Filelfo's Odes reflecting Marziano?
Posted: 04 Jun 2022, 22:40
[Mainly for Ross but instead of that other thread in the Unicorn terrace keeping this in the main Marziano thread]
Ross,
I can see why you are intrigued with Brunelleschi in finding a literate person at the top of the artist profession, being in the right places (Florence and Milan) and time, but your research has necessarily reached a dead end unless you can find letters from Brunelleschi somewhere, but otherwise that thesis rests on a meagre foundation.
If the criteria is a Florence and Milan connection, there is no better candidate than Filelfo, and of course he's not an artist but a humanist in the highest circles of either city - and arguably, the top humanist in either city. I'm not proposing him for the ur-tarot (for which I suggest Bruni) but for an expanded ur-tarot into the PMB, c. 1451. But let's put that aside and focus on knowledge of the Marziano deck...
You imagine Brunelleschi playing a hand of the Marziano deck with Filippo, but Filelfo was on much more intimate terms with Filippo and for a longer period of course. Filelfo disparages gaming (dice and board games at least) in his Odes, so not sure about playing a hand with Filippo, but would certainly have taken an interest in the Tractatus. I can't rule Filelfo out from augmenting the ur-trionfi, naturally, but certainly not as a means to please card-playing public (or playing it himself) but rather to please his new patron, Sforza, on his favorite subject: the virtues or just plain Virtue (recurring themes in the Odes are Virtue overcoming Fortune - the Ambrosian Republic mob worships the latter - which also raise the deserving to heaven). The Marziano was acquired outside of Milan in 1449 and Marcello made a copy; presumably the original stayed in the hands of Sforza and his wife Bianca. Once Milan fell the neighboring year, and Filelfo was now welcomed into their court, and the humanist would have presumably been familiar with it. How can we fathom that?
One of the several oddities of Marziano's treatise is his emphasis on the Gigantomachy - hardly a popular subject of the illuminations for the Ovide Moralisé, for instance. For the very brief entries for each of the 16 heroum it is therefore a bit surprising to read of three references to the Giants, twice in Jove and once in Apollo (from your older on-line translation):
If the year is 1412 then the rebel "Giants" context is rival claimants to the throne of the Duchy that Filippo is fending off (e.g., rival Ettore Visconti dies in Jan. 1413).
Compare now Filelfo's Odes, contemporary to the siege and fall of Milan and shortly thereafter , c. 1449-1452. Filelfo repeatedly refers to Filippo Visconti in Odes written to Inigo d’Avalos, King Alfonso, Carlo Gonzaga, etc. to remind them of the hospitality and honors Filippo paid them, and that F. Sforza is his son-in-law (in the context of stopping the ensuing war following the fall of Milan, that only ended with the Peace of Lodi in 1454). In the introduction of the Odes dedicated to Sforza, Filelfo mentions that “princes, kings, and worldly leaders follow him [Delian Apollo]." Typically the "Children of Jupiter" are worldly leaders, but in Visconti Milan - where the radiate sun (sometimes with dove) became the imprese - Apollo was closely associated with leaders; that much is made much more clear in the c. 1430 Semideus written to go along with a Sol quadriga made for Filippo (whether the Semideus is an expansion on Marziano or a novelty is open to debate). With those prefatory comments, on to the Odes:
All of these Odes were written immediately after the fall of Milan in 1450 or shortly thereafter as war with Naples and Venice heated up in 1451-2 (no sign of the Peace of Lodi in any of them). The c. 1450 context, paralleling that of 1412, is a new Duke of Milan fending off rival claimants to the duchy (in that latter case, any mob-associated adherents to the Ambrosian Republic), with the enemy being classified as the mythical Giants. The point being if Francesco and Bianca Sforza had the Marziano back in their possession in 1449 and Filelfo working for them in 1450 (he being previously stranded in the besieged city) and wanted something like the Marziano produced for them, then I don't think that the language in the Odes paralleling the Marziano treatise is a coincidence. Not that Filelfo probably didn't already know it (Filippo personally commissioned him to write a commentary on Petrarch's canzoniere, a life of John the Baptist, etc.), but it has now become an item of keen interest to his new patrons. And Filelfo genuinely seems to think highly of Filippo or he could have stopped speaking well of him after he was dead. So if the ur-tarot was augmented in c. 1451, with the spurring item being the Marziano, then I think Filelfo would have been the person commissioned to provide a new "treatise" of sorts - at least a descriptive letter detailing each trump as Marziano's treatise does. Hence Filelfo's trip to where the cards were painted by Bembo's studio in Cremona in 1451....
