Re: Collection "nec spe, nec metu"

32
Ross Caldwell wrote: 24 Mar 2023, 07:36 Hi Mike,

Alessandro Colleoni actually owned the entire deck of 75 cards. They aren't a family heirloom or anything. Antonio Maria Ambiveri (1727-1782; auxiliary bishop of Bergamo https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bambive.html ) left them to the Donati family, who then left them to Colleoni. So it is an accidental association of the names.

I've sent you Parravicino's 1903 article explaining it.
Long time Ross!

As always, I still harbor the hypothesis that Colleoni was given a "PMB" deck from Sforza. While its true Alessandro Colleoni did not originally own the deck, it seems absurd to posit the Ambiveri family as the original owners as well. We just don't know. But considering Bergamo was never in Sforza's control as duke of Milan, why would a deck be there if not via his one time most important lieutenant, now lord of Bergamo (under the auspices of Venice)?

I did find this interesting tidbit regarding the Ambiveri and a castle they held at some point near Bergamo, Lanzi alla Minella ; I'll give the English machine translation but link the original Italian for you:
Certainly the most famous of the Trescore castles, due to the historical events in which they were the protagonist, especially during the struggles between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. It has been the property of the Ghibelline Lanzi family since the 13th century, although at different times it temporarily passed to the Terzi and the Suardi: perhaps passing emperors were hosted here, if this was required for safety reasons.

With the decision of Venice in 1455, the fort fell into ruin: the peripheral structures were demolished, above all the dominant nucleus on the edge of the hill, with a large vaulted hall of which vestiges remain, the towers fell (one of them was the largest of all those in the country) and the curtains were lowered, until they became simple walls, the entrance portals and a few other walls remained standing.

The ancient church dedicated to the Archangel Michael no longer exists, while you can still read the coats of arms of the noble families who succeeded one another in the property, up to the Caccia, the Radici, the Ambiveri: each contributed its part to transforming the manor in a country house, with annexed buildings necessary for running a farm. It is currently a private residence.
http://www.asftrescore.it/Trescore/ville-palazzi.htm
The above information is a bit vague, but if the primary fortifications were destroyed (with apparently some surviving structure allowing a residence today) in 1455 and Venice gave Bergamo as a vassalage to Colleoni in that year (I believe the offer of the Bergamasque was floated as early as 1453 to sway him away from Sforza), then we have a very interesting if problematic connection between the two families; were the Ambiveri removed from the place or given the remains as allies? Any prominent Bergamo family ending up with the cards would be unsurprising, but one allied with Colleoni the most likely IMO.

I can't find images of any Ambiveri stemmi, but a "singular" version of the name - Ambivero - looks suspiciously like it was derived from Colleoni's (the lion head, alternating red/white, and testicles/"hearts"):

https://www.armoriale.it/wiki/Armoriale ... liane_(Am)

Image

https://www.armoriale.it/wiki/File:Coa_ ... o_AIAR.png

An elaborate version of Colleoni's stemma
Image

I suppose there is more on this family in Belotti.

Hope you are well,
Phaeded

Re: Collection "nec spe, nec metu"

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Phaeded wrote: 27 May 2023, 00:52
Long time Ross!
Indeed! Welcome back (?). Have you emerged from whatever non-Tarot rabbit-hole you were in, ready to join us again?
As always, I still harbor the hypothesis that Colleoni was given a "PMB" deck from Sforza. While its true Alessandro Colleoni did not originally own the deck, it seems absurd to posit the Ambiveri family as the original owners as well. We just don't know. But considering Bergamo was never in Sforza's control as duke of Milan, why would a deck be there if not via his one time most important lieutenant, now lord of Bergamo (under the auspices of Venice)?
Of course, I don't think anyone would posit that Ambiveri owned it since the 15th century. We just don't know how many hands it passed through from the 1450s to the 1700s.
Any prominent Bergamo family ending up with the cards would be unsurprising, but one allied with Colleoni the most likely IMO.
It's reasonable to suppose that it stayed in the Bergamo region for most of that time, even if it were made for the Bon family of Venice originally.
Hope you are well,
Phaeded
It's all Alberti these days. Brunelleschi led me to him. Quite a rich vein, I'm sure you can imagine.

Re: Collection "nec spe, nec metu"

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Ross Caldwell wrote: 27 May 2023, 10:12
Phaeded wrote: 27 May 2023, 00:52
Long time Ross!
Indeed! Welcome back (?). Have you emerged from whatever non-Tarot rabbit-hole you were in, ready to join us again?
....

It's all Alberti these days. Brunelleschi led me to him. Quite a rich vein, I'm sure you can imagine.

