Ludophone wrote: 08 Nov 2017, 12:35
Thanks, I'll keep an eye out for it. Depaulis referred to it as Ferrarese in 2009. As he is one of the co-authors, did he change his opinion or was it the other co-authors that challenged the provenance?
It was never a matter of challenging any consensus on the provenance, as none has been established.
Thierry Depaulis wrote this part of the introduction to the Anonymous Discourse, and made the argument on pp. 38-40 of
Explaining the Tarot that the author was probably neither from Ferrara, or Venice.
Although the author's trump order makes it an Eastern (Dummett's "B") order, it matches no other list. There are no Pope or Popess, the places of the Chariot and Fortitude are switched, and Temperance is called Prudence. We can not therefore assign the author's tarot to any specific place, except to broadly note that it is not A or Southern (Bologna and Florence), nor C or Western.
The author's vocabulary and spelling might help to narrow the possibllities, with the caveat that we do not have, with any security, the autograph. Pratesi had noted a few terms that suggested places as far apart as Venice and Rome. Depaulis, consulting with Claire Lesage, assistant professor of Italian at the University of Rennes, considered that the vocabulary contains typically southern Italian card playing vocabulary with some northern terms. Based on vocabulary, they estimate that the best place to locate the author's tarot is thus the Marches, offering Pesaro, tentatively, as satisfying the evidence.