Re: From Marziano to the Cary-Yale and the Ludus Triumphorum
Posted: 21 Jun 2021, 10:40
Over 500 years of history in 78 cards
https://www.forum.tarothistory.com/
https://www.forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1382
Prince Fibbia, according to the inscription on the painting making the claim, died in 1419. If he had invented the tarot, it would have been somewhat earlier, perhaps even before Marziano wrote his essay. He reiterates his defense of the Fibbia hypothesis - as a hypothesis only, let me emphasize - in Il Mondo e L'Angelo. Nothing since Dummett's time goes against that hypothesis, as hypothesis. That 1440 is our first known mention (only two years earlier than what Dummett knew), only shows that the game wasn't noteworthy until noteworthy people showed an interest. Also, as primarily an educational game for children before then, it could easily escape notice for a long time. And if on top of that, it had been invented in another city, where many records have been lost due to upheavals, and not written about due to fear of censure from religious people (followers of Bernardino, for example, or the papal legate), it could have existed for a long time in that city without spreading further, like a fire that smolders for a long time before it reaches something really flammable. The "playing field" of conditions in various cities and various categories of players is hardly level.Signor Pratesi has certainly pushed the probable date of the invention of the Tarot pack considerably further back; but he oversimplifies when he says (p.37) of Prince Fibbia that 'he was generally discarded as a candidate [for having invented the game] for being too early'. I do not recall anyone but myself who has rejected his claim on any but the false ground of the non-existence of his portrait. Part of my ground was that the evidence is so late: a portrait dating, I suppose, from the later XVII century is hardly strong ground for an event of the early XV century. It testifies to a family tradition; but a conjecture, intended to explain the presence of the Fibbia arms on some Bolognese cards, might have solidified into certainty. My original objection, in The Game of Tarot, was that Prince Fibbia was too early to have invented the game of tarocchini, as the inscription states. I have for long abandoned this view: if he had been the inventor of tarocchi in general, the word tarocchini, still in use for the only form of the game then known in Bologna (Minchiate excepted), might well have been employed in a XVII-century Bolognese inscription. It therefore already seemed to me possible, before Signor Pratesi's exciting discovery, that Prince Fibbia might really have been the inventor; but the evidence remains exceedingly flimsy.
I would agree that it is only a "faint possibility" that Marziano's pack had 80 cards. However it is nice to see that he contemplates the idea that the principle governing the length of the trump suit in the early tarot might have been to make it be "of the same length as each of the suits," so that the Cary-Yale (the Modrone, he calls it) would have sixteen trumps, as opposed to the twenty-five he had proposed in Game of Tarot. If so, a pack with 14 cards per suit would have had 14 trumps, following the same rule.We know, however, that the composition of the Visconti di Modrone pack did not conform to what later came to be standard: the hypothesis that it contained only sixteen trumps is accordingly a real possibility. If so, then the trump sequence was of the same length as each of the suits; and this would give a simple reason why sixteen was chosen as the number of trumps. This suggests the faint possibility that, in Marziano's pack, too, each suit had both male and female court figures for each of the three ranks, making a total of 16 + 64 = 80 cards altogether.
I am not at all sure that Pratesi thought of the gods as trumps "in our sense"; he just says that they were trumps as well as extensions of the suits. The latter is not a characteristic of trumps "in our sense." But Dummett takes the issue further, into meaningful speculation. I do not defend the rule he suggests, but I do defend a modification of it. Take the example of how Cupid could capture Jupiter. If Doves were led, and someone out of Doves played Jupiter, it could be captured by someone who played Cupid, as long as someone else did not play Venus, Bacchus, or Ceres. But in that situation someone would only play Jupiter if he or she had no other triumphs, since it was sure to be lost. My modification of Dummett's proposal is that while the highest trump would take the trick, a card in the extension of the suit led would take priority over other trumps. In that way an inexperienced player might well play Jupiter, thinking to win the trick that way, only to be upended by someone playing Cupid. That would be more fun than with Dummett's rule.If they were trumps, their assignment to the suits is pointless; if they were superior court cards, their ranking among themselves is pointless. Of the two hypotheses, Signor Pratesi's, that they were trumps in our sense, seems the more probable. But there are other possibilities: for instance, that, when a King or pip card was led, the trick could be won by a god only if it was of that suit, but that, when a god was led, it could be beaten by any higher god. If this seems complicated, we should remember that evolution sometimes goes in the direction of simplicity; we should recall also the complicated rules about the trump suit in Karnoffel. This hypothesis would make Marziano's game ancestral to Tarot, but at a considerable remove.
