Tarot History Forum

Huck wrote: 24 Jun 2025, 08:11
The intro speaks of the year 1479 and the politcal engagement of Eleanore d'Aragon in the Pazzi war.
In the footnotes W.L. Gundersheimer is mentioned.


If you look through the 22 tercets of the trump-suit with some critical view, you can see, that the male protagonists suffer at their own stupidity and the female persons get the more clever parts.

Trump 1 Laziness v. Trump 2 Effort...
.... and so on

Hi Huck,

Thanks for the further clarification and references,, all of us I think have recognized, and none of us I think have denied, the Female V. Male schema . I see the line you're drawing from Gundersheimer’s thesis on shifting gendered discourses in Ferrara, from women being seen as "equal to men" to “better than men” and how you’re connecting that to Boiardo’s tarot, particularly in the way the female figures seem more admirable or morally successful than the male ones.

However, I’m not convinced that this should be read primarily as a contribution to the querelle des femmes or a statement of feminist ideology emerging post-1487. The pattern you’ve identified, men as victims of folly or passion & women as exemplars of virtue and strength, seems more coherently understood in the context of the medieval and early Renaissance psychomachia tradition, where vices and virtues are personified and placed in moral opposition. In that context, women often serve as exemplars not because of a political or gendered agenda, but because certain virtues had long been allegorized as feminine (e.g., Humility, Chastity, Prudence) and demonstrated through biblical or classical heroines.

Your own example with Sardanapalus and Hyppolita shows this: Sardanapalus is slothful and effeminate not simply because he is male, but because he embodies a vice, while Hyppolita is industrious and heroic not just as a woman, but as a personification of Effort or Fortitude.

This is consistent with a visual tradition too where we often see women like Judith or Jael depicted as allegories of moral strength, not as figures in a debate over the superiority of women per se. In fact, the very imagery you find in Boiardo’s tarot (Judith, Laura triumphing over Cupid, Lucretia) is typical of virtue iconography, not polemical gender commentary. The message is ethical, not gendered: reason triumphs over desire, chastity over lust, action over passivity.

So rather than seeing Boiardo’s poem as emerging from a new wave of feminism circa 1487, I’d place it in the well-established tradition of allegorical moral instruction, where virtues (often feminized) are shown triumphing over vices (often masculinized). The poem draws on this tradition both visually and narratively, and fits within a much longer arc of moral didacticism that predates Eleanor d’Aragon and her cultural circle.

That said, Boiardo may well have shaped his poem to flatter and appeal to a courtly audience that included powerful women like Eleanor, but that is part of courtly decorum, not necessarily evidence of ideological feminism.

Image:
Humility Slaying Pride, Speculum Virginum

SteveM wrote: 22 Jun 2025, 19:06
8. PATIENCE
PATIENCE dwelled in Psyche through her trials,
And so she was sustained in all her sorrows,
And made a goddess in the end — an example to us all.

The first printed version of Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass) appeared in 1469, the primary source for the story of Psyche and Cupid, and was translated into Italian in the 1470's by Boiardo at the request of Ercole d'Este. However, the story was well known through secondary sources prior to that, such as in Boccaccio, in "On the Genealogy of the Gods of the Pagans" (Genealogia deorum gentilium, 1360 –1374), Book 5, chapter 22. The first printed text of Boccaccio was 1472 but well circulated prior to that in manuscript form.


Here a page beginning the story of Psyche and Cupid, from a printed edition of Boiardo's translation:

Here is a list of printed editions according to Solerto, 1894:

Printed Editions:

I. Amore, by Hieronimo Beniueni, Florentine, dedicated to the most illustrious Lord Niccolò da Correggio. A beautiful Caccia d’Amore and five chapters (XXXIII in total) on Fear, Jealousy, Hope, Love, and a Triumph of the World, composed by Count Matteo Maria Boiardo, and other various pieces. In octavo. At the end: Printed in the famous city of Venice by Nicolò Zopino and Vincenzio, his partner, in the year 1523, on the 30th of July, during the reign of the renowned Prince Messer Andrea Gritti.

II, III, IV, V, VI. Amore, etc. Venice, Nicolò Zoppino, 1526. Cited by Mazzucchelli (Scrittori, article Boiardo).
Identical to no. I.
Printed in Venice by Vettor, son of Piero Rauano della Serena and partners, in the year of Our Lord 1532, in the month of July (National Library of Turin).
Same edition as no. II but dated 1533 (cited by Mazzucchelli).
Amore, etc., same as nos. III and IV, but dated 1535 (Municipal Library of Bologna).
Amore, etc., same as nos. III, IV, and V, but dated 1537 (cited by Mazzucchelli).

