Lorredan wrote:Here I come out of left field.
What if the geography is not Italy at all? :-ss
What if that water is the Danube and that center town is Nicopolis?
What if those ships are Genoaese and Venetian?
What if those men in the fishing boat are Sigismund and his Marshall?
What if this is celebrating 1396 and Visconti Fame even if The Ottomans (The Lightening Rod) won?
What if this deck supports the antipope (Armadeus V111- the Savoy- the Peacemaker)
That Knight is the Knight -Monk order of Saint Maurice???

Gulp....whatcha think?

~Lorredan

Well, there were considerations in 1441/1442, that Sforza should become the leader of a crusade (I don't know details, I just saw it mentioned)... the crusade took place 1444. Sforza wasn't part of the activities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade_of_Varna

Well, if Phaeded would be right with Chioggia and Ravenna as the two cities at the sea, then one might think, that Chioggia and Ravenna were ports, where a projected army might leave.

After the wedding the delegation met to discuss the new peace. One of the results was, that Niccolo d'Este was suddenly dead under not totally clear conditions.
Well, that was a sort of brainstorming. Likely a lot of ideas were thought, and the promise (at the council 1439) to do something for the Greek and Constantinople had a focus.

Lorredan wrote: The thing is the geography of any Italian area is vastly different to what one imagines it might have been in the 15th Century. Fermo was an important place and Ancona was a small port, whose buildings had been burned to the ground several hundred years before Sforza came on the scene.
~Lorredan

First of all, the landscape crammed into the narrow frame of the arch/card cannot be too realistic, especially if the area covered extended from Cremona to the Marche of Ancona; moreover important cities are missing, e.g. Bologna (on the road from Cremona to Rimini, which is north of the Marche). It is a symbolic landscape meant to approximate the geopolitical situation and signify the major players at the time of the 1441 wedding: Visconti's realm (here, Cremona), Visconti's enemies of Florence (more on that below) and Venice (Chioggia/Ravenna), and the condottiere they all coveted: Sforza (his still relatively new fiefdom of the Marche of Ancona).

How do I figure Florence into any of this? You have severely downplayed the significance of Ancona: Florence and its contado could not produce enough wheat to feed itself (I believe it was down to 40% self-sufficient by the time of the famous castato of 1427) and it was accordingly supplmented with surplus from Sicily via Pisa and with surplus from Apulia/Puglia via Ancona (as well as being a major trade port to the Levant). The earliest Florentine banking concerns such as the Bardi got rich from this so when Cosimo opened a branch of his own bank there in 1436 he was following a true and tried trade route that was central to Florence's well-being. But the enormous amount he invested there was clearly to buy off Sforza from going to war against Florence for Visconti. This is all clearly stated in Parks, Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, And Art In Fifteenth-century Florence, p. 116f
http://books.google.com/books?id=3MPmpQ ... nk&f=false
...and in De Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank: 1397-1494: p. 59f.
http://books.google.com/books?id=3ptzaU ... na&f=false

One can only guess at delusional Filippo's thinking here but it had to have gone something like this: Medici's new Ancona bank would become a crippling write-off and the grain supply from there to Florence cut-off with Sforza in the fold. So to Filippo this was a twofold masterstroke if it came to fruition: his son-in-law keeping Venice at bay (perhaps he even imagined Sforza warring his way up the coast, taking Ravenna then Chioggia "pushing Venice back into its lagoon") and choking off Florence from a strategic investment and food supply route. On paper it made sense - its just that ultimately Filippo wasn't matching Cosimo's florins.

Phaeded

PS Ancona was significant enough to the Ottomans ("the Levant trade") that they produced this map of it:

Well I believe that the cards of the Cary-Yale Visconti show equal lineage of parties of the wedding.
I believe that the Cary-Yale Emperor shows Wenceslaus and alludes to Giangaleazzo coronation as Duke of Milan.
The Lovers card wilst meaning Francesco and Bianca nods it's head to Bianca's Lineage of Bianca of Savoy's marraige to Galeazzo 11 (whence in comes Petrarch and the start of the Castle at Pavia and the association with the last antipope Armadeus. Like landscape, lineage is also condensed and details are glossed over that seem important to us at this end of History. The Battle of Nicopolis (Death card)was a watershed event for the Visconti as it was for many other European Courts, and was felt all the way to the Council in Florence.
Phaeded, I might be convinced on your description of the CY World card if you could explain to me why there is an Orobus on the pennat/standard of the Knight on the River. It is not the Viper eating the red human.
Interesting having other views on these fascinating cards and Happy Holidays.
~Lorredan

Lorredan wrote: Phaeded, I might be convinced on your description of the CY World card if you could explain to me why there is an Orobus on the pennat/standard of the Knight on the River. It is not the Viper eating the red human.
Interesting having other views on these fascinating cards and Happy Holidays.
~Lorredan

Loredan,
I always assumed the image was too worn off in the pennant to make anything definite out (or it would have been ID'd by now) but maximum zooming in via Yale's webpage does seem to show the blue outline of a left facing snake head (with the interior blue coloring lost), with a mouth and eye above it. I cannot discern a snake tail so not sure where ouroboros fits in. Given the small area of the pennant on what is already a very small miniature it shouldn't be a surprise that the artist dispensed with the level of detail needed to have shown a man protruding from the snake's head (hell, I can barely see the snake's head). Cary's zoom-in-able (sp?) World card scan:
http://brbl-zoom.library.yale.edu/viewer/1011957

The knight is carrying the primary coat of arms of his "beloved" (as much as that sentiment had anything to do with the unfolding of a political marriage in 1441).