The PMB-14 has according my suggestion 6 Petrarca-Trionfi and 8 other motifs, but no "four virtues". Martiano suggests 4 virtues connected to Jupiter-Apollo-Mercury-Hercules. A 4x4-grid (used by Marziano) naturally fits well with a wheel of Fortune and its four directions, but Marziano doesn't use the pictureWhat your chart comes to is that two of the three groups that are in the earliest tarot are also in Marziano, namely the four virtues and the six petrarchans. Another that might be there is the Wheel of Fortune, represented by the four gods corresponding to riches. However, some of them are a stretch of the imagination, such as Ceres for Death and Apollo representing a river. Your comparisons, if I may call them that, with the early tarot suggest more that Marziano had some inspiration from the early tarot than the reverse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LetoIn Greek mythology, Leto /ˈliːtoʊ/ (Greek: Λητώ Lētṓ; Λατώ, Lātṓ in Doric Greek) is the daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe, the sister of Asteria. She is the mother of Apollo and Artemis.[1]
The island of Kos is claimed to be her birthplace. However, Diodorus, in 2.47 states clearly that Leto was born in Hyperborea and not in Kos.[2] In the Olympian scheme, Zeus is the father of her twins,[3] Apollo and Artemis, which Leto conceived after her hidden beauty accidentally caught the eye of Zeus. Classical Greek myths record little about Leto other than her pregnancy and search for a place where she could give birth to Apollo and Artemis, since Hera in her jealousy caused all lands to shun her. She eventually found an island that was not attached to the ocean floor, therefore it was not considered land and she could give birth.[4] Once Apollo and Artemis are grown, Leto withdraws, to remain a dim[5] and benevolent matronly figure upon Olympus, her part already played.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/DelosEinst, wie der Mythos erzählt, war Delos eine schwimmende Insel auf dem Meer. Nur hier konnte die von Hera verfolgte und an der Niederkunft auf jederlei festem Boden gehinderte Leto niederkommen. Danach befestigte Poseidon (einer anderen Version nach Zeus) die Insel an vier diamantenen Säulen.
Leto gebar hier die Artemis und den Apollon (daher deren Beinamen Delia und Delios)
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteria_( ... des_Koios)Asteria (altgriechisch Ἀστερία) ist eine Titanide der griechischen Mythologie.
In Hesiods Theogonie[1] und diesem nachfolgend bei späteren Mythographen[2][3] ist sie die Tochter des Titanen Koios und der Titanide Phoibe sowie die Schwester der Leto. Von Perses ist sie die Mutter der Hekate, wobei hier als Varianten auch die Väter Zeus[4] und Polus[3] überliefert sind. Nach Eudoxos von Knidos und Cicero ist sie zudem die Mutter des tyrischen Herakles,[5][6] Nonnos von Panopolis nennt sie als Tochter des Hyperion und als Gattin des Flussgottes Hydaspes.[7]
Der Mythos einer schwimmenden Insel, die anlässlich der Geburt des Apollon und der Artemis durch Leto von aus dem Meeresgrund heraufragenden Säulen getragen wird, ist bereits Pindar bekannt.[8] Ob die familiäre Beziehung von Leto und Asteria Pindar bekannt ist, ist unklar. Bei Kallimachos und diesem folgend in der Bibliotheke des Apollodor stürzt sich Asteria auf der Flucht vor Zeus ins Meer, um dort als schwimmende Insel umherzutreiben, bis sie sich Leto als Geburtsort anbietet.[9][10] Hyginus Mythographus berichtet als bekannteste Version des Mythos, dass Asteria von Zeus in eine Wachtel (ortyx) verwandelt und diese ins Meer gestürzt wird, da sie seine Annäherungen zurückweist. Aus ihr entsteht die schwimmende „Wachtelinsel“ Ortygia. Auf Anweisung Heras darf Asterias Schwester Leto nicht dort gebären, wo die Sonne hinscheint. Zugleich sendet sie Python aus, um Leto zu verfolgen. Zeus lässt Leto deshalb vom Windgott Boreas zu Poseidon bringen, der sie auf Ortygia bringt. Ortygia versinkt zur Geburt der Zwillinge im Meer und wird seit ihrem Wiederauftauchen Delos („die Sichtbare“) genannt.
