Tarot History Forum

Hi Mike

Interestingly, I find that your name is Mike in my GoogleBeta browser but your same post appears as "by mikeh" in my DuckDuckGo browser. So you are both the same person.

As for Francesca, I understand the reasoning that there were some Francescas in the family but I give it little weight because curiously the mother of Francesca or Isabella Bentivoglio was called Francesca, so possibly if she was called Francesca instead of Isabella or Elisabetta it could be in honor of her mother, Anton Bentivoglio's wife. That woman daughter of Anton was called Isabella or Elisabetta (like her grandmother) according to several sources and I only know of one source where she was called Francesca, which is the book on noble families that you mentioned at the initiative of Andrea Vitali.

I think that possibly Giovanni Bentivoglio (father of Anton) had some daughter called Francesca, according to the text of Fibbia's portrait. That daughter of Giovanni called Francesca could have been the daughter of Giovanni's first wife or perhaps of some lover (I don't know if Giovanni was unfaithful) but the dates make me think that Francesca, married to Fibbia, could not have been the daughter of Giovanni's second wife because that would have been too late for the grandson Biagio to have been an adult in 1420. In any case, the dates are too close to accept that Giovanni Bentivoglio was the father of Francesca, Fibbia's wife, because we know that Giovanni was born in 1358, so Francesca would have been born after 1375. The painting says that Fibbia was born in 1360, which is close to the birth of his father-in-law Giovanni. But Fibbia's parents were married in 1380 according to the Treccani encyclopedia (article on Enrico Castracani). There are several problems, as we can see. The issue of dates and generations would have to be resolved before accepting the name Francesca, which is not as problematic as the inconsistencies in the dates.

On the one hand, it seems that Fibbia and Francesca were born around 1380, in which case they would have had children after 1398 approximately. On the other hand, it seems that Fibbia and Francesca married around 1385 because Biagio was their grandson according to several family trees. I don't see a Biagio from an older generation in the tree. If it is Biagio Fibia has to be a descendant of Fibbia and not a cousin. Or is it Biagio Castracani? I also don't see another Biagio as Fibbia's cousin, except in the chaotic print family tree of 1727 which shows a Biagio as Fibbia's brother or cousin but there really are no clear lines in the drawing to know if he is Vallerano's son or where that Biagio comes from.

As for Tarocchino al Mondo, I have seen the same problem that you mention. I wrote to Benedetti telling him that the Moors of Al Soldato are more similar to the original Papas than the Moors of Al Mondo. He replied saying that he is not a historian like Andrea Vitali but that the Moors of Al Mondo are more beautiful. He was kind and I appreciate him but I think that his answer did not address the question raised. I am surprised that the museum keeps that note from Benedetti in its online catalogue. In any case, the subject is interesting and I love to discover that Al Soldato has Moors similar to the Popes because that makes it easier to understand the evolution of the design, although I would like to know the dates. Perhaps both models existed at the same time. Perhaps the Al Soldato Moors emerged late when the Church was less angry about this issue. But for me it would be logical that Al Soldato is older than Al Mondo, especially because of the similarity that Benedetti mentions, although curiously it seems that he is wrong when pointing out the most similar design. The answer that Benedetti gave me is the following. I do not want to be inaccurate when summarizing what he told me. For that reason I consider it appropriate to share his exact words, although they are not a solution to the problem. I thank him for his sympathy all the same.

"Mi spiace, non ti so rispondere, non sono uno storico; domande del genere le farei per esempio a Andrea Vitali. Quello che posso dire osservando le immagini è che entrambi i mazzi contengono dei residui di Imperatore e Imperatrice, con gli scettri con Sole e Luna di Al Mondo e i globi di Al Soldato. A parte questo, i Mori di Al Mondo sono molto più belli, ma questo è un altro discorso"

Thank you for sharing your personal knowledge and your impressions about Vitali ideas. I don't know if I will write to him. I asked him something a while ago and he still hasn't spoken to me. I imagine that he is busy or saturated with fans. I thought that he might have an opinion on a certain rumor that exists. I did not find the supposed text of the rumor. My question was this:

"Hello Andrea. Does the book by Pipozzo di Sandro from 1299 really exist where it is rumored that the word naipe or naibi is written? I can't find the book and I would like to see the exact text. It may be a mistake or an invention but there is a lot of talk about it without details. The title of that book from 1299 supposedly is "Trattato del governo della familia". Thanks!!"

Let's see what Huck thinks about the Fibbia cards. After all, Andrea leads the subject towards Teikemeier's 5x14 theory.

thanks!