When you get lost in your own rabbit holes...and forget where you even started, bad. All of my old interests have bubbled up - I need to pick my poison and just finish off my research on one of them. The one I went down the furthest was the disputed authenticity of Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, especially with ramifications for aspects of Empedocles and Aristophanes (I do believe Aeschylus was the author, but that's not related to anything here; to say the scholarship on that subject is "dense" is putting it mildly). But I'll keep my eye on this place....

Alberti is clearly the most interesting person in the 15th century, but I don't think he'd ever do propaganda for a state, which is how I view trionfi (he was too busy satirizing everything; e.g., Momus; someone like Filelfo, OTOH, would gladly do that).

I'd had done quite a bit of research on Alberti's motto and winged eye impresa (most of it lost in a computer crash), and I'm not sure if you remember me having posted that the outline of his eagle's wings used in his medals and manuscripts was lifted from the Jupiter symbol in Siena: viewtopic.php?p=22292#p22292
http://forum.tarothistory.com/download/file.php?id=2380

Given Jupiter was a by-word for the Christian god among the humanist it clearly alludes to that, but something more (and the context for the eagle in Siena is a bird's eye view of Rome, so perhaps an eye on classical rebirth as well as the art of perspective in seeing things from a distance).

Image

On a medal reverse:
Image


The "something more" I believe is a double-entendre of sorts in a play on the words pupilla (eye pupil; as you know oculos/occhi is more common for eyes) and pupillus (orphan). The last is the name of a story in Book 1 from Alberti's Intercenales or 'Dinner Pieces' where Alberti says the story of Pupillus (Orphan) “warns us that from early youth we must steel ourselves against all of fortune’s vicissitudes” (Dinner Pieces, 15; Intercenales, “admonet, uti ab ineunte etate quibus casibus fortune sit assuefaciendum”). Yet the valiant orphan of the story, despite his virtue and mental fortitude, despairs over the justice of the gods and prays, “. . . let orphans find the whole world full of hatred, betrayal, enmity, misfortune, and misery” (Dinner Pieces, 18; Intercenales, 18: “sed contra an sint pupillis omnia plena odii, insidiarum, inimicitiarum, calamitatum et miserie”). I don't think there is an on-line version (my own camera phone copying long gone), but touched on in this article here (I essentially pasted n. 91 from page p. 108 above): https://www.academia.edu/1521921/Living ... lete_Text_

As a bastard, this was all all quite dear to Alberti, and the well worn virtue vs fate theme being front and center in "The Orphan". As for the motto - is the mind naturally alienated/orphaned before God and seeks to realize him via the active life ("what next?" and the wings), alloyed to a literal and metaphorical lofty perspective? Hard to ever say for certain here, but I don't think the close resemblance of pupilla and pupillus is a happy coincidence - it meant something to Alberti, considering both the impresa and story.

And at the risk of encouraging your Brunelleschi theory, you will note that architect undertook a major orphanage project, Ospedale degli Innocenti - the Foundling Hospital first constructed 1419–1427 under Brunelleschi's direct supervision. The date of the Intercenales was 1424-1439, so would have been topical for Alberti given this major urban project in Florence (it still would have been new when Alberti got there and he would have undoubtedly been keenly aware of all of Brunelleschi's projects at all events).

Phaeded

Re: Collection "nec spe, nec metu"

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Phaeded wrote: 27 May 2023, 17:57
Ross Caldwell wrote: 27 May 2023, 10:12
Phaeded wrote: 27 May 2023, 00:52
Long time Ross!
Indeed! Welcome back (?). Have you emerged from whatever non-Tarot rabbit-hole you were in, ready to join us again?
....

It's all Alberti these days. Brunelleschi led me to him. Quite a rich vein, I'm sure you can imagine.

When you get lost in your own rabbit holes...and forget where you even started, bad. All of my old interests have bubbled up - I need to pick my poison and just finish off my research on one of them. The one I went down the furthest was the disputed authenticity of Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, especially with ramifications for aspects of Empedocles and Aristophanes (I do believe Aeschylus was the author, but that's not related to anything here; to say the scholarship on that subject is "dense" is putting it mildly). But I'll keep my eye on this place....
Ah, that's certainly a rabbit hole! For what it's worth, Euripides is my guy and The Bacchae is my play. No dispute about the authorship, that I am aware of. It wouldn't matter anyway for the value of the play.

On Alberti, there's too much to say. By "Brunelleschi led me to him," I mean that Alberti dedicated the first, vernacular version of De Pictura to Brunelleschi, a month before the dedication of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, and I learned that they had a mutual, deep, friendship with Toscanelli. The implications of those facts finally got through to me after Huck and I discussed the Certame Coronario back in March viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2323&start=10 (I see you posted in that thread), and I began to study Alberti after that. First his poetry, then everything.

