Huck reported Margaret King's book, The Death of the Child Valerio Marcello (1994)

https://books.google.de/books?id=RdWeII ... ou&f=false

Nothing more about our inquiry : no mention of Anjou neither of Provence...

Of interest :

1.Court of René p. 120
Presence at the court of René d'Anjou of :

Guiniano Maio neapolitan humanist
Giovanni Mario, the wandering son of Francesco Fifelfo

François Philelphe is well known : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Philelphe

But his son ? I have no data.
About Maio, I have no data.

2. Marcello's Triumphs as of consolation p51

Added November 27 : a literary panegyric

Marcello was unconsolable since the death of his son 1461 and to give him consolation Mascarello had intented to display to him his "Triumphs" - both in the tradition of the Trionfi of Petrach and "as the Roman granted their heroes" - in order to lessen his sorrows.
" I believe this would be be most efficacious medecine for you, excellent knight and great hearted man if I place before your eyes the spectacle of your remarquable achievements that you might observe as it were your own triumph"

Maybe as Mikeh stated before another piece of the puzzle later on 1477 but still before 1505...

1. Proto tarot offered to Isabelle of Lorraine in 1449 = "precious" deck(s)
and
2. Deck found at Cambrai in 1477, "of little value",
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1091#p16776

3. If we admit the possible Provencal origin of the Goldsmidt hand painted luxury cards on parchment : mid XVth century

[Deleted]

Question : I did not finally understand the case about the "Donson cards" : Queen and Ermite
Are they French but found in Italy?
Depaulis gives Lyon?
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10510958d.r

Here you've some speculation about the elephant picture ...

https://books.google.de/books?id=YEASDA ... lo&f=false

Cossa is directly addressed by the inscription on the picture ... as I understand from other sources, Cossa was the second man in the order. If the order had a fame-motto, it's not a wonder, that Cossa appears in this context.
I don't find a connection between elephant and Marcello family. The Malatesta had an elephant symbol in their family, that's well known.

Added: "In final : 3 if not 4 if we count 2 for Isabelle de Lorraine" ... sounds like the riddle of the Sphinx for Oidipus ... :-) ... could you explain this?

Huck wrote:Here you've some speculation about the elephant picture ...

https://books.google.de/books?id=YEASDA ... lo&f=false

Cossa is directly addressed by the inscription on the picture ... as I understand from other sources, Cossa was the second man in the order. If the order had a fame-motto, it's not a wonder, that Cossa appears in this context.
I don't find a connection between elephant and Marcello family. The Malatesta had an elephant symbol in their family, that's well known.

Added: "In final : 3 if not 4 if we count 2 for Isabelle de Lorraine" ... sounds like the riddle of the Sphinx for Oidipus ... ... could you explain this?

Smile...
I was writing but this is now deleted

About the elephant, yes there are more than one interpretation ; I read somewhere (but I don't remember where) that this was a hidden warning directly adressed to Cossa the Senechal of René that Venice (the elephant of Hannibal) was powerful and that he should not attack...
Added now : https://books.google.de/books?id=RdWeII ... nt&f=false p 122

https://books.google.de/books?id=tkX6fy ... 49&f=false

Maybe this helps a little bit.

Your book link is not available to me. I get the book, but I don't get the page. Do you get it? books.google.com somehow differs in different language versions.

https://books.google.de/books?id=B4FcAA ... &q&f=false
... gives a list for the entry into the order
26th of August, 1449, for Marcello and Sforza. Margaret L. King used this date, possibly it means, that Cossa met Marcello and Sforza at this day (or it is so interpreted by her).

Well I ve made my first try to capture the page!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5Hg6j ... sp=sharing

Thanks for the data about René's stays in Tarason.

BOUGEAREL Alain wrote:Well I ve made my first try to capture the page!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5Hg6j ... sp=sharing

Thanks for the data about René's stays in Tarason.

