Tarot History Forum

Hi friends!

Excelent argument, thanks Ross.

Some problems:

a) In archeology, as you know, a very big danger is the "contamination." For example, a mouse makes its lair and, through the tunnel, a coin change stratum. Roots of trees, an little earthquake ... Many causes can mixed strata. Therefore, it is very important have many elements to date an archaeological stratum, not one.

For Visconti-Sforza, for example, we have several documents and several decks. We can assume that Milan's Court played the game "trionfi" because there are many facts, too many to be the result of "contamination".

Marchione Burdochio is a single case. Very little smoke to much fire. If Bologna hypothesis were correct, would have left more clues, more documents.


b) The production of something in a place is not necessarily to be consumed there. For example, in India and China build Ikea furniture, but it's for the European market.

c)

But could Filippo have designed the tarot? My impression, having studied him in depth, is no.

Lol... My impression, having studied him in depth, is yes.

Visconti is very intelligent. He loves the games. He likes chess and cards. Have much free time (no go to the war directly). He designed a deck very similar that trionfi... In fact, the tarot game yet existed in Germany. Filippo only adjusted the figures as her preferences and maybe adjust the number of trionfi in 16.

mmfilesi wrote: Some problems:

a) In archeology, as you know, a very big danger is the "contamination." For example, a mouse makes its lair and, through the tunnel, a coin change stratum. Roots of trees, an little earthquake ... Many causes can mixed strata. Therefore, it is very important have many elements to date an archaeological stratum, not one.

I don't understand your objection. This entry is dated, 28 July 1442 - no contamination. The issue is one of interpretation of the dated action - a Bolognese merchant sells Bolognese cards - that makes the most sense. Any other explanation has to invent scenarios in order to avoid the natural implication of the common-sense conclusion.

I think by "contamination" in the archeological sense, you mean what historians call "anachronism" - this means interpreting something in a way not suitable for the time or place. But the time and place is clear here.

Marchione Burdochio is a single case. Very little smoke to much fire. If Bologna hypothesis were correct, would have left more clues, more documents.

Not true. We don't have the right to expect more documents or clues.

Look at the case of regular playing cards. First documented in Italy in 1377. From there until the end of the 15th century, there must be hundreds of references to "carte da gioco" and "naibi" from Italian sources. We know the Italians loved to play cards - like the rest or Europe in the 15th century.

Yet, we have only fragments of a single pack of Italian playing cards from the 15th century.

By contrast, we have about 50 documentary references to carte da trionfi. More importantly, we have around 25 packs, fragments of packs, and uncut sheets of triumph cards that can be dated before around 1500.

We know, with certainty, that more played with regular cards than with tarot cards, yet the physical evidence is vastly more plentiful for tarot cards. Secondly, the documentary evidence would make it seem like triumphs had a huge chunk of the playing card market - maybe 25 to 33 percent. But we know this is implausible, since there are dozens of different card games played with regular cards, but only one "triumphs". So we cannot directly calculate relative popularity from a comparison of the number of surviving references or surviving cards.

What else is different? The nature of the cards. Most of the surviving triumph cards, and the earliest ones, are from luxury packs. These have a higher chance of surviving than regular cards or printed tarots because they are precious works of art, likely to be kept even when cards are lost and playing with them becomes impossible. Thus historical accident is biased in favour of luxury triumph cards, and we have to take into account this bias, and balance it, when we theorize. Something that is cared for is more likely to be preserved in history than something that is easily discarded and replaced, or left completely to chance.

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of packs of cards were made in Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries - only one fragment survives. If printed tarot cards existed in the 1440s and 1450s, they would have suffered the same fate - thrown away when they became useless because of damage or lost cards.

There are a handful of documentary references to triumph cards in the 1440s, and three of them point to the existence of mid-market if not "popular" packs - Burdochio, Marcello's first pack (given to him in 1448), and Sforza's request for "the finest" triumphs his secretary can find - implying that there were grades of triumphs not so fine. Both Sforza and Burdochio also show that triumph cards were pre-made and sold retail. In other words, there was a standard thing called "triumph cards" and it was available in stores. The luxury commissions were just that - special commissions. But like regular playing cards, there was a larger market that left little trace in history.

b) The production of something in a place is not necessarily to be consumed there. For example, in India and China build Ikea furniture, but it's for the European market.

