The problem is further compounded if we go back to the original edition of the Lo Scarabeo, from 1995 according to one page of the booklet, 1996 on the cover. In that edition, the publisher claims 1725 as the historic date of this deck, just like Meneghello. These dates are nowhere on the cards themselves, so where do they come from? Meneghello at least gives an explanation - it is a fallacious one, as I will explain, but nonetheless a nice try. Trionfi.com has considerately uploaded the relevant pages of the booklet, as well as the cards he is refering to (http://a.trionfi.eu/WWPCM/decks07/d05115/d05115.htm), Libra and Cancer (second and third from left below): You will have noticed the odd squiggle in Libra, but where is the stamp (timbro) on Cancer? Perhaps the artistic director lightened the card so much that it disappeared from view. Well, Meneghello did not make the same mistake, as can be seen from the card at the far left, which I downloaded from the same trionfi.com web-page as the other. Lo Scarabeo in their 2019 edition has corrected its earlier error.
If there is only one surviving original of this particular deck, with its hand-coloring, then the difference between Meneghello's coloring and Lo Scarabeo's must be modern. I cannot imagine a publisher turning blue into grays, so surely Meneghello's is closer to the original, while Lo Scarabeo's is an artfully done restoration of the color to what the artistic director supposes was its original glory. However, without physically seeing the original, I cannot verify this hypothesis.
So what about the stamps on Libra and Cancer? Actually, the sign on Libra is a combination of the letters SCF, meaning Stamp of the Cards of Florence, in the course of describing the period of minchiate production in Florence after 1781. (The Playing Card, 50:1 [July-Sept, p. 21, speaking of that era :
Actually, Monzali has overextended himself a bit here. It is only that as far as he knows this assurance that the deck was made in Florence was instituted in 1781. It makes sense, since other important changes occurred then, including a change in the placement of the tax stamp, from Acqua to Aries. However, Franco Pratesi recently found some cards in the Cary Collection of Yale University that show that even during the previous period the early version of the stamp was put on Libra (I have translated the essay, which has colored reproductions of the twelve cards involved, at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2733. This period started in 1752, but in my opinion, given the Hapsburg-Lorraine arms on the back, which I don't think went into effect until after the dynasty was established as part of a marriage contract in 1763, and that no other such stamps on Libra have been found, it went into effect late in that time period, 1765-1780. (See my post immediately following the one just given).The period of the Stampa delle Carte di Firenze (Florence’s Cards Printing) also begins, marked by a stamp on the trump XXIIII (Libra). There are two versions of this stamp. The first, more elaborate, has the monogram SCF intertwined and written in a mirror image in two semicircles surrounded by the words Stampa delle carte di Firenze. The later simplified version has the three letters FCS written in italics surmounted by the same initials written in small letters in block capitals Fig. 33.
As for the tax stamp, here again is Monzali, p. 52:
Monzali's figure 37 is simply more Cancer cards with the same stamp as we have already seen.The last years of the century saw the entry on the European scene of Napoleon Bonaparte. For the Grand Duchy of Tuscany there was first the passage to the Bourbon-Parma family as compensation for their renunciation of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza which was annexed by France. In consequence, the Grand Duchy was replaced by the creation of the Kingdom of Etruria on 21 March 1806. For the cards, the creation of the new kingdom did not involve immediate changes. It was only on 24 May 1806 that Maria Luisa, acting as queen regent of the Kingdom of Etruria, on behalf of her six-year-old son Carlo Lodovico I, signed the edict that modified the design of the stamp and the card on which to affix it. As can be seen from figure 37, the card on which to affix it becomes the trump XXX (Cancer) and the new stamp has an octagonal shape with the French and Medici party shield in the centre surmounted by a crown and with the inscription Regno di Etruria on the sides.
According to Monzali, this stamp was in use from sometime in 1806 until June of 1808, following the annexation of "Etruria" into France in 1807. Earlier, Stuart Kaplan (Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. 2, 1984, p. 247) had had 1806-1807. That explains Lo Scarabeo's new dating, even if 1806-1808 is probably more accurate (Kaplan didn't take into account the time needed for a new practice to get into gear). It is not 1805-1806, but at least Lo Scarabeo is close. Meneghello still has 1725.
I think I know where that date came from. Writing in the 1984 catalog Tarot, Jeu et Magie (https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k ... .r=trionfi), pp. 84, Thierry Depaulis observed that the version of the engraved, handpainted minchiate pack in their exhibition had not only a tax stamp on Cancer but also a signature on the side of the card, one he read as "Anton. Molinelli". The same stamp and signature appeared on two other identical decks, one in the British Museum (Schreiber It. 47) and the other in the Fournier Museum (Fournier Museum 82, 115, No. 31). Not only that, but the same stamp and the signature, "Anton. Pius Molinelli", are found on card XXXII (Sagitarius) in another minchiate deck, an educational pack with history lessons written on the cards as well as its number and a small identifying icon. This one has the date 1725 written on its initial page. This educational pack is also part of the exhibition, loaned by Sylvia Mann, one of the founders of the International Playing Card Society and an avid and careful collector. Depaulis does not draw a conclusion, but in saying no more he seems to suggest that date for all these decks. It is then easy for someone to infer that by comparing any of these decks with the one, so far the only complete deck, used by Meneghello and Lo Scarabeo, if the cards look the same, their deck must be of the same year: "Etruria" was simply the name of the brand, not an indication of the political structure in place. After all, the word was also on the back of the deck, where brand names usually went.
But the card is the same as used for tax stamps. And as for the signature, the problem is that the Molinelli family controlled the tax stamp concession for a vast number of years, from before 1700 all the way up to 1751. That is seen not only in the 2021 article just quoted, which gives a table of who had the concession when, but also in a list given by Kaplan, p. 248. So the most that could have been said is that the plates with which the Lo Scarabeo/Meneghello decks were made, or an identical set, go back to before 1752.
Assuming that the plates are in fact the same, a good guess, in my opinion, giving that deck a pre-1751 provenance is taking advantage of a certain ambiguity in the dating of decks. In France, according to Kaplan (p. 238), in the 18th and 19th century the method of certifying that the taxes had been paid was most often that of putting a band of flimsy paper around the deck, which the purchaser normally simply tore off and discarded. There was no tax stamp on the cards. But card makers frequently put a year and a name on the 2 of Coins or elsewhere. The problem is that this only identifies the year the woodblock was made. So the BnF's "1760" Conver is estimated to have been printed 1810-1820. Lo Scarabeo recently published as a "1760 Conver" a deck printed in the 1850s, as the publisher told my friend Andrea Vitali, who had asked the publisher on my behalf when I queried him on this issue (because the paint looked so well preserved). By the same token, dating the plates is what matters in our case, not the date of that particular copy. But that of course needs to be said, if that is the basis for "1725," or any other date in the absence of other information about the deck.
I think that is enough to be said about Lo Scarabeo and Meneghello. However, it is still worth trying to estimate just when the plates were first made, based on the card the stamp was put on, what words can be made out, if any, a better grasp of the signatures, and other things. Well, that is something for another post.