Re: Collection "nec spe, nec metu"

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Huck in 2009 ....
... ... .-) ... did you read meanwhile the Philodoxus of Alberti?
search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keyw ... s&start=30

1424 Philodoxus of Alberti, with Trionfi notes
1425 Trionfo of Filippo Maria Visconti, birth of Bianca Maria Visconti at March 31
1423 Trionfo of Alfonso d'Aragon, later King of Naples, in Naples
1420 September 6 : Alfonso of Aragon becomes declared heir of Naples by Queen Johanna II
1423 : ? Alfonso's Trionfo show with an artificial elephant
1423 : July 1 : Johanna negates the approach of Alfonso
1423 : September 14 or 1424 : October 21 : Louis of Anjou becomes heir
(dates according https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-udk/frontdo ... hirmer.pdf )

28 July 1424
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Zagonara, Carlo Malatesta becomes prisoner guest in Abiategrasso, The mother of Bianca Maria is pregnant in Abiategrasso in the first month.

Image


Church and State in Spanish Italy: Rituals and Legitimacy in the Kingdom of Naples
by Céline Dauverd
Cambridge University Press, 26.03.2020 - 310 Seiten
https://books.google.de/books?id=4HzUDw ... 23&f=false
The author has "Easter 1423" for the date of the Trionfo show with "elephant"

I remember, that we discussed the elephant in relation to the oldest Trionfi note 1440 with Malatesta elephant and the elephant in the in the letter of Matteo de Pasti

Image
Chaucer ... Sire Thopas and ye gret Geaunt Oliphaunt in the Canterbury Tales
https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/ima ... t-oliphant

Well, one shouldn't overlook, that the elephant had been occasionally a chess figure.

Image


http://www.chess-museum.com/cyclopes-el ... lnder.html
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: Collection "nec spe, nec metu"

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Phaeded wrote: 27 May 2023, 17:57 Alberti is clearly the most interesting person in the 15th century, but I don't think he'd ever do propaganda for a state, which is how I view trionfi (he was too busy satirizing everything; e.g., Momus; someone like Filelfo, OTOH, would gladly do that).
I can't change your point of view, but if your preconceptions of Alberti are the reason, I'd urge you to take another look and go deeper.

Alberti's four most substantial works have been translated into English.

The Family in Renaissance Florence, translation and introduction by Renée Neu Watkins, University of South Carolina Press, 1969 - contains I Libri della famiglia (four books) (Watkins is also the author of an essay on the winged eye emblem and Alberti's adopted name “Leo,”: see “L. B. Alberti's Emblem, the Winged Eye, and His Name, Leo”, in Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 9. Bd., H. 3/4 (Nov., 1960), pp. 256-258. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27652096 ; note that her sources have misled her in describing what appears in the manuscript of the volgare "De pictura" of 1436 – it doesn't show “an emblematic eagle” but the winged eye itself with the motto QVID TVM https://archive.org/details/fondo-nazio ... 5/mode/2up ; the other manuscript, the Philodoxeos fabula dedicated to Leonello d'Este, has the winged eye, in color! https://edl.cultura.gov.it/item/oz5dk40rly )
Image
Image
You can borrow this book at archive.org and screen grab the pages - https://archive.org/details/familyinren ... 7/mode/2up

Dinner Pieces, translation, introduction, and notes by David Marsh, The Renaissance Society of America, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987 - contains all of the recognized Intercenales. This book is hard to find, out of print. Email me.

On the Art of Building in Ten Books, translation and notes by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor, MIT Press, 1988 (fourth printing in 1992 is the latest I believe) - contains De re aedificatioria. Out of print, but not hard to find. Ditto.

Momus – Latin text and translation, Sarah Knight and Virginia Brown, Harvard University Press, I Tatti Renaissance Library, 2003. Still in print.

Others -

Philodoxeos fabula - “The Play of Philodoxus,” edition and translation by Gary R. Grund, in Humanist Comedies, Harvard University Press, I Tatti Renaissance Library, 2005, pp. 70-169. Still in print.

The Mathematical Works of Leon Battista Alberti, translations and commentaries by Kim Williams, Lionel March, and Stephen R. Wassell, Birkhäuser/Springer Basel AG, 2010 - contains Ex ludis rerum mathematicarum, Elementi di pittura/Elementi pitturae, De componendis cyfris, De lunularum quadratura (the first, Ex ludis... they suggest “Cool things you can do with mathematics” as the most appropriate title to the intention and tone, although they think it will sound too flippant so don't use it; Elements of Painting, On Writing in Ciphers, On Squaring the Lune). No longer in print, but available on Kindle.