VII. (cited by Mazzucchelli).
A Most Beautiful Caccia, by the Reverend EGIDIO, with the delightful Amori of Messer GIROLAMO BENIUENI and five chapters by the Lord Count MATTEO MARIA BOIARDO on Fear, Jealousy, Beauty, Hope, Love, and a Triumph of the World — a work newly reprinted and carefully revised and corrected.
Dated 1538.
At the end: Printed in Venice by Nicolò d’Aristotele of Ferrara, called Zoppino, 1538 (Municipal Library of Ferrara).
In this edition, the chapter on Beauty is placed last, after the one on The World, and the explanatory sonnets for the game are missing.

VIII. Selected and Illustrated Poems, by G.B. Venturi, Modena, 1820.
Venturi mistakenly omitted the sonnets, which are the key to understanding the game.

Online:

First printed edition, 1523: Amore, by Hieronimo Beniueni, Florentine, dedicated to the most illustrious Lord Niccolò da Correggio.

https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=Z5 ... &q&f=false

Pages xxxii-xxxiii of the Introduction have useful information about the 1523 publication on which the 1894 is based, such as the original title, publisher, etc., which should clear up some of Magic Moon's questions.
https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=Ty ... HI&f=false

I suppose the introductory sonnet is worth translating, too. I think it clarifies that the Fool is not a triumph. If that is by Boiardo, too, that is helpful information about the status of the Fool when Boiardo wrote it. Here is the version not with Viti's comments, put just before the end sonnet (http://www.dominiopublico.gov.br/downlo ... 000122.pdf).

Finis.
ARGUMENTO DE LI DITTI CAPITULI
DE MATTHEO MARIA BOIARDO
SOPRA UN NOVO GIOCO DE CARTE

Quattro passion de l'anima signora
Hanno quaranta carte in questo gioco.
A la piú degna la minor dà loco,
E il lor significato le colora.

Quattro figure ha ogni color anchora
Che ai debiti suo officii tutte loco.
Con vinti e un triumpho al piú vil loco
È un folle piú che 'l folle el mondo adora.

Amor, speranza, gellosia e timore
Son le passion, e un ternario han le carte
Per non lasciar chi giocherà in errore.

Il numero ne' versi si comparte:
Uno, duo, tre, fin al grado magiore.
Resta mo a te trovar del gioco l'arte.

Or in Viti's version, put as a prologue:

Quatro passion de l'anima signora
Hanno quaranta carte in questo gioco;
A la piú degna la minor dà loco,
E il lor significato le colora.

Quatro figure ha ogni color ancora,
Che a i debiti soi officii tucte loco;
Con vinti et un Trionfo, e al piú vil loco
È un Folle, poi che 'l folle el mondo adora.

AMOR, SPERANZA, GELOSIA, TIMORE
Son le passion, e un terzetto han le carte,
Per non lassar, chi giocarà, in errore.

El numero ne i versi se comparte:
Uno, doi e tre, fin al grado magiore;
Resta mo a te trovar del gioco l'arte

One thing I don't understand is where the non-Viti versions of the tercets and sonnets come from.

Magic Moon wrote: 24 Jun 2025, 02:58
In #6 Mikeh put a text that mention: "Capitoli del giuoco dei tarocchi".
This title is in Amazon as a book (Venice, 1523) here:
https://www.amazon.es/Tarocchi-capitoli ... B0BT88SCTJ

There, Amazon say (english translation):
"Although it is not possible to establish with certainty the date of its first publication, it was certainly printed by the learned doctor from Urbino Pier Antonio Viti (Solerti) in Venice in 1523, about thirty years after the author's death. Closely linked to the court, the lyrics served to poetically illustrate the eighty cards of a painted deck in which the main suits were inspired by the "four passions of the lord's soul", namely darts (love), vases (hope), eyes (jealousy), whips (fear); Boiardo made a tercet correspond to each card, except the first and the last, which were intended for a sonnet"....

Pier Antonio Viti died around 1500 and could not have published anything in 1523. The first known printed edition of Boiardo’s "tarot" poem (Capituli de li Giuochi de le Carte) was published in Venice in 1523 by Nicolò Zoppino, not by Viti. What Viti did was compose a manuscript commentary on Boiardo’s poem — sometime before 1500 — which survived in private collections and was later studied.