I don't think this analogy works, since there are too many other factors involved. Bologna did in fact make cards for other markets, which we know of later - Minchiate for Florence (and Rome?), Tarots for Milan and France.

Your example could just as easily apply to my scenario - cards produced in Bologna are sold in Ferrara.

But really - what makes you think that a Bolognese cardmaker wouldn't be making cards for a local market as well?

c)

But could Filippo have designed the tarot? My impression, having studied him in depth, is no.

Lol... My impression, having studied him in depth, is yes.

Visconti is very intelligent. He loves the games. He likes chess and cards. Have much free time (no go to the war directly). He designed a deck very similar that trionfi... In fact, the tarot game yet existed in Germany. Filippo only adjusted the figures as her preferences and maybe adjust the number of trionfi in 16.

Well, I said that I didn't agree with everything I wrote in that quote from 4 years ago, and this is one of them - more or less. I think he probably commissioned the Brambilla and Cary Yale packs - but there is a chance one of them could have been a gift to him from some people like the Borromeos. But I don't think Visconti invented the game - it would not explain the cheaper cards existing so soon. You have to push the date of invention further back than I think deductions from the pattern of the evidence allows.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:But I don't think Visconti invented the game - it would not explain the cheaper cards existing so soon. You have to push the date of invention further back than I think deductions from the pattern of the evidence allows.

These issues were discussed on this thread -
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=258&hilit=chart&start=30

and here -
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=334&hilit=chart&start=120#p5523
(start there)

But we can go further if you like. Here is all of the evidence for triumph cards - physical cards, documentary mentions, and plausible iconography (like Palazzo Borromeo) - from 1442 to 1482.



This chart is arranged strictly chronologically, as far as it can be ascertained in some cases (like specific surviving packs). But, except for the differences between documentation of "triumph cards", and surviving artifacts, it is not qualified any further (the two "?" squares refer to Cristina Fiorini's controversial theory placing the Rothschild cards around 1420 in Florence - it is repeated to show another view of the date of these cards).

The main thing I learned from it is that, taken as a whole, the spread of the evidence leaves no more than 5 years' gap - maybe less than three years - between one documentation and the next. Not in any one place, necessarily, but overall. I reasoned that since the two decades before 1442 are no less well documented than the two decades afterward - there is no "black hole" of information all over Italy between 1420 and 1440 - then some evidence should turn up somewhere, just as historical accident makes it turn up in the years after 1442 with such regularity.

Since it does not, it follows that Triumph cards had to be invented sometime not too long before 1442 - short enough to fall into an acceptable margin of error derived from what we do know. As I noted, that margin of error, or silence, is 3-5 years in the attested evidence. So I concluded that the game of Triumphs should have been invented 3-5 years before 1442 (or 1437-1441 inclusive).

But the chart isn't qualified by any other criteria - type of cards, precise form of the documentation, geographic proximity, etc. Chronology can be a helpful way to arrange data, but it is not the only way.

So, we can put the chart on geographic scale instead, from the most southerly evidence (Naples) to the most northerly and westerly (Milan) -



This chart makes clear some points I tried to make in writing in my earliest post on the subject. The game appears simultaneously - as far as historical accuracy will allow - in Ferrara and Milan. Of course there is a perfectly clear historical scenario for this - the two cities were extremely close in 1440-1441.

But the chart also brings up something else - what else do Ferrara and Milan have in common? They were both aristocratic courts, and bulk of their surviving evidence concerns luxury trionfi cards. By contrast, the rest of the references on the chart are documentary references referring to viewings of the game or permissions for playing it - i.e. referring to a more common level of pack and game. We may call this "popular", so long as we remember that popular doesn't mean "dirt cheap" or "low", but just to distinguish it from "luxury" and "courtly".

So the chart essentially visually shows the separation of the cream from the milk, or the oil from the water, if you like.

If we distinguish the "cream" from the "milk", we get a chart like this (one Ferrara 1442 reference should be black - don't know why I forgot that) -



If we skim off the cream and leave only milk, we get this (again remembering the 1442 reference) -



The arrows show a propsed pattern of diffusion for the popular game, with the Lombary reference (Marcello's 1448 gifted pack) having an unknown provenance.

This chart shows Marcello's gift as part of the diffusion (diffusion meaning the game was known and played in a place, not just that someone mentioned it) -



Either scenario is plausible. The reason the arrows point to Bologna-Florence is drawing backwards across the pattern of the data to a plausible place of origin - it has to be before 1442 because we know Tarot existed by then, and the earliest hint of a popular product, Marchione Burdochio, is 1442. So it points to the axis of Bologna-Florence, and the A type sequence and iconography.