Phaeded
Ross,
I can see why you are intrigued with Brunelleschi in finding a literate person at the top of the artist profession, being in the right places (Florence and Milan) and time, but your research has necessarily reached a dead end unless you can find letters from Brunelleschi somewhere, but otherwise that thesis rests on a meagre foundation.
If the criteria is a Florence and Milan connection, there is no better candidate than Filelfo, and of course he's not an artist but a humanist in the highest circles of either city - and arguably, the top humanist in either city. I'm not proposing him for the ur-tarot (for which I suggest Bruni) but for an expanded ur-tarot into the PMB, c. 1451. But let's put that aside and focus on knowledge of the Marziano deck...
You imagine Brunelleschi playing a hand of the Marziano deck with Filippo, but Filelfo was on much more intimate terms with Filippo and for a longer period of course. Filelfo disparages gaming (dice and board games at least) in his Odes, so not sure about playing a hand with Filippo, but would certainly have taken an interest in the Tractatus. I can't rule Filelfo out from augmenting the ur-trionfi, naturally, but certainly not as a means to please card-playing public (or playing it himself) but rather to please his new patron, Sforza, on his favorite subject: the virtues or just plain Virtue (recurring themes in the Odes are Virtue overcoming Fortune - the Ambrosian Republic mob worships the latter - which also raise the deserving to heaven). The Marziano was acquired outside of Milan in 1449 and Marcello made a copy; presumably the original stayed in the hands of Sforza and his wife Bianca. Once Milan fell the neighboring year, and Filelfo was now welcomed into their court, and the humanist would have presumably been familiar with it. How can we fathom that?
One of the several oddities of Marziano's treatise is his emphasis on the Gigantomachy - hardly a popular subject of the illuminations for the Ovide Moralisé, for instance. For the very brief entries for each of the 16 heroum it is therefore a bit surprising to read of three references to the Giants, twice in Jove and once in Apollo (from your older on-line translation):
JOVE
... The inventor of wars, he overcame the Giants, mockers of the gods, and afflicted them with onerous punishment. Therefore, on account of his outstanding virtue and great merits, the former age venerated him as a god. And he was called Good Jove, and temples were dedicated to him, to the perpetual memory of his glory.... Truly in the lower part, on the right side, appears a burning star like Mars; if in mine it shines maximally with frightful contempt when deployed so that the republic may be preserved, how much brighter in Jupiter, who for the sake of sacred worship happily defeated the blaspheming Giants by war!
APOLLO
APOLLO SHINING PHOEBUS, GLORY OF THE STARS, WHO IS SURROUNDED BY THE CHORUS OF THE PIERIDES [a somewhat obscure nickname for the 9 Muses], HOLY HELICON and mount Parnassus you adorn. Add yourself as fifth to the number of the gods. This one, the most desirous of glory, combined arms with wisdom and letters. There would seem to be nothing lacking to him regarding these two most excellent kinds of praise: namely by his arrows he did away with the Python, a serpent of enormous size and among the most dangerous in the lands; and he assisted Jupiter with amazing strength in the war with the Giants: thus we discover Apollo....his name being counted among the highest praises of these divine prophets, since among poets and victorious leaders, his gift of the laurel is always green....
If the year is 1412 then the rebel "Giants" context is rival claimants to the throne of the Duchy that Filippo is fending off (e.g., rival Ettore Visconti dies in Jan. 1413).