FIBBIANA

Fibbiana is a location between Lucca and Florence (which have a distance of 71 km), with about 25 km to Florence and about 45 km to Lucca.
https://www.google.de/maps/dir/Florenz, ... FQAw%3D%3D
If one goes into details, then we have, that a Via del Croci meets a Via del Piano and the place, where the both roads meet, has the name Fibbiana. For the current moment there is a Pizzeria Casa del Popolo Fibbiana there.
https://www.google.de/maps/dir/Florenz, ... FQAw%3D%3D

Fibbiana (3500 inhabitants) is an Eastern part of Montelupo Fiorentino.(about 15.000 inhabitants). Montelupo is at the south side of the river Arno
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibbiana ..... "Il toponimo è citato nei documenti antichi come Fibiana (Santa Maria di -, 1289)"

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montelupo_Fiorentino
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montelupo_Fiorentino
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montelupo_Fiorentino
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montelupo_Fiorentino

https://www.google.de/maps/place/50056+ ... FQAw%3D%3D


COREGLIA ANTELMINELLI

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coreglia_Antelminelli
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coreglia_Antelminelli
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coreglia_Antelminelli
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coreglia_Antelminelli

https://www.lust-auf-italien.com/reise/ ... elminelli/
https://youtu.be/WKYKt8xJsvM

.... will proceed

Hi Huk

Interesting discovery, the village of Fibiana. Perhaps Prince Fibbia had lived there in his childhood. I don't know if Orlando could have come near to Florence.

As for Coreglia village, its name is due to the fact that Francesco Castracani degli Antelminelli, known as Cecco, was from that village. He was a second cousin of the famous Castruccio Castracani degli Antelminelli (Fibbia's great-grandfather). There is an article about Cecco in Treccani and I have seen that he is listed with his children in the family tree from 1727, on the right of the tree. Cecco was also a count palatine. I suppose that Cecco was born in Coreglia although I have not been able to confirm it. It seems that he governed there or was mayor or lord... Cecco's descendants remained linked with Coreglia but later lost control of Coreglia. Cecco was murdered by his cousins ​​Vallerano and Enrico, that is, Fibbia's grandfather, who later died by hanging.

Cecco in Treccani:
https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ca ... ografico)/

Magic Moon wrote

In any case, the dates are too close to accept that Giovanni Bentivoglio was the father of Francesca, Fibbia's wife, because we know that Giovanni was born in 1458, so Francesca would have been born after 1475. The painting says that Fibbia was born in 1460, which is close to the birth of his father-in-law Giovanni. But Fibbia's parents were married in 1480 according to the Treccani encyclopedia (article on Enrico Castracani).

Did you mean 1358, 1375, 1360, 1380? Also, please give a link to the Treccani article, as searching Treccani nothing comes up for me.

In the comments you got from Benedetti, this part was of some interest:

Quello che posso dire osservando le immagini è che entrambi i mazzi contengono dei residui di Imperatore e Imperatrice, con gli scettri con Sole e Luna di Al Mondo e i globi di Al Soldato.

(What I can say by looking at the images is that both decks contain some remnants of Emperor and Empress, with the scepters with Sun and Moon of Al Mondo and the globes of Al Soldato.)

That correlates with Croce, who in 1602 had named the Emperor and Empress as among the trumps (and simply ignored the other two - see https://bub.unibo.it/it/bub-digitale/gi ... d=17_X_026). I had not noticed that aspect before.

But I cannot imagine that the Moon and the Sun were ever on any Empress and Emperor cards; at least I don't know of any. It is a conceptual association, not a visual one. I don't know if that makes any difference: there simply may have been a desire on somebody's part to differentiate the papi, so as to rank them as in minchiate. It seems to me that some people in the Bologna area did play a game with them ranked.

.... still in work:
...............................

Montelupo (= Mountain of the Wolf) .... the Fibbia family, possibly related to the location Fibbiana close to the modern Montelupo has the heraldic element of the dog (similar to a wolf or related to the wolf in a hostile manner) . See a Fibbia Tarocchi playing card with dog heraldry (part of Andrea Vitali's arguments) ....