If we put all of the evidence back together, cream on top of milk -



we have a plausible theory of transmission and development of the two kinds of trionfi, popular and luxury. The game of Triumphs was invented in the lat 1430s in either Bologna or Florence, among the intelligentsia who acted as courtiers and other functions in the courtly world, and the courts of Ferrara and Milan quickly took it up. They made luxurious versions according to their taste - the blue dotted lines show the straight pattern in these two courts. Mantua's reference says the physician had a pack "gilded in the Florentine manner", which means his pack was also luxurious (and incidentally shows the audience for Florentine cards like the Charles VI were not necessarily nobility or "first citizens" like the Medici).

The pattern of diffusion of the popular game is more spotty, as is to be expected, but it remains clear that the pattern points towards the Bologna-Florence axis, A-type, southern type.

The reason Ferrara is not preferable to Bologna-Florence is that the popular deck - Marchione's - already existed by 1442, and was presumably made in Bologna. If invented in Ferrara as a luxury item, that would be too short a time for a popular production to begin in another city.

Secondly, the first documentation in Ferara - Februrary 10, 1442 - goes to the trouble to describe the pack in general terms - "the cups, swords, coins and batons, and all the figures, of 4 packs of carte da trionfi". This is never done again - suggesting it was a novelty.

Thirdly, Marchione Burdochio was in Ferrara selling fabric for Sagramoro to make banners and pennants for the funeral of Nicolo d'Este (died December 26, 1441). Sagramoro's four packs of February 10 had to have taken some time to make. Since we know, from the Este card workshop of Don Messore and Gherardo da Vicenza in the 1450s, that it took an average of 11 days to make a luxury pack of Triumph cards, we should give Sagramoro at least 40 days to paint his. That is precisely January 1, 1442, when Marchione Burdochio is in town. I speculate that it was then that Burdochio already had a Bolognese tarot with him, and the family became acquainted with the game, and suggested making a luxury version, giving the commission to Sagramoro.

This is also how they knew to go to Marchione seven months later, when they wanted a regular, ready-made pack of Triumph cards for the two boys Ercole and Sigismondo to play with.

I need time to respond well, but now I can advance some issues...


a) The first, congratulations by the study. I find it very seriously. We can question the results, but not the methodology and this is very important. Thanks for sharing. Great!

b)

I don't understand your objection. This entry is dated, 28 July 1442 - no contamination.

Its my inability to write in English, sorry. I try explain again. I dont question the date. No question the document itself. I only say that a single document is not enough. The example I was saying before: we cant date an entire stratum of a single document, a single coin, because it may have been many causes.

For example, probably, the cards arrived in Europe in the early fourteenth century. But the bans begin in 1370. So I think that the cards had arrived, or popularize, during the second half of the fourteenth century, although Johannes says arrived in 1300. Much fire yesterday = lots of smoke today (and vice versa).

This mean that I think the hypothesis of Bologna is incorrect ? NO. But neither is correct. It's an interesting idea, but need more studies. I think the scientific study of the tarot is very young. In Spain it has not even begun. Much remains to be investigated. In fact, only been studied in depth the case of Milan and Ferrara.

what happens with the University of Bologna? Which students were playing? What we know about the artisan production of Bologna? Very little. I have read this article Vitali:

http://www.associazioneletarot.it/Bolog ... 9_eng.aspx

And Vitali is really intelligent. But dont give many data.

Between Avignon 1505 and Bologna in early XIV century don't exists big temporal distance. Only 70 years. But the production of cards in the south of France has left many traces. Even in the language!

No, sorry, dear friend, for now, until we find more evidence, more documents, I can't consider right (or wrong) the hypothesis of Bologna. I'm skeptical, in the original sense of the term, ie, "suspend my opinion".

c) As you know, the geographical distance is not equal to economic or cultural distance. In the thirteenth century, for example, Venice and Genoa are near of Byzantium and far from Milan. Filippo Maria is close to Germany, but far from Rome.If we want establish a statistical pattern of expansion, we need compare more date: textile, food, etcetera.

Who are the ways of expansion cards? (In general, all games):

Soldiers (and the armies of condottieri were of all nationalities).
Relations between nobiliares houses, as they happen in a marriage.
Merchants.
Students and other intellectual channels.
... others.

