Re: help identification tarot of marseilles

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Mike and Huck have already discussed some of the similarities between these cards and the Minchiate decks from Lucca, including the elephant on the 4 of Coins and the appearance of some of the trumps, notably trump IIII. However, there are some other similarities too. Rosele pointed out to me in a PM that the Chariot card shows the inscription FAMA VOLA, which also appears on the Lucca cards, as Huck noted here: viewtopic.php?p=21718#p21718
She also pointed out the cross on the flag of the Water card, which doesn't appear on the Water card in most Minchiate decks (they have a flag on the ship, but no cross is visible). But I don't know if the Lucca Minchiate decks have a cross like this on that flag, because I have not yet been able to find an image of the Water card from a Lucca Minchiate deck.

Another interesting detail of the cards Rosele discovered is that the Hanged Man is printed in mirror-image reverse, with the number appearing as IIX. This is not something that appears in the Lucca decks, or in the Ganellini decks made in Genua (at least, not in the ones that I have seen). However, this reversal does appear in a deck illustrated on p. 121 of Hoffmann & Dietrich, Tarot Tarock Tarocchi (Leinfelden-Echterdingen: Deutsches Spielkarten-Museum, 1988) and that deck matches Rosele's cards in every other respect as well, including the FAMA VOLA inscription on the Chariot (trump 40 also bears the same words, as usual).

[media]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BKTAI- ... hELgVEMG-/[/media]

This deck survives in the form of three woodblocks which the book says are from the 18th century; the illustration is an imprint made from that woodblock in 1969. The book does not attempt to say where the deck was originally produced, but it does report that the Ace of Batons carried the inscription "NEL FINAL" so it looks like the cards were produced in the Marquisate of Finale. According to Huck, Franco Pratesi says there were Minchiate decks being made there in the town of Finale, so this deck was probably made there. Franco says Minchiate cards were also made in Oneglia (on the Impero river), so Rosele's deck was probably made in Oneglia.

In other words, what we have here seems to be a specific Ligurian variant of the Minchiate deck, which was different even from the one made in Genoa, but which (like the Genovese deck) still had features in common with the Lucca decks. This is not surprising, as Lucca is in northwestern Tuscany, and therefore "on the way" from Florence (where Minchiate seems to have originated) to Liguria—we can assume that all the Minchiate/Ganellini decks produced in the areas between Lucca and the Impero river would have had these shared characteristics at some stage. But those shared characteristics did not include the reversed Hanged Man, which is therefore a distinctive marker of the local Ligurian variant.

UPDATE: I just realized (looking at the above illustration) that the NEL FINAL woodblock tells us why the Hanged Man was printed in reverse: the Ligurians turned the card upside-down, so the man is dancing instead of hanging. This is interesting, as it raises the possibility of a connection to the Viéville/Belgian tarot decks, which also turned the Hanged Man upside-down in this way. I have long been of the belief that the deck that Piscina was using in Piedmont in the 16th century must have also shown the Hanged Man upside-down, because he seems to be describing a figure hanging by the neck, having committed suicide (this is one of several reasons for believing that Piscina's deck must have been a French-made deck a lot like Viéville's, or at least a Piedmontese deck copied from a French deck of that type). Perhaps tarot decks like that were in use not only in Piedmont, but also throughout Liguria as well, and this resulted in this card being upturned in the Minchiate deck too, when it reached that region.
One could take the speculation even further: The Sicilians used a similar name for Minchiate to the name used in Liguria. Perhaps Minchiate came to Sicily via the Sicilian emigrant community in Liguria, and consequently the Hanged Man in the Sicilian tarocco deck also has its ultimate origins in Viéville-style tarot decks used in northwestern Italy...