And a happy holidays to you,
Phaeded

PS Not sure if its relevant but the same blue Visconti snake appears in the CY ace of coins; the devoured man appears to be tooled into the card but the color for it has long been rubbed off and is not discernible:

Lorredan wrote:Here I come out of left field.
What if the geography is not Italy at all? :-ss
What if that water is the Danube and that center town is Nicopolis?
What if those ships are Genoaese and Venetian?
What if those men in the fishing boat are Sigismund and his Marshall?
What if this is celebrating 1396 and Visconti Fame even if The Ottomans (The Lightening Rod) won?
What if this deck supports the antipope (Armadeus V111- the Savoy- the Peacemaker)
That Knight is the Knight -Monk order of Saint Maurice???

Gulp....whatcha think?

~Lorredan

In my opinion too far off.
It's 1441 or something around this time and not 1397/98. Public react on recent things mostly and not at things long ago. The war is gone in October 1441, but only a short time, and one doesn't know, how the peace negotiations will proceed ... so still there's insecurity. The wedding is in Cremona, and the last battle was nearby.. The major battles were around the Garda lake. Some called the war a war between Piccinino and Sforza. The war had some other locations, Bologna, Ravenna, as Phaeded had pointed out, Anghiari, but the Garda lake situation dominated, and the last battle was far of it.
"Mostly" (but not always) the public reacts on things "short ago".

In comparison:
WWII movies were very common after the war, This doesn't say, that a modern WWII movie is "impossible". It's just not so probable.

Phaeded searches another perspective which is "modern around 1441". This seems to be a better direction, but I think, one should find real buildings in the presented cities.

Merry Christmas.

I think that your associations are quite appropriate, Lorredan, given that the occasion is probably a marriage, or the birth of a son (if 1444) or some other family-related event, and that the deck is filled with family heraldics.

Commemorating war is also appropriate, if it is one that has brought glory to the family. I don't know how it is where you live, Huck, but in the U.S, World Wars I and II are an established movie genre, capable of endless repetition (usually anti-war for the first, pro-war for the second), many more of them than of, say, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, or other places, which indeed are film subjects only for a few years after the event. Example: on the last day of last summer's London Olympics, before we could see the final events, the American public was given a 45 minute recap of the 1940 Battle of Britain.

I have been searching for the 26 towns that constituted the grant given by Wencelaus for 100,000 ducats to Giangaleazzo 1395- thence his coronation as Duke of Milan.They correspond to all held by the Lombard league- I have 19.
Milan, Vercelli, Mantua, Brescia,Treviso, Venice,Vicenza, Verona, Padua, Crema, Cremona, Modena, Piacenza, Bergamo, Lodi, Parma, Genoa, Reggio Emilia, and Bologna(which appears the furtherest South)
So I am looking for 7.
I am thinking one is Casale Monferratto??? Como??? Can anybody help?
~Lorredan

Bianca of Savoy as Born in Pavia in 1350, I am presuming because Pavia was the seat of the Kings of Italy.
It was because of her that the title of Count of Virtue became Galeazzo Visconti 11's.
Bianca was raised at Casale Monferrat, her older brother's Court as she had been orphaned at a young age. Her parents were Aimone Count of Savoy and Yolande Palaelogina of Monferrat. I imagine it is through the Palaiologos- the feudal lords of Montferrat that the Suit cards of Tarot (Mamluk) entered the Visconti Court.
I found the fortifications of Casale Monferrat rememiniscent of the throned dias in the Visconti decks. ~Lorredan

To further the consideration that the CY Visconti has strong indications of the geneology of Bianca Through the Savoy Line and may not show Italian geography.
1. Bianca is possibly a Savoy name from Umberto Biancamano the first Count of Savoy. It as taken to mean Umberto the white hand to signify his genorosity- but may have been a mistranslation of the the white walls of his castle- but meant white handed since the 11th Century.
2. When seeking the imperial crown, Rupert The Roman Emperor went to Italy. He attempted to intervene in Italian affairs and regain the former imperial city of Milan from Gian Galeazzo Visconti , (In the 12th cent. members of the family received the title of Viscount, from which the name is derived) He(Rupert) was financially unable to compete and outside of Brescia his troops melted away and he had to return to Germany. On the way back they met in a field by a tributary of the Po(Tanaro) outside Sale,possibly upriver from Pieve del Cairo, where the Franciscans had a community; only the Church of Saint Martin remains. Sale is in a dirct line towards Pavia
3.The Death card seems to show Death on a Mamluk saddle of the Lancers. It is distinctly different from western or what the Ottomans called 'English' saddles. The fenders are lime wood and on the outside or uncovered, they hang downover the cushioned blanket which is on two rolls to protect the Horses back instead of a 'Tree' frame. I imagine the headdress on the skull is unwound Mamluk Lancer Headress. So I believe the CY Visconti is more a geneology deck of Bianca as inherited from The Savoy; and that the World card
shows Bianca of Savoy (Lucy in the Sky ith Diamonds ) as does the Marriage Card as a connection from the past to the present of 1438?

~Lorredan