John Shephard - Goldschmidt tarot

About Cossa, Sforza, and Rene. Did anyone give translations of the words on the elephant picture and, encoded, on the portrait of Marcello? If so I apologize for repeating what King says (pp. 122, 125) The castle represents Venice, and says to the elephant (p. 122),

I acknowledge that you sustained me when I was falling.

The elephant represents Marcello, who replies,

I deny this for it is by divine power that you escaped.

That the elephant represents Marcello is by way of Hannibal, who had been defeated by a forebear of Marcello, King says--at least according to the panagyric of Marcello written by Guarino (King p. 67). Another association, it seems to me, is that while Hannibal transported elephants through the mountains of Italy, even greater, in Guarino's panagyric, Marcello as a "second Hannibal" transported ships across the mountains of Italy, to launch in Lake Garda and liberate Verona (King. p. 67, noting that Guarino had just finished translating Plutarch's "life of Hannibal"). It is true that Venice did pull ships through the mountain passes on rollers; whether it was Marcello's doing is another matter.

More important is what is written on the portrait, albeit in code (p. 125):

Se mia speranza non dixe bugia
Non ferai ingrata patria Cossa mia.

(If my hopes do not deceive me,
You, Cossa, will not make my country ungrateful to you.)

In other words, Marcello is trying to dissuade his old friend Cossa, Rene's general, then in alliance with Sforza, from attacking Venice, in the coming summer season of 1453. King captions her reproduction of the elephant picture (p. 124) by saying that the St. Maurice manuscript is "an intricate pictorial puzzle prepared by Marcello to deter King Rene and his general Giovanni Cossa from their planned offensive against Venice." Marcello also at this time also wrote a long, flattering panagyric to Rene.

In the event, Rene did seem to take his time getting his army into position. (No wonder the message was in code.) As I recall, there was one perfunctory engagement, then winter intervened, and the Peace of Lodi, in which Sforza at least got what he had been planning to take. In this campaign Rene, Cossa, and their army were being paid by Florence, and quite a sum considering that they didn't do much fighting. (These last facts--I think they are facts--are said elsewhere; King's way of telling the story is not good for our purposes: in one part she recounts the panagyrics about the military maneuvers, then in another part the maneuvers themselves, and then, quite detached from the either of the others, about the diplomacy via manuscripts. The "search" function for the pdf reveals nothing, but it is not reliable, as it can't find many words that are clearly there in abundance, like "Hannibal".)

BOUGEAREL Alain

Re: John Shephard - Goldschmidt tarot

136 by BOUGEAREL Alain

Yes.

Morever, about the lack of bellicism of René in 1453, yes there was the warning of Marcello to Cossa and also the fact that René was utterly wounded by the death of his beloved Isabelle de Lorraine, née en 1400, morte à Angers le 28 février 1453 .Elle fut duchesse de Lorraine, duchesse consort d'Anjou, reine consort de Naples, comtesse consort du Maine, de Provence et de Guise et reine consort de Jérusalem titulaire.

It seems that he never really got out of his sorrow - even if he marries one year later Jeanne de Laval.
In 1474, he won't really fight for Anjou when his neveu Louis XI occupies the country and abdicate's after a weak attempt of resistance.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_d'Anjou

http://www.sgdl-auteurs.org/alain-bouge ... Biographie

Huck

Re: John Shephard - Goldschmidt tarot

137 by Huck

mikeh wrote:
I acknowledge that you sustained me when I was falling.
The elephant represents Marcello, who replies,
I deny this for it is by divine power that you escaped.
That the elephant represents Marcello is by way of Hannibal, who had been defeated by a forebear of Marcello, King says--at least according to the panagyric of Marcello written by Guarino (King p. 67).

I guess, that this is a post-action explanation (1458?), not necessarily true in the action (June 1453). Or is the first part the castle text correctly translated?

Another association, it seems to me, is that while Hannibal transported elephants through the mountains of Italy, even greater, in Guarino's panagyric, Marcello as a "second Hannibal" transported ships across the mountains of Italy, to launch in Lake Garda and liberate Verona (King. p. 67, noting that Guarino had just finished translating Plutarch's "life of Hannibal"). It is true that Venice did pull ships through the mountain passes on rollers; whether it was Marcello's doing is another matter.

More important is what is written on the portrait, albeit in code (p. 125):
Se mia speranza non dixe bugia
Non ferai ingrata patria Cossa mia.
(If my hopes do not deceive me,
You, Cossa, will not make my country ungrateful to you.)