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2 quotes of a webpage about the history of Montelupo:
https://www.latoscanadileonardo.it/en/p ... ntino.html

Montelupo, Florentine castle on the Arno
At that point, the Arno is rather narrow, and at that time it was crossed by a bridge allowing the road coming from the Val di Pesa to continue toward the Montalbano ridge. At the beginning of the 13th century, the river constituted the natural border between the Florentine contado and the territories controlled by neighboring cities, but for Florence, at that time planning the expansion of its territory, Capraia represented an obstacle. The Florentine response was to unfold a series of actions aimed at neutralizing that important stronghold. First, Florence succeeded in gaining control of Capraia’s fortifications by undermining the collaborative relationship between the consuls of Pistoia and the branch of the Counts Alberti who still held its garrison. At the same time, it projected and constructed a new strong point on the left of the Arno, the castle of Montelupo. This was the name of the new Florentine fortress that, in 1204, was already under construction on the hill in front of Capraia, as we read in the document ratifying the truce between the parties. In the text, the Pistoiesi, together with Count Guido Borgognone, swore to the Florentines not to permit cavalcades (raids) ubi est Montelupus, a Florentini noviter hedificatus. In 1206, programming began for populating the new settlement that, by the early decades of the 13th century, must already have been inhabited. We do know that in the middle of the century, the destruction of two towers, probably the residential buildings of the new inhabitants of Montelupo, was noted among the damage caused by the Ghibellines in the Florentine contado. The castle must then have included the upper part of the hill, which is referred to in later written sources as Castello (castle), as opposed to the lower part of the town, the Borgo (village). The castle and the village were enclosed within a single circuit of walls in 1336. It is in this form that Leonardo depicted Montelupo in the early 16th century.

Montelupo’s 14th-century walls
The threat of the transit through the Lower Valdarno of the army of Emperor Henry VII forced Florence to face, at the beginning of the 14th century, the problem of defending its territory. .In 1312 Montelupo was also among the castles claimed by the Empire, and Florence was preparing to update the defensive structures of some villages in order to reactivate their function, if necessary. In this phase of imminent danger, the municipality of Florence decided upon some actions for Montelupo, aimed at preventing the houses of the village from being used by the besiegers as points of support against the fortified upper part, the castle. The prescription required removal of all projecting parts of the roofs of the village houses, and even the destruction of those houses that had been built too close to, or leaning against, the castle walls. At the beginning of the 14th century, therefore, the only part of Montelupo still defended was the upper part, the castle When this area was affected by the warring episodes, around 1325, that saw Florence violently opposed by Lucca, the village of Montelupo must still have had no defenses, and was probably damaged by the incursions of Castruccio. So the Arno flood of 1333, which seriously damaged the walls of Empoli and Pontorme, probably touched the village of Montelupo, but not the walls of the castle, which was situated at a sufficiently high elevation to avoid this danger. In 1336 Florence organized an important revision of the fortifications of some of the castles of its contado. The resolution, for Montelupo, required not the re-construction of pre-existing walls, but the completion of the walls of the village. Therefore, at this date, the walls planned for enclosing the village were already at an advanced stage of construction. The new walls, some pieces of which we can still see preserved in Via Giro delle Mura, enclosed the old castrum and the village within a single defensive line, damaged only a few years earlier by the armed forces of Castruccio.

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The center of the modern Fibbiana seems to be at 2.8 km distance in Western direction (to Lucca) to the place of the castle on a mountain in the modern Montelupo, which in the year "around 1325" protected Florentine territory against an attacking Lucchese army. The street name "Via del Croci", which leads to Fabbiana possibly remembers the victims of the fight (Croci means "crosses"), so suggests my own phantasy.

.... still in work

Very difficult publishing here with tecnic problems in internet.

This post is deleting.

Thanks Mikeh (#24) for understanding my errors in dates: I actually wrote 1458, but I was thinking of 1358. I'm sorry for my confusion. I made that mistake many times in my post, but I've now edited it to ensure that all those years are written correctly. I hope the problem of having children so young that there are three generations in a few years is now clearer. I suppose women didn't have children before the age of 12 or 14 and could generally marry at 16 or later. I suppose men were usually older than 15 when they married.

The link to the Treccani encyclopedia on Enrico (or Arrigo, that is the same name) Castracani is this:

https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/ca ... ografico)/

The article talks about Enrico and below it talks about Orlando, Fibbia's father. The text reads as follows:

"Orlando, figlio del C., mise particolare cura nel restaurare le finanze della famiglia; si sa che diede [...]" And below it continues speaking about Orlando: "Dopo aver sposato nel 1380 Simona de' Fensi del conte Francesco da Prato, prestò i suoi servigi ai Genovesi e nel 1383 divenne governatore di Brescia".

This is the reason becouse i understand that Orlando married in 1380. Then, it is not possible that Fibbia were born in 1360. Fibbia should have been born later than 1380. True?

