understood this correctly, then there was a direct contact between Brunelleschi and Filippo Maria Visconti. Is there a reference for this contact?

Attempting to find it, I detected 2 pieces of information about Scheggia, which I found interesting ....
In 1432 he registered in the Guild of Stonemasons and Carpenters and the following year in that of the Physicians and Apothecaries, which was the Guild the artists enrolled in, a sign that he was by this stage specialised in his profession as a decorator of interiors and domestic furnishings, collaborating with carpenters and inlayers. His work was considerably appreciated in the city, so much so that he received commissions even for Palazzo Medici, including a spalliera panel (lost) illustrating the joust of 1469, which was set above strongboxes and chests in the first-floor chamber of Lorenzo il Magnifico (Cavazzini 1999, p. 13). As a painter of sacred subjects, in altarpieces and large-scale wall paintings, lo Scheggia’s commissioners were instead largely located in the rural district, in particular the Valdarno.
Between 1436 and 1440 he collaborated on the intarsia cupboardsforthe Sagrestia delle Messe in the Duomo. In the interim, after the death of his brother (1428), Giovanni turned his attention to those artists who had shown themselves to be the most gifted interpreters of Masaccio’s teaching, such as Beato Angelico, Domenico Veneziano and Filippo Lippi.
Around 1449 he created his masterpiece, the birth tray for Lorenzo il Magnifico portraying the Triumph of Fame (New York, Metropolitan Museum).
Dating to 1456-1457 is the only signed work by loScheggia: the fresco portraying the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and Scenes from the Life of Saint Anthony Abbot in the oratory of San Lorenzo in San Giovanni Valdarno. It is around this work that the critics have reconstructed the corpus of the painter’s works, drawing partly on catalogues gathered under the conventional names, Master of the Cassone Adimari and Master of Fucecchio.
Among the most important works referred to lo Scheggia are the so-called Cassone Adimari, or Adimari Wedding Chest, actually a spalliera panel (Florence, Accademia Gallery), the birth tray showing the Gioco del civettino and the curved panels portraying the Triumphs of Death, of Fame, of Love and of Eternity, now in Palazzo Davanzati (the latter originating from the Medici collections) and the altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints Lazarus, Martha, Mary Magdalene and Sebastian originating from the Collegiate church of Fucecchio (now in the Museo Civico).
http://www.travelingintuscany.com/art/loscheggia.htm

So he painted also the Lorenzo Medici tournament of 1469, but unluckily this picture is lost. And only one picture is signed, and for all others Scheggia's authorship is only reconstructed.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Nightmare Alley

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Brunelleschi in Milan is discussed here ...
Filippo Brunelleschi. Sein Leben und seine Werke · Band 1
Von Cornelius von Fabriczy · 1892
https://www.google.de/books/edition/Fil ... frontcover

The author comes to the conclusion, that the period 1428-32 would be probable. Which should be outside of the Trionfi card interests.

Added:
From German wiki biography ... https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Brunelleschi
Arbeit als Erfinder und Ingenieur
Brunelleschi war auch Ingenieur und Erfinder von Maschinen und Apparaten. So erfand er während des Kuppelbaus am Florentiner Dom für den großen Holzkran, der die Baustoffe nach oben transportierte, ein Wechselgetriebe, das das Umspannen von Arbeitstieren überflüssig machte. Bis dahin wurde dessen Hebewerk durch einen Göpel angetrieben, wobei hier die Tiere für die Auf- und Abbewegungen des Korbes immer zeitaufwändig umgespannt werden mussten. Damit konnte Brunelleschi die Bauzeit an der Kuppel erheblich verkürzen. Im Jahr 1421 wurde Brunelleschi für drei Jahre das alleinige Recht zum Bau eines Schiffs mit einer Hebevorrichtung zum Marmortransport verliehen.
Überliefert sind auch Nachrichten von Apparaturen, die Brunelleschi für religiöse Inszenierungen ("sacre rappresentazioni") in Florentiner Kirchen gebaut hat; beispielsweise für Aufführungen der Himmelfahrt Mariens in Santa Maria del Carmine (zuerst am 14. Mai 1439)[6] und für ein "Paradies" in San Felice.
Automatic translation
Work as an inventor and engineer
Brunelleschi was also an engineer and inventor of machines and apparatus. During the construction of the dome on the Florentine cathedral, for example, he invented a change-speed gear for the large wooden crane that transported the building materials upwards, which made it unnecessary to change the workhorses. Until then, its hoist was driven by a gable, which meant that the animals always had to be re-hitched to move the basket up and down, which was a time-consuming process. Brunelleschi was thus able to shorten the construction time on the dome considerably. In 1421, Brunelleschi was granted exclusive rights to build a ship with a hoist for transporting marble for three years.
There are also reports of apparatus that Brunelleschi built for religious stagings ("sacre rappresentazioni") in Florentine churches; for example for performances of the Assumption of Mary in Santa Maria del Carmine (first on May 14, 1439)[6] and for a "paradise" in San Felice.
It seems, that Brunelleschi's talent as crane builder made him also useful in religious theatre plays with flying or lifted actors. As far I remember, similar shows were also arranged by Leonardo da Vinci later. This doesn't mean, that Brunelleschi arranged complete trionfi shows, I would assume.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Nightmare Alley

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Ross Caldwell wrote: 23 May 2022, 18:30
Phaeded wrote: 23 May 2022, 17:54 The scenario Alberti describes of artists mingling with humanists (bolstered by what you found in Vasari, however late) must have been an accomplished fact, and he was then simply recommending that for places other than Florence. But again, for Brunelleschi, what links him to the trump subjects?
No smoking gun, as I said. I'm not imagining that Brunelleschi single-handedly invented the game. It obviously required a group of people, to conceive, design a prototype, and test-play it until it was right to carve a plate to print and sell it. The latter scenario is what I imagine to have happened, in any case.

Brunelleschi simply opened the door to 1) the connection with Filippo Maria...

And that's where I see the role of Filelfo, who was also involved in artistic programs in Milan involving a series of images. If Bruni was the inventor then Filelfo is arguably as close as anyone to both Bruni (continued to correspond after kicked out in 1435 and even made Bruni a central figure in his On Exile of c. 1440) and Visconti, and precisely at the right time for the CY. Someone in Milan understood immediately what the Florentine ur-tarot was and adapted it; a visiting Florentine isn't going to do that for Visconti right after Anghiari. Too me the biggest factor is the small amount of time separating the Florentine ur-tarot from the CY - minor changes, besides belli, of course had to be made to reflect the local regime (so the Chariot and World, in particular, are adapted, but not from the veering too far from the essential genre of each), but otherwise I would assume the decks would be easily recognizable as the same species of work, albeit the 3 males/females variation of the suits (which I assume Filippo picked up from exposure to German luxury decks such as the Stuttgart).

Without restating the sources, the likelihood is that a humanist was behind a novel art series. And Brunelleschi was taxed by much larger concerns - several churches underway in c. 1440 - Sam Lorenzo, Santo Spirito, Ospedale degli Innocenti, the Pazzi Chapel, and not to mention the the duomo's exedra (built 1439–1445). Just don't see him getting roped into cards.
cron