On my hypothesis the four kings of the PMB would represent the four virtues: Swords is Justice (which has a sword), Batons is fortitude (which has a stick), Cups is temperance (which has cups), and Coins is Prudence (round like a hand-mirror). Anyway, the PMB isn't the only early tarocchi deck. The CY was earlier and surely had the four cardinal virtues. I wouldn't have thought that the PMB "first artist" cards were an example of the earliest form, in the sense that all its subjects, and only those subjects, were there at the beginning. I am especially dubious about the Bagatella. Unlike fools, I don't know of anyone like the PMB Bagatella in any earlier deck of cards, or even visual art, for that matter.The PMB-14 has according my suggestion 6 Petrarca-Trionfi and 8 other motifs, but no "four virtues". Martiano suggests 4 virtues connected to Jupiter-Apollo-Mercury-Hercules. A 4x4-grid (used by Marziano) naturally fits well with a wheel of Fortune and its four directions, but Marziano doesn't use the picture.
I remember children-of-the-moon pictures with Bagatella, and I think, in astrology texts it might have existed before 1440 or 1452. But that's a vague memory on my side. Marco Ponzi was active in this topic, I remember. Here's a German dissertation to the theme ..mikeh wrote: 23 Jun 2021, 12:01 On my hypothesis the four kings of the PMB would represent the four virtues: Swords is Justice (which has a sword), Batons is fortitude (which has a stick), Cups is temperance (which has cups), and Coins is Prudence (round like a hand-mirror). Anyway, the PMB isn't the only early tarocchi deck. The CY was earlier and surely had the four cardinal virtues. I wouldn't have thought that the PMB "first artist" cards were an example of the earliest form, in the sense that all its subjects, and only those subjects, were there at the beginning. I am especially dubious about the Bagatella. Unlike fools, I don't know of anyone like the PMB Bagatella in any earlier deck of cards, or even visual art, for that matter.
We persecute the development of a name for a type of card decks and the name is "Trionfi" ... second to this we've growing interest in a poetical work of PetrarcaDIE MACHT DER STERNE
Planetenkinder: ein astrologisches Bildmotiv in Spätmittelalter und Renaissance
Dissertation by Annett Klingner (2017), 322 pages
https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/bitstream/han ... annett.pdf
The argument was about the point, that Apollo/Artemis had some water connection. I think, one needn't Diodorus to recognize that.When you cite myths about the gods, it is important that they be myths that Marziano would have known about, even better, ones that he mentions. Wikipedia isn't enough. I don't see how he would have known Diodorus, for example.
I was replying to your comment:The argument was about the point, that Apollo/Artemis had some water connection. I think, one needn't Diodorus to recognize that.
and the rest of what you said, where you did not specify the sources of the Greek myths you recount. There is no need to include comments from Diodorus, and the other sources need to be carefully sorted according to whether they were works known in the Latin west before the great influx of Greek manuscripts.However, Diodorus, in 2.47 states clearly that Leto was born in Hyperborea and not in Kos.[2]
That is too lazy of a reply. In other words, you have no idea. All I can say is that I know of nothing verifiably from before 1460, the de Predis picture in Milan. There is another that "might" be as early as 1430, but also "might" be 1480. viewtopic.php?f=23&t=384&start=100#p13799, from Wurttumberg. (I am too lazy to put the umlaut in.) As for the ph.d. dissertation, I see no pictures, Italian search terms produce nothing. "Taschenspieler" produces three occurrences, but it doesn't look to me that they are any earlier than 1460. German is your language. If you find something associating a taschenspieler or some other word for him in that dissertation, I would very much like to know. It is much easier for you than for me.I remember children-of-the-moon pictures with Bagatella, and I think, in astrology texts it might have existed before 1440 or 1452. But that's a vague memory on my side. Marco Ponzi was active in this topic, I remember. Here's a German dissertation to the theme ..