What happen with Bologna arround 1420-1440?

Soldiers: Irrelevant.
Relations between nobiliares houses: Irrelevant.
Merchants: I dont know
Students and other intellectual channels > This is important for de Bologna hipotesys. What we know about students of Bologna? Which play? I dont know.


d)

But really - what makes you think that a Bolognese cardmaker wouldn't be making cards for a local market as well?

I dont know whats happen. I said this as an example of a single document is not enough. It may result from many causes.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:

Ferentino ... Orbetello ... Brescia / Domodossola ... Recanati

For Ferentino, Orbetello, Brescia / Domodossola I've nothing, for Recanati I've only the following provisionally note:

Document 36b
Recanati ca. 1480

For the moment we've only the information from Thierry Depaulis, that there is a Trionfi note in the following source

Source: "Leopardi, Monaldo e Vuoli, Romeo, Annali di Recanati con le leggi e i costumi degli antichi recanatesi, inoltre Memorie di Loreto, opera del conte Monaldo Leopardi". 1945, Varese: Tip. Varesi. 2 v. in 1. [A cura di Romeo Vuoli. port.]

The dot for Ferrara ca. 1478 I don't understand, also I think, that I don't know the dot Lombardy 1482, perhaps also others not from Lombardy.

I'm not sure, if I understand the 3 dots in 70's of Florence. Are this decks sold to Rome?

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:The reason Ferrara is not preferable to Bologna-Florence is that the popular deck - Marchione's - already existed by 1442, and was presumably made in Bologna. If invented in Ferrara as a luxury item, that would be too short a time for a popular production to begin in another city.

Secondly, the first documentation in Ferara - Februrary 10, 1442 - goes to the trouble to describe the pack in general terms - "the cups, swords, coins and batons, and all the figures, of 4 packs of carte da trionfi". This is never done again - suggesting it was a novelty.

Thirdly, Marchione Burdochio was in Ferrara selling fabric for Sagramoro to make banners and pennants for the funeral of Nicolo d'Este (died December 26, 1441). Sagramoro's four packs of February 10 had to have taken some time to make. Since we know, from the Este card workshop of Don Messore and Gherardo da Vicenza in the 1450s, that it took an average of 11 days to make a luxury pack of Triumph cards, we should give Sagramoro at least 40 days to paint his. That is precisely January 1, 1442, when Marchione Burdochio is in town. I speculate that it was then that Burdochio already had a Bolognese tarot with him, and the family became acquainted with the game, and suggested making a luxury version, giving the commission to Sagramoro.

This is also how they knew to go to Marchione seven months later, when they wanted a regular, ready-made pack of Triumph cards for the two boys Ercole and Sigismondo to play with.

Sagramoro got the most recorded Ferrarese commissions, though not the commissions for "high class art", but the usual with lots of repeating processes, especially heraldic, which was often used.
Playing cards belonged to his repertoire already in 1422, and he had variously opportunity for similar commissions for the court.

It seems probable, that Sagramoro had a workshop or at least was able to organize helpers, if greater commissions demanded it. Also it seems probable, that Sagramoro was not totally dependent on commissions of the court, so that he possibly also made playing cards for other persons in Ferrara or even exported them.

It's a good question, if the assumed 11 days per deck, justified by the calculation of the data of Ferrarese documents in the year 1454 (which relate to other artists instead of Sagramoro) allow a comparison with the usual production time of Sagramoro.

What can we conclude about the year 1454? Borso invited other foreign artists for the production, which had to live at the court ... why? What's the reason o this seril production?
One point: It's the time of the peace of Lodi (9th of April). Ferrara had always been engaged in peace negotiations in the Milanese-Venetian war, so perhaps Borso felt responsible (or saw the good chance of a public demonstration of his own political weight) to give the opportunity some glamor with the connected detail of a Trionfi card production (the production took place 1 February to 20 April, so started already before the peace of Lodi, but Borso as a wise politician might have seen the peace arriving before).
Don Messore and Giovanni Cagnolo, called "his helper", were foreign to Ferrara ... the reason to chose foreign artists might have been, that these persons knew something, which Sagramoro possibly didn't know, for instance about details of foreign heraldic.
Sagramoro was predestined to paint Ferrarese playing cards, cause he was the specialist in Ferrarese heraldic, that's more or less obvious.