The edition sold on Amazon is most likely a modern reprint based on the 1894 critical edition by Angelo Solerti, which includes Boiardo’s verses and Viti’s commentary. The Amazon blurb confuses things by attributing the 1523 printing to Viti, when in fact Viti wrote a commentary that remained in manuscript form.

The 1523 printing was produced by Zoppino and included Boiardo’s verses — without Viti’s commentary.

Solerti's edition (in 1894), made extensive use of Viti's commentary, noting variations between his text and Boiardo's. Of Viti's commentary Solerti wrote:

"For the text of these chapters, I have followed integrally and faithfully a manuscript that contains them together with the valuable commentary by Pier Antonio Viti. This manuscript is owned by Mr. Antaldo Antaldi of Pesaro, who kindly provided it to me after I was informed of its existence by my esteemed friend, Professor Tommaso Casini.

"The codex came into the Antaldi family's possession as part of the well-known inheritance from the Viti family of Urbino, familiar to scholars. The manuscript, made of paper and dating from the 15th century, measures 220 x 145 mm and consists of three quires, totaling 30 leaves, which are loose. As a result, it has suffered the loss of several folios...

"Mr. Antaldi does not give up hope of recovering these missing leaves among other codices in his collection.

"I note that in the printed editions — not in the manuscript — the chapters, even when mis-ordered, conclude with a single line after the final tercet. This is clearly a later literary addition, since each card in the game originally had exactly one tercet inscribed on it — no more. Therefore, the final line is out of place."


It’s from Solerti's edition that most modern reprints derive.

The title in early prints refers not to Tarocchi but instead to a “gioco di carte” or “capitoli”. The title “Tarocchi” only becomes associated with Boiardo’s poem after Solerti’s edition in 1894 — hence your impression is correct. So when Amazon uses “Tarocchi” as a title and says it was published with that name in 1523, they’re applying a modern label retroactively, which is misleading if not explained properly.

The poem was designed to accompany a complete 78-card structure, like a trionfi ( tarot ) deck:

4 suits of 14 cards each → 56 cards

10 pip cards

4 court cards (King, Queen, Knight, Page)

21 trionfi (trump) cards,

1 Matto (Fool)

2 sonnets

There are 73 tercets, 5 quatrains,* 2 sonnets = 80 verses.

*According to Solerti, the final line that appears at the end of each chapter, turning the final tercet into a quatrain, are later additions, and that all were originally tercets, to make 78 tercets in all.

Steve ...
Well, a fine collection (that of Solerto).

You recently claimed, that Lucrezia or Lucretia or similar would be a common name.

https://www.s-gabriel.org/names/juliana/condado/ .... is a statistic about names, based on the Cataster of Florence
The list for women names, the names which start with an "L"

Labe 1
Laggia 2
Lagia 16
Lando 1
Lapa 15
Lapaccia 1
Lena 11
Leonarda 8
Liparata 1
Lippa 14
Lisa 41
Lisabetta 1
Liva 1
Lore 1
Lorenza 40
Luca 3
Luchina 1
Lucia 57
Luna 1

https://www.s-gabriel.org/names/juliana/condado/ .... the start page
The alphabetic list of .... "The 2664 women share 389 names (counting each spelling variant independently) or 291 names (grouping spelling variants and diminutives together)." .... https://www.s-gabriel.org/names/juliana ... alpha.html

The result for Lucretia or Lucrezia or similar is zero. On this list.

Names follow fashions and the popularity is changing. In the case of Ferrara and the duke Ercole d'Este we have, that he had a daughter Lucretia, and that his
son Alfonso married a Lucrezia (Borgia) in second marriage and there was a Lucrezia-daughter (1535-98) of the grandson Ercole II and another Lucrezia who married a Sigismondo d'Este (brother of Ercole I) son with the name Ercole . Well, in these circles iLucrezia was not rare.

But the Lucrezia which married Annibale looks like the first. In the moment. c1470
A Lucrezia, also 1470, was die daughter of Lorenzo de Medici.
Both got a lot children, Lucretia I had 13 children.
April 1480 is the birthdate for Lucrezia Borgia.

Huck wrote: 24 Jun 2025, 16:01 Steve ...

You recently claimed, that Lucrezia or Lucretia or similar would be a common name.

Not me, mate — you’re confusing me with someone else.

That aside, you’re right that names follow fashion and fluctuate in popularity across time and place — but I think we should be cautious about reading too much into frequency statistics when interpreting literary allegory.