Re: help identification tarot of marseilles

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Huck wrote: 01 May 2021, 01:15 That's good so far.
But there's no guarantee, that all fragments from Rosale are from the same deck type. Do we know now all fragments, Rosale? Or are there a few more to expect?
I think we can safely assume that all the fragments are from the same deck type, i.e. the same deck "pattern" (if we want to use the usual playing-card terminology for this, which is pattern in English, Bild in German, portrait in French; I'm not sure if there is a standard Italian equivalent—it's modello in Dummett's Il Mondo e l'Angelo but you also see tipo and simply mazzo).
The Coins fragment with the elephant and the fragment with the court cards both have exactly the same dotted borders on the individual cards and the same thick black line around the entire sheet as the trumps fragments, and the little black squares in the upper corners on the Aces of Cups and Coins containing flowers are the same as on the trumps sheet. The courts have simpler flowers on these little squares, but the squares are still quite similar. In other words, the fragments do all look like they come from the same deck. Moreover, they all broadly match the Lucca cards and the other cards we know of from Liguria. So it certainly looks like all the fragments are from a single pattern, essentially the same pattern as the NEL FINAL deck.
Is there info, how old the archive is? Anything about the local history of playing card production in Finale? When did it start? Same question about Genoa and Savona and Imperia.
Rosele said in an earlier post "The manuscript was written from 1750 onwards, but the book was certainly bound before the beginning of the 1700s." I believe her when she says the binding is from before 1700, because restoring old book bindings is her profession, but even if her dating of it is slightly inaccurate, it must be from no later than the first half of the 1700s.

But it would certainly be good to have more information about when production of these decks started in Liguria. What is the earliest evidence of Minchiate/Ganellini in that region? Andrea Vitali, in his essay "Ganellini seu Gallerini," cites a work written in 1635 in Genoa which mentions the game of Ganellini. Vitali also cites a source from Pistoia in 1613 which mentions Ganellini, which was apparently found by you, Huck. Apparently Thierry Depaulis knows of a mention of it in Genoa as early as 1600 (see Huck's summary of these references here) but we have no further information about this.

It would be very good to know what Depaulis' source is for this. Until we have some verifiable information, we must regard 1613 as the earliest definite mention of Ganellini. The source from 1613 is a clergyman in Pistoia, by the name of Monsignor Bonifatio Vannozzi, condemning the "Tarocchi and ganellini" cards because they include various religious figures. Pistoia is in northwestern Tuscany, like Lucca, but it is closer to Florence than Lucca is. From this fact, together with the similarities between the Lucca cards and the Ligurian cards, we can assume that the name Ganellini probably originated in this area of northwestern Tuscany and then the game spread north, under that name, along the coast to Genoa.

This means that without further information from Depaulis, we must assume that Minchiate/Ganellini might not have reached Liguria until after 1613, and any production of cards would have to be later than that.

The above facts also imply that all the "minchiate" decks that we have been discussing in this thread, including the ones from Lucca, would actually have been called Ganellini or Gallerini decks by those who made and used them.

In the essay cited above, Vitali tells us that the Gallerini name is much less common in the historical texts than the name Ganellini. But the Gallerini name is not only known from Sicily: Vitali quotes one source from 1676 which says that the game was called Gallerini in Liguria. However, the sources from Genoa call it Ganellini. This makes me think that the name Gallerini was used only, or mainly, in some other part of Liguria, outside Genoa—perhaps the western part where Finale and Imperia are located, and where the Hanged Man was turned upside-down. This makes me all the more inclined to think that the game might have reached Sicily from this area in Liguria: it otherwise seems very difficult to explain how this unusal name of Gallerini could appear both in Sicily and in one part of Liguria.
(It seems far more likely that the name, and the game, would have reached Sicily from Liguria than vice versa: It is easier to imagine the "Ganellini" game spreading north along the coast from northwestern Tuscany and then undergoing a minor change of name to Gallerini, and then being taken to Sicily via the long-standing links between that island and Liguria.)

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Nathaniel wrote: 01 May 2021, 08:15 I think we can safely assume that all the fragments are from the same deck type ....
Rosele showed already a Marseille deck Fool ... this is a second deck. As I understood it, her job is not finished. Possibly other cards might appear ... I dont know the situation of the work, I just ask.
It would be very good to know what Depaulis' source is for this.
Right ... somebody with contact to Depaulis might ask him about the appearance of the name Ganellini in the year 1600. This is a practical problem, which can be solved.

c 1440: We have a"minchattar" in a poem of Burchiello in context of a "triumphi" (or similar). The first "Trionfi" in playing card context we have also in the year 1440. We have the first notice about illuminated Trionfi in manuscripts of the Trionfi poem in 1441.
1466: Luigi Pulci writes about a game Minchiate in a letter to Lorenzo di Medici
1470/71 and 1477: 2 further notes of Minchiate
1506: Germini, oldest appearance
Image