Compare now Filelfo's Odes, contemporary to the siege and fall of Milan and shortly thereafter , c. 1449-1452. Filelfo repeatedly refers to Filippo Visconti in Odes written to Inigo d’Avalos, King Alfonso, Carlo Gonzaga, etc. to remind them of the hospitality and honors Filippo paid them, and that F. Sforza is his son-in-law (in the context of stopping the ensuing war following the fall of Milan, that only ended with the Peace of Lodi in 1454). In the introduction of the Odes dedicated to Sforza, Filelfo mentions that “princes, kings, and worldly leaders follow him [Delian Apollo]." Typically the "Children of Jupiter" are worldly leaders, but in Visconti Milan - where the radiate sun (sometimes with dove) became the imprese - Apollo was closely associated with leaders; that much is made much more clear in the c. 1430 Semideus written to go along with a Sol quadriga made for Filippo (whether the Semideus is an expansion on Marziano or a novelty is open to debate). With those prefatory comments, on to the Odes:
Ode I.2.5-6 9 (to Maemo, a fellow humanist): “When Duke Filippo left this city for the lofty citadels, Pluto soon sent the frightful Giants to our wretched land…”; and a little later in the same Ode, 1.2.26-30: “I shall join now the serious men of peace. I have returned to Apollo and the sacred Muses who inhabit the holy slopes of highest Parnassus amid springs and laurels dripping with honey.” (Tr. D. Robins, 2009: 27 and 30)
[Apollo, on Parnassus on both Marziano and the Ode, is thus an antidote to the Giants, which in Filelfo is the mob rule, which Sforza replaced]
Ode III.4.1-9 to 'Ambrogio' (has to be A. Trivulzio, who led the faction initially barring Sforza’s ingresso into Milan until better surrender terms could be arranged): “Fierce Mars and savage Famine, who would send even the hard giants to dark Hades and subdue grim Dis, have finally gone from our lands, Ambrogio, to the remote Triones. For the venerable hero, Francesco Sforza, who was sent to us from heaven with favorable omens, has destroyed the mad tyrants [mob, or at least its 3 plebian leaders called out in a different ode] and brought peace and relief to the weary.” (ibid, 179-181)
Ode IV.4.4-5 (to Charles VII) “O fabled glory of our time, mirror of ancient heroes [heroum], offspring of the gods…” (ibid. 35).
[what is interesting here is the use of heroum, of which Filippo must have similarly regarded himself in the Semideus, and Marziano uses for the gods]
Ode IV.1-11 (for Bianca). "Flowering Pierian Thalia…The highest father of the gods upsets and tramples the happiness that was yours alone to magnify with song. Thundering on all sides, he lights up the sky with the arrows of the felled Giants who dared to scale the lofty mountains to shining Olympus.” (ibid 221)
[here we have both the more rare nickname of 'Pierian' for the Muses used by Marziano and a reference to felling the Giants]
same Bianca Ode IV.1.25-32. “What sin of ours, what criminal wrong could turn kindly heart and will against us, so that you, O greatest Jupiter, would suddenly kill us all with celestial lightning? The ungrateful plebs are punished because they failed to honor the deserving shade of the sublime and celebrated Duke Filippo with funeral rites.” (ibid 223)
[the implication is that Jupiter's scorching the "Giants"/mob in Milan is somewhat indiscriminate, but I would also note what I mention elsewhere that the solar mask being lifted to heaven in the PMB Sun trump is a belated corrective "funeral rite" for the Semideus Filippo.]
Ode IV.9.99-101 (to King Alfonso, begging for peace) “Why talk next about the power of Rome? Among the early kings, only Numa, who deserved to die well, can be seen as just.” (ibid 273)
[you'll recall our discussions about how/why Vesta got included in Marziano - Numa created their cult; interesting that Filelfo should have a similarly high opinion of Numa who is otherwise an obscure inclusion for this ode]
All of these Odes were written immediately after the fall of Milan in 1450 or shortly thereafter as war with Naples and Venice heated up in 1451-2 (no sign of the Peace of Lodi in any of them). The c. 1450 context, paralleling that of 1412, is a new Duke of Milan fending off rival claimants to the duchy (in that latter case, any mob-associated adherents to the Ambrosian Republic), with the enemy being classified as the mythical Giants. The point being if Francesco and Bianca Sforza had the Marziano back in their possession in 1449 and Filelfo working for them in 1450 (he being previously stranded in the besieged city) and wanted something like the Marziano produced for them, then I don't think that the language in the Odes paralleling the Marziano treatise is a coincidence. Not that Filelfo probably didn't already know it (Filippo personally commissioned him to write a commentary on Petrarch's canzoniere, a life of John the Baptist, etc.), but it has now become an item of keen interest to his new patrons. And Filelfo genuinely seems to think highly of Filippo or he could have stopped speaking well of him after he was dead. So if the ur-tarot was augmented in c. 1451, with the spurring item being the Marziano, then I think Filelfo would have been the person commissioned to provide a new "treatise" of sorts - at least a descriptive letter detailing each trump as Marziano's treatise does. Hence Filelfo's trip to where the cards were painted by Bembo's studio in Cremona in 1451....
Phaeded