Ross Caldwell wrote: 28 Aug 2023, 09:45
Phaeded wrote: All we can say for certain is the court cards were expanded, not the trumps (with the PMB representing a modification/expansion of the ur-tarot, IMO). I provided an explanation multiple times for the CY court cards, but in short: the Florentine love trump in the ur-tarot must have matched the Florentine "CVI"'s Love trump with 3 couples (Florence would never feature a single couple implying a royal wedding); Milan changed the love card to matrimonial considerations of a single couple with a low bed in the background of the tent for the required consummation. The original idea of the three couples was retained however in each suit, three females that could pair with three males. There is no imaginary rule stating the trumps had to match the number of cards in a suit. The CY is indeed idiosyncratic, but largely due to that change and particular iconographic changes relating to the Chariot and "World" which necessarily needed to reflect Visconti Milan.
Ah, the six courts are an innovation, but the theological virtues aren't. A couple falling in love doesn't have to imply a royal wedding, or a wedding at all. That is quite an acrobatic theory, that Filippo Maria transferred the three couples of the Charles VI-like Ur-Love to the court cards when he changed the Love card to show a marriage. You give him lots of creativity,
but not in the matter of the Three Theological virtues just being added to the standard trump sequence. I suppose you can pick and choose what you want.
Visconti did not invent making the suits male and female - his Württemberg relatives did via the Stuttgart deck: 2 suits of 3 males, 2 suits of 3 females; (deck somewhat matching the CY, which has 3 males and 3 females per suit, vs the 3 males or 3 females). Filippo's court merely adapted that notion with the the advent of the ur-tarot, the Florentine love card being compatible.
But again, in my theory the Theological virtues are not added to anything - they are original to the Florentine ur-tarot. They get
replaced in the PMB: Charity by the Pope, Hope by the antitype of hopelessness of the Hanged Man (precedent is Giotto), and Faith by
Ecclesia/'Popess'. By a sheer coincidence, none of these cards 'survives' in the CY....because they never existed there.
But let's get back to your opening central point of this thread's subject; you wrote:
What is important to me is that some of the same people, or at least the same sort of people, I believe, who invented the game of Triumphs, also designed the Florentine part of Alfonso's triumph, and perhaps the overall plan of it. So we may look for insights into how they conceived the triumph-idea for the context of the game's symbolic triumphal procession, by comparison with the triumph they designed for Alfonso's through Naples, since the latter is "speaking" in the various accounts, and we have no such speaking-explanation for carte da trionfi.
And what the Florentines speak of, just some 3 years after the ur-tarot, are SEVEN CANONICAL VIRTUES. I bring that up and instead you want to discuss Petrarch's 14 sub-virtues of Chastity which exist in artistic form nowhere. If you don't want to discuss the canonical virtues at Naples - what lesson is there to be learned from the Florentine contribution to Alfonso's triumph - Caesar???
Closer to home, on their
cassoni the same Florentine artisans feature plenty of classical triumphal processions (spoils, trophies, generals, etc.) but they also feature all seven virtues on cassoni (again, dal Ponte, et. al).
You might have at least countered that Justice is featured in Alfonso's triumph, while I've made a lot of hay out of Prudence being elevated (especially by Bruni) in Florence. Of course I'm going to say that's the Neapolitan inflection, in deference to Alfonso's needs as a king. But when we do find an abbreviated form of the virtues on a cassone,
specifically in connection with the triumphal proceedings of St. John's (see my Newbigin post above this one and her St. John's description translation at the bottom of this post), and all three theological virtues are present, guess which of the cardinals stands in for the rest of them?
Giovanni Francesco Toscani, panel of a cassone preserved in the Bargello Museum showing the procession of the Palii banners before the race before the St. John's baptistery (also where the conquered cities had to make their annual contributions to Florence - the location reeks of Florentine triumphal connotations). At each of the four corners, starting lower left and clockwise: praying Hope, Faith with chalice and cross, Charity with nursing child, and Prudence with mirror:
And why, pray tell, would the Theologicals get dropped with Pope Eugene living in the city since 1434? Makes zero sense.
Finally Goro Dati's description of the St. John's procession, roughly contemporary (c. 1420) to the cassone above:
Close by, around the ringhiera of
the Palazzo Vecchio, there are a
hundred processional banners or
more, on their poles, fastened with
iron rings: and the first are
those
of the major cities that pay tribute
to the Commune, such as Pisa,
Arezzo, Pistoia, Volterra, Cortona,
Lucignano, Castiglione Aretino,
and the lords of Poppi [revolted at Anghiari but defeated] and Piombino,
who are subject to the
Commune; and they are made of
velvet lined with fur or with silk
brocade, or else the rest are all
velvet or some other precious
cloth or taffeta edged with silk:
and they are marvellous to behold.
...
Then follow the processional
banners described above, carried
each one by a man on a horse
(some caparisoned in silk, some
not), each called by name: and
they go to make their offering at
the church [baptistery] of San Giovanni. And
these processional banners are
offered as the tribute of the cities
acquired by the Commune of
Florence and of their subject cities
from some time back
https://italian-renaissance-theatre.syd ... ovanni.pdf