The Florentine data you cited represents a very specific urban demographic in 15th-century Florence. The absence of "Lucretia" from that list doesn’t mean the name was rare across Italy, especially not in humanist and aristocratic circles, where classical names like Lucretia, Portia, and Cornelia were deliberately revived. As you yourself point out, the name appears multiple times in the Este and Medici dynasties, reflecting its cultural cachet rather than its general statistical weight.

But that does not prove that Boiardo’s Lucretia refers to Lucrezia d’Este, or to any contemporary woman. All available evidence suggests she represents the Roman heroine, whose story was a commonplace of Renaissance moral exemplars. Her appearance in the final tercet of the trump sequence aligns with her role in other humanist literature: a symbol of chastity, civic virtue, and the ultimate sacrifice for honor.

We find this version of Lucretia not only in Livy, but also in Petrarch, Boccaccio (De mulieribus claris), Christine de Pizan, and in widespread visual and textual traditions of moral allegory. In these, Lucretia embodies virtue overcoming dishonor, especially sexual violation. That Boiardo concludes his sequence with her suggests he intended her as the culminating figure of moral triumph, not a courtly compliment veiled in allegory.

That said, names do carry resonance — and Boiardo’s use of "Lucretia" may have held additional appeal in a courtly context where women with that name were present. But the primary reference is literary and symbolic, not biographical.

If Boiardo meant to point to Lucrezia d’Este specifically, we would need more than a shared name. We would need dedicatory language, iconographic allusions, or some documentary evidence, allusions to contemporary events or court roles, or multiple figures identifiable to the intended audience. As it stands, the identification is speculative.

Boiardo was especially influenced by Petrarch, in whose Trionfo della Pudicizia we see Lucretia is named as the foremost figure among chaste women:

I’ non poria le sacre e benedette
vergini ch’ivi fur chiudere in rima,
non Calliope e Clio con l’altre sette;
ma d’alquante dirò che ’n su la cima
son di vera onestate; infra le quali
Lucrezia da man destra era la prima,
l’altra Penelopè: queste gli strali
avean spezzato e la faretra a lato
a quel protervo, e spennachiato l’ali.



I could not name the sacred, blessed throng
of virgins gathered there, nor render true
their number into rhyme, not even song

from Calliope and Clio with their crew
of sister Muses would suffice. Yet still
I’ll speak of some who stood in honor’s view

upon the height of virtue , foremost, Lucrece
at my right hand; beside her, Penelope.
They snapped his arrows, made his quiver cease,

and left that proud boy humbled at their knee,
his feathers plucked, his vaunted wings undone,
chaste victors over Love’s inconstancy.

(Trionfo della Pudicizia, lines 127–135)

"onestate" here is translated as "virtue," though more literally it is "honesty" or "honourable conduct".

Finally, it's worth noting that Petrarch also wrote extensively on the four passions (love, hope, fear, and jealousy) the same categories Boiardo uses for his trump sequence. These affinities further support the idea that Boiardo was working within a literary and moral framework, not encoding contemporary figures into his poetic structure.

Steve wrote,

Huck wrote:
Steve ...

You recently claimed, that Lucrezia or Lucretia or similar would be a common name.

Not me, mate — you’re confusing me with someone else.

It was me - but what I said was (viewtopic.php?p=27427#p27427):

About the three paintings you talked about earlier: I see no direct relationship to Boiardo's poem. The only one that illustrates one of Boiardo's tercets is that about Lucretia. That was a common name among ruling families then, and they all would have known the story of their namesake. If they were using Boiardo, Hasrubal's daughter, rather than his wife, whom Boiardo doesn't mention, would have come to mind first.

If in Ferrara this fashion started in 1470 might suggest a relationship to the poem (although a rather grim exemplar of honor). If so, that is another argument in favor of a dating around that time rather than 1487.

Here is the article by Rainier:

https://archive.org/details/studisumatt ... 8/mode/2up

Steve

Thanks for the explanation. What you say is interesting: Boiardo's four passions were previously in Petrarch's poem Trionfi. I've looked for those four passions in Petrarch's poem, but I don't see the structure you're talking about. I only see the word "love" used many times and the word "hope" used a few times. What do you mean?

Solerti says that the last verse of each chapter didn't exist in the manuscript. I assume Boiardo's manuscript is no longer preserved. I assume Solerti is referring to Viti's manuscript. Right? In that case, it seems difficult to determine whether Boiardo wrote that last verse or not.

I was also missing the danger tercet in the text I downloaded years ago. Glad you found it complete! I assume Boiardo wrote the danger tercet before Viti. Huck mentions an introduction that mentions the year 1479, but I see that this introduction is not the introduction to Boiardo's poem. Huck is probably referring to another text.