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Regarding the sun and moon that Benedetti observes in the Moors, I understand that he is referring to a small symbol located above the scepter or staff of two Moors in the Tarocchino Bolognese al Mondo edition that is in the British Museum. Incidentally, in another thread, Mikeh showed us that Beineke has a Tarocchino al Mondo copy with different Moors than those in the British Museum, that is, identical or almost identical to the Moors in Tarocchino al Soldato. In any case, I have sometimes imagined that perhaps there could be some analogy (structurally symmetrical in the complete sequence of trumps) between the four cards of priests (low trumps) and the four cards of stars, planets or luminaries (high trumps). For example, the poem Germini on prostitutes (before 1553): Trump IV (Popess) mentions a Tower; Trump III (Emperor) mentions the sun, the star, and the moon, but specifically mentions the star again; Trump II (Empress or Queen) mentions the night, which I can relate to the moon. Supposedly the symbolism of the sun and moon in the Moors represented the feminine or masculine, to differentiate the emperor and the empress. I think I read this in an article by Benedetti. I suppose he read it somewhere else.

The father of prince Fibbia (according the picture description) has the name Giovanni (?), not Orlando

Compare the first post of this thread ...
viewtopic.php?p=19073#p19073

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This German genealogy list of the Castracani family has more data of the family than other sources.

https://gw.geneanet.org/lucques?lang=de ... p=giovanni

According this Giovanni was born PERHAPS in 1315 and Giovanni died in 1343. Other lists have Giovanni as the oldest of the legitime sons older than Arrigo and older as Valeriano. It seems, that Giovanni hadn't children. If this is correct, then Giovanni wasn't a father of Prince Fibbia.

Andrea Vitali found a version of Manucci or Manutius (1449/1452 – 1515) ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldus_Manutius
... about the Condottiero Castruccio Castracani (1281-1328)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castrucci ... telminelli
The title is:
"Le attioni di Castruccio Castracane de gli Antelminelli, signore di Lucca. Con la genealogia della famiglia: estratte dalla Nuoua discrittione d'Italia, di Aldo Manucci."
books.google.com has various versions of the text, here is one of archive.org
https://archive.org/details/ita-bnc-ald ... ?q=orlando
The name Orlando appears 4 times at the pages 107-113 and the names of 4 sons are mentioned: Castruccio, Enrico, Francesco and Rolando, ... it seems to me, that the birthdates are around 1360 and Francesco is the 3rd son. The text is difficult to me, I'm not sure about it.

Thr father of Orlando is Enrico, not Giovanni. At least this looks plausible.

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You wrote

This is the reason becouse i understand that Orlando married in 1380. Then, it is not possible that Fibbia were born in 1360. Fibbia should have been born later than 1380. True?

Enrico, Giovanni's brother, might have had a son around 1335 , Orlando.
Orlando might have gotten 4 sons around 1355-65 in a first marriage and had a second marriage in 1380. Orlando would have been ca. 45 years then. Andrea Vitali stated, that Orlando got Francesco in 1360.

Huck and Magic Moon: Andrea in our 2022 book, p. 60, cites two wills made by Orlando, 1362 and 1363. Both list all four sons, including Francesco. So yes, there must have been a first marriage. I do not know where Andrea says that Francesco was born in 1360, but it is plausible.

Magic Moon: About the parallels between low and high triumphs in tarocchini and minchiate. These parallels might be a product of how the points were scored. In Minchiate, the "papi" and "aire" scored points (and a few other cards, but with the aire getting the most), and more if there were three or more in sequence. See
https://www.pagat.com/tarot/minchiate.html.

Tarocchini had something similar, but with four "papi" and the four highest trumps, with sequences going down from there. https://www.pagat.com/tarot/ottocento.html

Whether there is anything more than that is of course a good question. It might be significant that the rules for sequences and combinations had similarities between trumps and suit cards, using just the high and low of each. This might go back as far as Marziano's time, since certain trumps in groups seem to have been favored there. But the rule seems to have been too commonplace - or perhaps experimental - to mention.

That before they were Moors the papi were differentiated by gender is suggested by a composition by Giulio Cesare Croce in 1602 Bologna, his Lotto Festivale, fatto in Villa. He has an Empress and an Emperor, but nothing for a Papa or Papessa. The 1602 edition is online in BUB digitale. Whether they were actually called by those titles, or he is writing for an audience beyond Bologna, I can't say. But I can't find any indication of it being reprinted elsewhere.