I wrote earlier ...
These are the 3 interesting lines
-----------------------
a. 36 paia di germini e tr(i)onfi ... speaks of 36 decks with Germini and Trionfi
b. 1 paio di tr(i)onfi alla franc(i)osa non finiti ... a not finished French Trionfi deck
c. 26 forme tra grande e piccolo da germini più chartoni ... 26 big and small forms (production tools)
I was referring to an article of Franco Pratesi .... http://naibi.net/A/IPCS44N1.pdf

Let's interpret "a. 36 paia di germini e tr(i)onfi", that's not easy. In my opinion it could mean ...

a1. 36 decks of germini (whatever this is) and 36 decks of trionfi (whatever this is)
a2. 36 decks, a part of them germini and another part trionfi (for instance 17 germini and 19 trionfi)
a3. 36 decks (possibly called Minchiate) and each deck consists of one part Germini and one part Trionfi

a3 is then somehow identical to a1, but declares, that Germini is something specific (not the general idea, as we understand Germini as a full deck ) and Trionfi dito is something specific (also not as in the general idea, that Trionfi means a full deck).
Franco once surprized me with his opinion, that the name Germini for a card game comes not from card 35, Gemini, but from "germinare", english "germinate" and German "keimen". Andrea Vitali once surprized me, when he translated the English "suit of playing cards" with an Italian "seme", which means in German "Samen" and in German it's a clear idea, that "Samen keimen" and in English the Italian "seme" is translated with "seed". In German the expression for suit is usually "Farbe" (= color).
On this background of my surprizing ideas about the nature of Italian playing card language I conclude, that solution a3 might be correct. 36 Minchiate decks, consisting of x cards Germini (56 ?) and y cards Trionfi (41 ? Or 22? Or another?).

Franco wrote an article about the Germini name ...
Secolo XVI: Firenze – Il nome dei germini
Franco Pratesi – 06.09.2014
http://naibi.net/A/332-GERMINI-Z.pdf

The command "site:letarot.it seme" proves, that Andrea Virali used "seme" rather often.

The sentence b. "1 paio di tr(i)onfi alla franc(i)osa non finiti" proves, that there is a sort of action indicated, that the card producer possibly worked on a French Trionfi deck. This doesn't surprise, as in 1506 the French troops in Milan and in other parts of Italy had been a natural market.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: help identification tarot of marseilles

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Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: 02 May 2021, 09:45 I will ask Thierry.
Before that, do we know what town Rosele lives in? Where she is working?
You've probably already read through the thread and found this, but Rosele said this about the village where the book was located: Il villaggio ora si chiama Vezzi Portio é nell'entroterra di Finale Ligure, marchesato dei Carretto (in this post here, which I translated here). Rosele doesn't live there, that's just where the book was.

Re: help identification tarot of marseilles

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A late addition to my hypothesis about Gallerini coming to Sicily from Liguria:

There is another connection between Gallerini in Sicily and Gallerini/Ganellini in Liguria, namely the 98th card that appears in some Ligurian decks. As Michael Dummett observed in his article "The Portuguese Suit-System in the Central Mediterranean" (in The Playing-Card 17, no. 4, 1989, p. 124), there were also apparently 98 cards in the Gallerini deck in Sicily, according to the marchese di Villabianca in his opuscolo written ca. 1786. Dummett hypothesized that it was the Sicilians who had taken the game to Genoa/Liguria rather than the other way around, but that seems much less plausible to me, given what we now know about the name Ganellini being used not only in Liguria but also in Tuscany. That knowledge was not available to Dummett in 1989 (as far as I am aware). If "Gallerini" had originated in Sicily, it would have to have changed its name to Ganellini and then made its way down the coast from Liguria to northwestern Tuscany, bringing not only the name but also the same kind of deck as that used in Genoa, except that it lost the 98th card on the way—and of course it is far more likely that the standard Germini/Minchiate deck would have already reached that area from Florence long before, which means that this supposed new import from Liguria must have displaced the existing deck and name. That scenario is a lot less plausible than the alternative, namely the game spreading out from Florence, up the coast to Liguria, and from there to Sicily, undergoing various changes to its name and the design and composition of its deck as it went.

