Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: 14 Mar 2020, 17:49
The
Prohemium begins with a justification for playing a game that “many say is childish and lacking sufficient maturity” (
ludus puerile … et parum maturitatis habere). Decembrio says Filippo Maria loved such games “from his youth” (
ab adolescentia), and Marziano anticipates (or reflects) criticism of Filippo Maria's love of card games being childish and immature. Can this suggest a date as early as 1412 for the book? It would seem that Filippo Maria's rapid reconquest of the Milanese ….
Interesting, but forces me to abandon one theory (deck was c. 1418 for Agnese del Maino, or “Mayno” per the T. Stemmario) for a relatively recent idea that Marziano was influenced by Christine de Pizan, particularly her
L'Épistre de Othéa a Hector ("Letter of Othea to Hector"; hereafter simply Othéa). There are several reasons for this, but the primary one would tie into your “youth” theory, Mariano’s deck being an illuminated-only “mirror for princes,” exactly as Othéa was for Louis of Orléans, the brother of the mad King Charles VI, and seen as the potential regent of France at court until he was murdered in 1407. Othéa, specifically equated to Prudence by Pizan, instructs Hector of Troy (whose son was the putative founder of France) in the history of the virtues, classical gods and heroes, all amply illuminated. After Louis’s assassination, Pizan continued to produce luxury editions of Othéa between 1408 and 1415 (albeit with an emphasis on different persons). These dates perfectly overlap with your new proposed date for Marziano (i.e., Pizan was “in circulation”/relevant).
First of all,
what of the cultural interchange between the Valois and Visconti courts? The marriages between the courts are of course well known: Isabella, the youngest daughter of King John II of France, married Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the first duke of Milan, and had Valentina. Valentina Visconti, in turn, married Louis Duke of Orléans, the younger brother of said mad King Charles VI of France. Their son, Charles of Orléans (1394 –1465) was Duke of Orléans from 1407, following the murder of his father (on the order of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. The son Charles, sometimes championed for the throne although spending much of his life as an English prisoner following his capture at Agincourt in 1415, proudly showed his familial connection to the Visconti in his own personal
blasone, as in this post-mortem recognition of him in the Statutes, Ordinances and armorial of the Order of the Golden Fleece:
A French
and Imperial connection is found in the mad King Charles VI’s wife, Isabeau of Bavaria (c. 1370 – 24 September 1435; queen of France between 1385 and 1422). She was born into the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach, but whose mother was Taddea Visconti, eldest child of Bernabò Visconti. Pizan also dedicated works to her, so was prominent throughout the Valois courts, except perhaps to the English-leaning Duke of Burgundy, who had murdered the dedicatee of Othéa.
More specifically regarding Pizan and Milan, it should be noted that Gian Galeazzo himself invited her to Milan (she being Italian, an invite “home” while building yet another bridge to the Valois). In her own words (the autobiographical
Avision, c. 1405):
Thus, the first Duke of Milan in Lombardy heard of me, perhaps in a way more flattering than I deserve, and offered me a generous lifetime income if I would come live in his land. This can be verified by several nobles from that country who served as ambassadors in this regard. (Pizan, The Writings of Christine de Pizan, ed. C.C. Willard, 1993: 20).
In the other direction, consider the Milanese humanist who entered the French court, c. 1390, an Ambrogio dei Migli (Ambrosius of Miliis), who obtained the post of secretary to the Duke of Orleans. Although we are used to discussing Gian Galeazzo’s famous Visconti genealogy purely in local Milanese terms (a version is also depicted in the Visconti Hours leaf 57v, painted for Filippo by Belbello:
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GQj03avQWq8/ ... ilippo.JPG ), consider the recontextualization here in terms of its shared use with the Valois via Migli:
For example, Pietro da Castelletto, writing in in 1402 [the famous Besozzo Eulogie], supplied a family tree for Gian Galeazzo Visconti, father-in-law of Louis of Orleans. In one manuscript version, illuminators added painted roundels with inscriptions which gave visual form to the text, which traced Gian Galeazzo’s lineage though Troy back to the gods Jupiter, Anchises and Venus. Around the same time, Ambrogio Miglo, secretary of Louis of Orleans, wrote two poems that similarly bestowed a divine genealogy on Louis. According to Migli, Louis descended from specific gods and goddesses, from whom he acquired different virtues. (Sandra Hindman, Christine de Pizan's "Epistre Othéa": Painting and Politics at the Court of Charles VI, 1986: 104)
To the point: the Visconti genealogy in the
Eulogie and Marziano’s deck don’t just happen to share the same artist, Besozzo, they are part and parcel of the same “ethnogenic” project (Seznec’s term – reread his chapter one in his
Survival of the Pagan Gods which deals with euhemerism), that both the Valois and Visconti courts shared. Put another way, the young Duke Filippo, like the Duke of Orleans whose duchess-wife was Filippo’s half-sister, was being informed of the nature of the pagan gods and Trojan heroes that the Visconti were descended from, and at the same time being encouraged to engage in their erotic/genetic past-time and conceive an heir – the surest way to put a new reign on solid footing (especially with the looming succession crisis in France casting a pall over that ally).