On Painting : a new translation and critical edition, translated by Rocco Sinisgalli, Cambridge University Press, 2011 - contains De pictura. Ditto on availability.

Leon Battista Alberti : Biographical and Autobiographical Writings, edition and translation by Martin McLaughlin, Harvard University Press, The I Tatti Renaissance Library, 2023 - contains De commodis litterarum atque incommodis, Vita Sancti Potiti, Canis, Vita, Musca (On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Literature, The Life of St. Potitus, My Dog, My Life, The Fly) Forthcoming -
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php ... 0674292680

Re: Collection "nec spe, nec metu"

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An interesting meeting of Marziano and Alberti occurs in the Queriniana Library (Brescia) miscellany that contains Marziano's Tractatus de deificatione sexdecim heroum. Immediately following Marziano's final chapter, Cupid, is Alberti's Intercenalis "Virtus." The copyist did not note the author of either, and they seem to be parts of the same text. The 16th century (?) cataloguer appears to have regarded them as parts of the same text, at any rate, listing both in the front pages of the table of contents both as a single text, "De Diis Gentium". Alberti here appears as another chapter of the same book.
Image
Marziano (anonymous and untitled in this manuscript) ends on folio 244v; this is followed immediately by Alberti's Virtus (anonymous and untitled again), on folio 245r.
Image
http://www.rosscaldwell.com/marzianotex ... mbined.jpg

Re: Collection "nec spe, nec metu"

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Ross Caldwell wrote: 29 May 2023, 20:21
Phaeded wrote: 27 May 2023, 17:57 Alberti is clearly the most interesting person in the 15th century, but I don't think he'd ever do propaganda for a state, which is how I view trionfi (he was too busy satirizing everything; e.g., Momus; someone like Filelfo, OTOH, would gladly do that).
I can't change your point of view, but if your preconceptions of Alberti are the reason, I'd urge you to take another look and go deeper.

Alberti's four most substantial works have been translated into English.

The Family in Renaissance Florence, translation and introduction by Renée Neu Watkins, University of South Carolina Press, 1969 - contains
Dinner Pieces, translation, introduction, and notes by David Marsh, The Renaissance Society of America, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987 - contains all of the recognized Intercenales. This book is hard to find, out of print. Email me.
On the Art of Building in Ten Books, translation and notes by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor, MIT Press, 1988 (fourth printing in 1992 is the latest I believe) - contains De re aedificatioria. Out of print, but not hard to find. Ditto.
Momus – Latin text and translation, Sarah Knight and Virginia Brown, Harvard University Press, I Tatti Renaissance Library, 2003. Still in print.
Philodoxeos fabula - “The Play of Philodoxus,” edition and translation by Gary R. Grund, in Humanist Comedies, Harvard University Press, I Tatti Renaissance Library, 2005, pp. 70-169. Still in print.
The Mathematical Works of Leon Battista Alberti, translations and commentaries by Kim Williams, Lionel March, and Stephen R. Wassell, Birkhäuser/Springer Basel AG, 2010
On Painting : a new translation and critical edition, translated by Rocco Sinisgalli, Cambridge University Press, 2011 - contains De pictura. Ditto on availability.

Leon Battista Alberti : Biographical and Autobiographical Writings, edition and translation by Martin McLaughlin, Harvard University Press, The I Tatti Renaissance Library, 2023 - contains De commodis litterarum atque incommodis, Vita Sancti Potiti, Canis, Vita, Musca (On the Advantages and Disadvantages of Literature, The Life of St. Potitus, My Dog, My Life, The Fly) Forthcoming -
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php ... 0674292680


I own all of those works (maybe different editions for painting and family) besides Philodoxeos, which I've read, and the Mathematical Works, which I have only skimmed.

But which point of view are you asking me to reconsider? The eye (which is neither here nor there for trionfi) or Alberti's proposed collaboration(?) with Brunelleschi on the trionfi? If the latter, what specifically in the above works leads to that?

Re: Collection "nec spe, nec metu"

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Huck wrote: 29 May 2023, 04:40 Huck in 2009 ....

1423 : ? Alfonso's Trionfo show with an artificial elephant
...

Well, one shouldn't overlook, that the elephant had been occasionally a chess figure.
Image
http://www.chess-museum.com/cyclopes-el ... lnder.html
Alfonso was from Spain which the Carthaginians had a history in. He is undoubtedly thinking of a Roman triumph, and nothing with chess. Same general thought with Marcello when he had this triumphal-like image made, with the elephant referencing Hannibal's trek over the Alps with elephants, which Rene was threatening to do from France (sans elephants) to join with Sforza vs Venice in 1450. No chess connection. Elephants' significance were as triumphal trappings, as is borne out in Mantegna's triumph series.
Image
Mantegna
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cron