Re: help identification tarot of marseilles

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Nathaniel wrote: 02 May 2021, 09:55
Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: 02 May 2021, 09:45 I will ask Thierry.
Before that, do we know what town Rosele lives in? Where she is working?
You've probably already read through the thread and found this, but Rosele said this about the village where the book was located: Il villaggio ora si chiama Vezzi Portio é nell'entroterra di Finale Ligure, marchesato dei Carretto (in this post here, which I translated here). Rosele doesn't live there, that's just where the book was.
Thanks Nathaniel! That should be enough information.
Image

Re: help identification tarot of marseilles

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Nathaniel wrote: 02 May 2021, 10:10 There is another connection between Gallerini in Sicily and Gallerini/Ganellini in Liguria, namely the 98th card that appears in some Ligurian decks. As Michael Dummett observed in his article "The Portuguese Suit-System in the Central Mediterranean" (in The Playing-Card 17, no. 4, 1989, p. 124), there were also apparently 98 cards in the Gallerini deck in Sicily, according to the marchese di Villabianca in his opuscolo written ca. 1786. Dummett hypothesized that it was the Sicilians who had taken the game to Genoa/Liguria rather than the other way around, but that seems much less plausible to me, given what we now know about the name Ganellini being used not only in Liguria but also in Tuscany. That knowledge was not available to Dummett in 1989 (as far as I am aware). If "Gallerini" had originated in Sicily, it would have to have changed its name to Ganellini and then made its way down the coast from Liguria to northwestern Tuscany, bringing not only the name but also the same kind of deck as that used in Genoa, except that it lost the 98th card on the way—and of course it is far more likely that the standard Germini/Minchiate deck would have already reached that area from Florence long before, which means that this supposed new import from Liguria must have displaced the existing deck and name. That scenario is a lot less plausible than the alternative, namely the game spreading out from Florence, up the coast to Liguria, and from there to Sicily, undergoing various changes to its name and the design and composition of its deck as it went.
Another possibility just occurred to me: In one of my posts above, I linked to a work by Carmelo Trasselli, Genovesi in Sicilia (Genoa: 1969), which not only describes the close links between Sicily and Genoa in the Renaissance, but also the important influence of Lucca on Sicily in the 16th century. So perhaps the game spread directly from Lucca to Sicily, around the same time that it was spreading from the area around Lucca up the coast to Liguria. It might then have developed in Sicily into the 98-card form under the name of Gallerini, which then went from there to Liguria, just as Dummett believed it had done. This would be one way of explaining why we know of the game in Sicily with only one name (Gallerini) and one size of deck (98 cards), but we know of two names in Liguria (Gallerini and Ganellini) and two types of decks, one with 98 cards and one with 97.

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Ross,
There is a location Imperia with a river Impero. The location was named 1923 Imperia likely cause of the river name (it consists of two older cities). Possibly the old deck name developed from the river region. Imperia has about 50 km distance to Finale Liguria (also called Final), where the book is.
Tarot, Tarock, Tarocchi 1988 has at page 121 a very similar deck, which has a "NEL FINAL" at an Ace of batons.
Allemagne cites a sentence, according which Final and Savona were active in playing card production 1753. Franco has noted, that he met one of the original cities at the Impero river as card producers in his Florentines researches.
The city Final is distant to Savona about 20 km. Savona was the old place of the Rovere family (Pope Sixtus and Pope Julius). The Leber Tarocchi and six cards which were shown by the younger Cicognara have similarity to the Rovere heraldic (oak). The decks are attributed to Nicoletta da Modena (active 1500/12 or 1500/1520). Pope Julius as Giuliano de Rovere was escaped to France after 1492 (when Alexander VI was elected) and was engaged in the French attacks on Naples and Milan (1494-1500). In 1499-1502 he became bishop of Savona. I can imagine, that pope Julius or his family was involved in Trionfi/Tarock deck production. in the early 1500s. 1506 we have the first Germini decks mentioned in a Florentine document together with a French Trionfi deck in a state of development.

I think it would be of interest to know more about the card production in Genoa, Savona, Final and Impero-region as early a possible.
Huck
http://trionfi.com
cron