Cupido is not just the lowest appendage to Marziano’s deck, but the key to the deck as an illumination of the gods/goddesses past-times of lovemaking (with appropriate Christian chaste refusals to which), generation and subsequent claims to "a bon droit"/rulership. All in a far off Homeric age when the gods consorted with humans. Consider that thesis in the light of this
ballade from Pizan:
The gods and goddesses… / they left Olympus for some mate / of lowly earth, in their descent / Impetuous to participate / in earthly joys, with quick consent / Embracing them, indifferent / to all costs of all such zeal achieved / if ancient fables be believed.
Delights of love could subjugate / Enchantress and nymph; immortals spent / Time, strength and wealth moderate / On maids and shepherds, earthward went / Bestowing boons munificent / on those whose favor they received / If ancient fables be believed.
So ladies, lords, submit, assent / to love, nor seek to be reprieved / from service proved so excellent / if ancient fables be believed.
(Ballade XXII, translation from The Writings of Christine de Pizan, ed. C.C. Willard, 1993: 42-43)
The very ambiguous emphasis on “ancient fables” is code for a learned euhemeristic understanding, which is also at the center of Marziano’s own explication of the gods/heroes in his prologue (again, Seznec’s insights are key here).
Although the god of love is featured throughout Pizan’s works (especially due to the literary quarrel over the
Roman de la Rose, in which Migli also participated), the god of love is featured in Pizan’s first long poem
Epistre au Dieu d'Amours (1399) which preceded the
Othea (1400) by just a year. Below is from the Book of the Queen (for Isabeau), a compendium of Pizan’s works, inclusive of
Othea (now Harley MS 4431); this particular illumination is the God of Love presenting a letter to a messenger, which also contains the rules and regulations of an Order established by the god:
The description of Cupid in Marziano throws one off this scent, as his description of the god has him gird with hearts, a description taken from the early Trecento Francesco Barberino’s
Documenti d'amore; but perhaps that is merely the fruit of Marziano’s own modest research – in a Boccaccio-genealogical sense - taken from one of the oldest documents he could find for this pivotal god (surely he submitted something to Filippo to which he thought he contributed something novel).
Ultimately, the influence of Pizan seemed to be long-lasting in Milan, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere in my "Ancona/CY World post", where the nimbus cloud/children of the planets-gods theme in Othea is clearly the closest precedent to the CY "world" (see below again: Venus/"children", Mercury/"children", CY "world" =
Fama of a prudent ruler, like Othea's Hector - Sforza here, inheriting the Visconti fief of Cremona and the family name itself,
VICECOMES). The above provides the basis for that cultural diffusion.
Below is Pizan presenting her work "Othea" to the Duke of Orleans and Othea-Prudence herself presenting her instructional letter to Hector, the historical exemplar for all kings of France. The presumption, again, was this duke would succeed his brother, the mad King Charles VI; the relevance here is Prudence in a nimbus above the would-be ruler. But for Sforza, who had already made a name for himself as the Count of Ancona, prudence's lessons were already enacted (again, see his 1441 Pisanello medal with the sword and books = he already possesses prudence), therefore it is the fame of his self-evident prudence being proclaimed (Visconti wasn't marrying off his only child to a nobody after all). In the words of Pizan's preface to her autobiographical Vision (in third person), "she was transported....by the cry of
Fama, which is to say by the cry of the holy prophets, to the law of God in which all beautiful things are contained" (and naturally there is a "Judgement" trump in the CY).
Phaeded