The image is gone now ....Here's a colour version of an image also found on Adam Mcleans's site, which describes it as "Joseph of Ulm. Manuscript painting 1404. Now in University of Tübingen Library. Possibly the earliest example of this emblem form.":
Image
So, there's our bateleur in 1404, cups and balls on table
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=384&start=100#p10839This image at http://stepanov.lk.net/magic/milbourn/01.html is given with description ...1404 sounds "rather early" for children of planets, I would assume ... but I see, we had it alreadyJoseph of Ulm included a cups and balls conjuror
in his 1404 drawing which showed the influences
of the moon. His astrological manuscript is preserved
in the Tuebingen University library in Germany.
http://www.jannesdegoochelaar.nl/media/ ... of_ulm.jpg
Ah, I see Adam McLean stating "Possibly the earliest example of this emblem form."
I find here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=e51y17 ... &q&f=false
c. 1475 ... not 1404, according this statementPlanetenkinder
Aus dem kalendarischen Hausbuch des Meister Joseph aus dem Kloster Güterstein bei Um, um 1475
Tübingen, Universitätsbibliok, Cod. M. d. 2
Planets (Mercury): [Ms Tübingen UB M d 2] German (Carthusian Monastery Güterstein, near Ulm?), ca.1475. The Children of Mercury, from an astrological manuscript. Tübingen UB Ms M.d.2, fol. 271. manuscript illumination. Includes an organ builder with positive and portative organs and a clock maker with a clock with a clapper bell. (D. Blume. Regenten des Himmels ... Berlin 200l. Taf. 40 [fine color reproduction] as ca.1475, as bound in the Carthusian Monastery of Güterstein and probably written there by an unknown Meister Joseph. Refers to it as the "Kalendarisches Hausbuch des Meister Joseph."; Hauber Planetenkinderbilder. Abb. 41, as Ulm, 1404)
http://www.unh.edu/music/Icon/ibelhs.htm
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=384&start=100#p13799Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: 01 Apr 2013, 17:43 The Tübingen Hausbuch, with the Children of Luna picture that Huck posted at the top of this thread, is downloadable in PDF (in color!) at Tübingen University -
http://idb.ub.uni-tuebingen.de/diglit/Md2
(181 megs)
(folio 272r)
The library gives a range of production dates from 1430 to 1480, in Württemberg.
http://swb2.bsz-bw.de/DB=2.312/SET=3/PP ... 97.31.8,FY
(it would seem the old "1404" date has been firmly rejected)
What I wrote is insufficiently precise. More specifically, the website first had scans of all the suit cards in Swords, then the three cards captioned after the colon above. Then came the suit cards in Batons, followed by the three cards listed, with the titles given. Then the suit cards in Cups, followed by the three cards listed. Then the suit cards in Coins, followed by the two cards as described, in that order but without captions.On the Beinecke Library website the cards are divided into four groups,which correspond almost precisely to the four suits. They are in the following order, with the captions as stated:
Swords: Empress of Swords, Emperor of Swords, Love (Swords).
Batons: Fortitude (Batons), Faith (Batons), Hope (Batons),
Cups: Charity (Cups), Chariot (Cups), Death (Cups)
Uncaptioned, Uncaptioned
The last two are first, a scene with knights and castles usually designated “World” (Mondo), and second, one of the Last Judgment, corresponding to the card known as “l’Angelo” in later lists.
One possibility was thatIf they [the gods] were [simply] trumps, their assignment to the suits is pointless; if they were superior court cards, their ranking among themselves is pointless.
A passage in the treatise supporting Dummett's suggestion is its very last sentence:...when a King or pip card was led, the trick could be won by a god only if it was of that suit, but that, when a god was led, it could be beaten by any higher god.
With a full bow, the wanton and wicked Cupid wanders through heaven and earth; whose arms, pestilent to gods and men, Jupiter himself was not able to escape.” (Caldwell and Ponzi translation, Lulu 2019, p. 93).