Good work ... Do you get also the picture of the page 53 of the other work (Oren Margolis) ?

For the page, that you copied: the author seems to think, that he/she has a precise date for the manuscript gift.

Margaret L. King has for Marcello in 1452 these dates ...
https://books.google.de/books?id=RdWeII ... ma&f=false

From a snippet I see, that she gives the date of 1st of June 1453 for sending the manuscript ... at 10th of October 1453 Renee d'Anjou and Cossa declare war on Venice. In November Rene lost his battle.

[quote="Huck"]

Good work ... Do you get also the picture of the page 53 of the other work (Oren Margolis) ?

Nope : cannot access to page 53

I notice that on p. 121 (I am using the version from my public library) King says:

Early in 1453, Isabelle died, and Rene d'Anjou grieved, inventing the device of a bow with a broken string as emblem of his despair (177: Chron. 1453, 28 February. For Marcello's responses, below; see Texts 1.4-5)

1453 is precisely when Rene and Sforza joined forces against Venice, in the summer. I cannot help but wonder whether the original version of the PMB Moon card might have been a Diana with such a bow and broken string, as a token of sympathy to Rene. That was Kaplan's hypothesis about the version we have (which I think is a memento of Elisabetta Maria Sforza); for that image, it is something of a stretch, but it is not exactly a bridle either. We know from many angles, not least Marcello's elephant, of the power of images to convey diplomatic messages, and also feelings from the heart.

On the elephant, King's reference is Millard Meiss, Andrea Mantegna as Illuminator: An Episode in Renaissance Art, Humanism, and Diplomacy, 1957, pp. 9-15. I do not see a Google Books version, but it is in several libraries easy for me to get to. For the Margolis book, I will have to wait until after New Years', when I can start getting 2016 books from Interlibrary Loan.

Oren Margolis again
https://books.google.de/books?id=YEASDA ... on&f=false



Roger de Gaignières was the same collector, who also had the Charles VI Tarot cards. Well, likely Gaignières had a lot of objects, so this must not be remarkable (but could be ... perhaps he bought from the inventory from Renee?).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A ... i%C3%A8res

He was the grandson of a merchant at Lyon and the son of Aimé de Gaignières, secretary to the Count of Harcourt, a member of the Elbeuf branch of the House of Guise. In the late 1660s, he was named écuyer (equerry) to Louis Joseph, duke of Guise.[1] Residing in a fine new apartment just over the stables of the magnificently renovated Hôtel de Guise, François Roger supervised the duke's riding and oversaw his stables, carriages, and footmen. His immediate neighbors in the stable wing were the respected neo-Latinist and translator Philippe Goibaut, who directed the Guise musical ensemble, and composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier, who wrote for the Guise chapel and salon.

After the young duke's death in 1671, François Roger served as écuyer to Louis Joseph's aunt, Marie de Lorraine, who in 1679 appointed him governor of her principality of Joinville and obtained for him a royal pension of 500 écus.[1]

At an early age, François Roger began to make a collection of original materials for history generally, and, in particular, for that of the French church and court. He soon was at the center of a group of art connoisseurs and historians that stretched from Paris to the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in Florence.

"Lorraine" signals possibly, that Marie de Lorraine had access to earlier "Lorraine possessions". But it are more than 200 years from 1453 till 1671.
She descended from Anna d'Este, a grand-daughter of Alfonso d'Este, who made the first Tarochi cards. Anna married to the Guise family in France in 1548 and became of some importance for the Italian queen on the French throne.
Marie de Lorraine still had the Italian identity to a big part. She had to live in exile for some time in Florence. And she kept contact to the house of Medici.

*********

The elephant and the portrait of Marvello were together in the book at two opposing pages and added later (as the text above claims). That's naturally an interesting detail ... if it's true, then it changes the character of the elephant meaning.



... one can decipher the end of (crois)sant at the person and see the encrypted message at the bottom.
Picture in high resolution at ..
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... -c1453.jpg