The cards produced in 1454 by the foreign artists were "high class" cards, likely gilded in contrast to the cards which were made for Leonello in 1442, which likely were not gilded (one can recognize this only in the difference of the paid price). The fabrication of gilded cards likely took more time than the usual type.

All these observations make it difficult to conclude too much of the short distance in time between 1st of January till 10th of February 1442.

Huck wrote: Ferentino ... Orbetello ... Brescia / Domodossola ... Recanati

For Ferentino, Orbetello, Brescia / Domodossola I've nothing, for Recanati I've only the following provisionally note:

Document 36b
Recanati ca. 1480

For the moment we've only the information from Thierry Depaulis, that there is a Trionfi note in the following source

Source: "Leopardi, Monaldo e Vuoli, Romeo, Annali di Recanati con le leggi e i costumi degli antichi recanatesi, inoltre Memorie di Loreto, opera del conte Monaldo Leopardi". 1945, Varese: Tip. Varesi. 2 v. in 1. [A cura di Romeo Vuoli. port.]

The dot for Ferrara ca. 1478 I don't understand, also I think, that I don't know the dot Lombardy 1482, perhaps also others not from Lombardy.

I'm not sure, if I understand the 3 dots in 70's of Florence. Are this decks sold to Rome?

Those are all Thierry's additions to my chart - I don't know them all. I assume they are statutes naming the game as permissible. I seem to remember at least one of the later Florentine references being a permission (after the 1463 reference).

He also grouped categories - creating "Lombardy", "Latium" and "Marches".

Hi Marcos,

mmfilesi wrote:I try explain again. I dont question the date. No question the document itself. I only say that a single document is not enough. The example I was saying before: we cant date an entire stratum of a single document, a single coin, because it may have been many causes.

For example, probably, the cards arrived in Europe in the early fourteenth century. But the bans begin in 1370. So I think that the cards had arrived, or popularize, during the second half of the fourteenth century, although Johannes says arrived in 1300. Much fire yesterday = lots of smoke today (and vice versa).

This mean that I think the hypothesis of Bologna is incorrect ? NO. But neither is correct. It's an interesting idea, but need more studies. I think the scientific study of the tarot is very young. In Spain it has not even begun. Much remains to be investigated. In fact, only been studied in depth the case of Milan and Ferrara.

I'm not trying to convince you of a Bolognese invention scenario here. My aim was to skim the cream off - the luxury packs and references to luxury packs - and show the "milk" underneath - the common game, which should be the standard that the courtly players adapted to their tastes for luxurious items.

Who played it? The professional elite (that the courts had to employ) - lawyers, doctors, military officers.

Military officers/politicians - Jacopo Antonio Marcello (Milan-Monselice, 1448-1449).
Diplomats - Scipio Carafa (Milan, 1448).
Jurists - Ugo Trotti (Ferrara, 1456).
Physicians - Francesco Acerbi (Mantua, <1465).

The game was also played in public, as evidenced by the permissions of Florence (1450, 1463 etc.). It was sold retail - Marchione Burdochio, Francesco Sforza's request (1450). Marcello also knows of card makers, where he goes to look for a better pack than the first he was given in 1448.

These are the tip of iceberg showing the existence of the standard, popular game. It redresses the bias of history towards the well-preserved evidence of Milan and Ferrara.

Marchione's text is not "isolated" in this context - it is the earliest evidence of the popular game of Triumphs.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: Who played it? The professional elite (that the courts had to employ) - lawyers, doctors, military officers.

Military officers/politicians - Jacopo Antonio Marcello (Milan-Monselice, 1448-1449).
Diplomats - Scipio Carafa (Milan, 1448).
Jurists - Ugo Trotti (Ferrara, 1456).
Physicians - Francesco Acerbi (Mantua, <1465).

Jacopo Antonio had close contact to Sforza already at the time of the wedding 1441, so he naturally knew Trionfi cards.

Scipio Caraffa in 1449 (!) didn't know Trionfi cards, when he saw them.

Ugo Trotti defended Ferrarese "games of skill" against attacks, likely from Padova and the general anti-cards movement by Capristanus in Germany. The words about cards take 3 sentences, the whole text has about 32 pages or so. Likely he had gotten a commission from Borso for this text.

Francesco Acerbi was not a poor man ...



... as he also had other objects of art.
I found this snippet here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=7rifAA ... a&lr=&cd=1