I asked him again in 2016, when he repeated the previous affirmation. This time he had been looking for notes previously unknown to him, on the occasion of moving the files to a new location:Cataloging information about the cards was received with the collection when it was given by the Cary family to Yale. The author of the printed catalogue to the Cary Collection used their descriptions when he created fuller catalog records. (email of 8/26/2008)
He also endorsed again his statement from 2008.I had hoped to find more evidence about how the Cary family acquired their sets of tarot cards, but unfortunately, there was nothing more. The notes by the person who created the catalog were basically a form that was filled out to be entered into a database - and that had the same information as appears in the online database. So I don't have any more information than what appears online. It would be extremely helpful to my work to have a better paper trail for the cards, but they weren't retained with the collection. (email of 11/23.2016)
In his view no significance should be attached to the triumph to suit correspondences: it was merely a cataloger’s misinterpretation of an accident of storage. Since the sole instance of these assignments of trumps to suits was in that very digital library, he would have the website changed to remove them. (Now, in fact, not only are the suit assignments removed, but the order of the cards has been made quite random.)I did some more checking on your question about the suits assigned to the trump cards and it may well be that there was some confusion due to the cataloging and housing of the cards. Each suit is stored in a separate box (there are four of them) with extra spaces in each box to house a few trumps. I believe that The Emperor, The Empress, and Love are stored with the Swords suit, so when scans were made of the cards, the cataloger may have assumed that the suit needed to be added to the names of the trumps. I can double-check this. (email of 3/20/2019)
In a follow-up he added that “I was mostly concerned with listing rather than order” (3/28/2019).I would have to say that the order of the trumps in the catalog entry probably reflects the order I saw in notes, inventories or articles available to me in the years during catalog preparation. It does not represent my estimation of a particular authority or viewpoint. Sorry to be so vague. I’m sure you have seen everything Dummett and Decker wrote by now. It’s possible I may have simply picked up the order presented in one of their Playing Card Society Journal pieces.
The Empress, The Emperor, The Triumphal Car, The Lovers, Fortitude, Charity, Hope, Faith, Death, The Judgment, The World.
This, too, is an order not to be found anywhere, even speculatively. In most respects it is that of minchiate. Unlike Wolff's list, it puts the Chariot, World, and Judgment where minchiate has them, even if minchiate calls the latter the Angel; and he does use minchiate’s term “Love” rather than “Lovers.” The only thing he didn't correct was Wolff's placement and order of the theologicals, which minchiate has after Death with Hope first. I suppose he is allowed an oversight; but it's an odd one for someone who had been for months looking at minchiate decks to see what cards they were missing, to record in his catalog. True, there is what he has put at the top of the two facing pages of this section: "nonstandard" on one side and "original designs" on the other. That is perhaps his disclaimer about the order of anything in this section, which includes cartomantic packs of odd design and a multitude of other things.Empress, Emperor, Love, Fortitude, Faith, Hope, Charity, Chariot, Death, World, Judgment.
Some have thought me unduly speculative. I can at least take it more slowly.The existing cards correspond to 5 of the 6 Petrarchan triumphs and 4 of the 7 principal virtues of the medieval Church, the 4 cardinal virtues and 3 theological. The missing Petrarchan triumph is that of Time, and we see that in later decks with an old man (Vecchio), holding an hourglass. Together with the Empress and the Emperor, that would make 15 cards. However in the Brera-Brambilla deck, done just a little later than the Cary-Yale according to current thinking, there is a Wheel of Fortune. This also was one of the triumphs in Boccaccio’s Amorosa Visione. That would make 16.
He repeated this argument in 1993, in Il Mondo e l'angelo, p. 52.Since four of the stock set of seven Virtues were included among the triumphs, it seems probable that the other three were also: Temperance and Justice, which belong to the standard list of triumph subjects, and Prudence, which does not.
Well, it is a hypothesis, based on what came before. Marziano in his dedication said to Filippo Maria of his god-cards, "be ready by observation of them to be aroused to virtue." If virtue is the important theme, what better, in a Christian context, than the four cardinal virtues as the organizing principle?In Marziano’s deck, each of the suits was associated with a bird and an allegorical theme: eagles had the theme of Virtues; phoenices that of Riches; turtledoves, that of Virginities; and doves, of Pleasures. So the CY’s organizing principle might be the four cardinal virtues, each related to three other of the cards.
Mirrors, round like coins, are an attribute of Prudence. One surviving 16th century pack found in Assisi has for its Maid of Coins a young woman holding the suit-sign as though it were a mirror (viewtopic.php?p=18369#p18369). Columns, straight like Batons, correspond to Fortitude, often depicted as a lady holding a column. Sustenance suggests Cups and Temperance’s two vessels. The Sword is that of Justice.O chiara luce, o specchio, o colonna, o sostegno, o franca spada, che la nostra contrada mantenevi sicura in monte e in piano!
(O clear light, o mirror, o column, o sustenance, o confident sword, you kept our territory safe in the high places and on the plain!)