The number of letters at the picture roughly are the same ...
the upper line has from left to right 2-3-8-3-4-4or5 letters as "Se mia speranza non dixe bugia"
the lower line looks more difficult.

Huck
http://trionfi.com

Phaeded

Re: John Shephard - Goldschmidt tarot

138 by Phaeded

mikeh wrote:About Cossa, Sforza, and Rene. Did anyone give translations of the words on the elephant picture and, encoded, on the portrait of Marcello? If so I apologize for repeating what King says (pp. 122, 125) ...

I scanned King's pages at the bottom of this short thread here: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=933

Color image of Marcello's illumination:

My comments back in 2013:

Marcello saw the Marziano deck sometime in November/December 1448 when he rejoined Sforza from Brescia, for these are the only months in 1448 that the Venetians were not incurring loss after loss to Sforza (notably Casalmaggiore and Caravaggio) . So when Marcello writes at the end of 1449 to Rene’s wife that he saw the cards “last year in the field of Milan” it had to have been after the October 1449 Treaty of Rivoltella when Sforza switched sides back to the Venetians who agreed to support him in taking Milan against the Ambrosian Republic. But that new Treaty had started to disintegrate by September 1449 when the proposed peace with Milan and Venice is not to Sforza’s liking and Venice cuts off its funds and orders Colleoni to withdraw with the Venetian troops. Good friend Marcello must have known exactly where Sforza was headed (breaking with Venice) by November when he wrote to Rene’s wife. Sforza’s siege of Milan begins in earnest in December.

So why was Marcello commissioning a Marziano deck for King Rene’s wife at this moment? Surely a token of foreign relations to keep Rene neutral as both he and Sforza had just been enrolled in his Order of the Crescent and thus might have seen himself – as the representative of Venice – on an equal footing with Sforza, but now Marcello was required to do only Venice's bidding.

The trionfi-like illumination – oddly having the general aspects of a playing card – that Marcello subsequently sent to King Rene in 1453 (an illuminated page within his commissioned life of St. Maurice, patron saint of Rene’s new order) was to keep Rene, once again, from joining Sforza against Venice. This image has received little attention, as far as I am aware, in regard to the milieu that produced the PMB. Without proposing my own take on this item at this time, just posting scans of the image (could not find it on-line) and Margaret King’s text that describes it in detail (The Death of the Child Valerio Marcello, 1994)

Its also hard to imagine that Marcello did not see Sforza/Bianca's CY deck - as the 'World' trump has similarities. Venice's prime domain - her Lagoon (from which her navy ventured out) - is featured, but is upon a terrestrial animal; i.e., the might of maritime Venice is being brought to bear on terrafirma, under Marcello. The elephant looks up at the famed "Justice of Venice", replacing any other virtue that might have been indicated in this place in the ur-tarot (Florence was all about her prudent citizenry; Patrician Venice, her justice) or indeed the CY.

Marcello-Cossa w CY World.jpg Viewed 6055 times 48.65 KiB

Last edited by Phaeded on 29 Nov 2016, 01:34, edited 2 times in total.

BOUGEAREL Alain

Re: John Shephard - Goldschmidt tarot

139 by BOUGEAREL Alain

Hi Phaeded

And Ross translation of the letter :
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=933#p13572

http://www.sgdl-auteurs.org/alain-bouge ... Biographie

BOUGEAREL Alain

Re: John Shephard - Goldschmidt tarot

140 by BOUGEAREL Alain

BOUGEAREL Alain wrote:Yes.

Morever, about the lack of bellicism of René in 1453, yes there was the warning of Marcello to Cossa and also the fact that René was utterly wounded by the death of his beloved Isabelle de Lorraine, née en 1400, morte à Angers le 28 février 1453 .Elle fut duchesse de Lorraine, duchesse consort d'Anjou, reine consort de Naples, comtesse consort du Maine, de Provence et de Guise et reine consort de Jérusalem titulaire.

It seems that he never really got out of his sorrow - even if he marries one year later Jeanne de Laval.
In 1474, he won't really fight for Anjou when his neveu Louis XI occupies the country and abdicate's after a weak attempt of resistance.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_d'Anjou

See some images of the gifts of Marcello and other paintings linked to the Crescent Order and to St Mauricius realised by Bellini or attributed to him
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=499&p=18146#p18146

http://www.sgdl-auteurs.org/alain-bouge ... Biographie