Filelfo's Odes reflecting Marziano?

501
[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):
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

Revisiting 16 in Cappella, Petrarch, Marziano...and Boccaccio

502
What follows is regarding Martianus Capella's 16 divisions of the sky and another item we discussed with the derivation of Phoenix from Phoenicia (and related to Syphax's palace as he is associated with the Carthaginians who hail from Phoenicia), the suit of riches in Marziano. Researching something else I came across another odd reference to 16 in Boccaccio - the mythical Cadmus, a Phoenician who immigrates to Greece and takes over Thebes, creates the Greek alphabet...oddly with 16 letters. Grammar, and the discussion of letters, is the next book in Capella that follows the marriage of Mercury and Philology in which the 16 divisions of the sky are discussed.

The passage in question, from Book II.63:

There are also those who think that while [Cadmus] was sitting by the Hippocrene fountain and thinking, he invented the shape of sixteen letters which were later used all over Greece. Similarly, Pliny in his Natural History says also that he discovered the Theban quarries and how to allow gold with metals, although Theophrastus says he did this while he was among the Phoenicians…. (Boccaccio, Giovanni. Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, Volume 1: Books I–V. United Kingdom: Harvard University Press, tr. Jon Solomon, 2011: 291)

Would Marziano have been that interested in that particular passage in Boccaccio? On one level the primordial origin of the gods from 16 sections of the heavens parallels the primordial origins of learning, the original letters. But even in Boccaccio's day the Greek alphabet already had 24 letters (indeed, in Classical Greece this was already the case), so the 16 came from a non-classical source, which Boccaccio does not name, merely moving on to the source for the alchemical subject of metals (which also might be tied to the description of Syphax's palace). Boccaccio's work was dedicated to the Lusignan king of Cyprus, the crusading base for Europe after the loss of the Holy Land, and the contemporary context of Petrarch's Africa where we read of Syphax's palace is the same - crusading targets included North Africa (e.g., Tunis), where Lusignan also lead raids.

Marziano's local connection to crusading would have been the 'Green Count' of Savoy -Amadeus VI (1334 – 1383) whose dominions were essentially abutting Tortona to the northwest. Amadeus led a crusade in 1366 against Murad I of the Ottoman Empire (the year after the raid on Alexandria) to aid his cousin, John V Palaiologos, the Byzantine Emperor, son of the Dowager Empress, Anne of Savoy, driving the Turks from Gallipoli, the key crossing point across the Dardanelles. Towards the end of his life in 1381 he mediated between Genoa and Venice and sponsored the peace treaty which brought an end to the War of Chioggia, that was in fact mainly over the island of Tenedos near the same entrance to the Black Sea. Genoa and Venice had long been leading commercial powers with ties to Constantinople and both sides supported different claimants to the throne of the Byzantine Empire and Tenedos, acquired by Venice from the Byzantine Empire in 1377, but after this conflict, they ceded it to Savoy and evacuated it in 1381 as part of the peace. Further connections to crusading, besides Acre, the last crusader-controlled city was Tyre, where Cadmus would have been from, and both had retreated to Greece, the former mainly based in the Peloponnese up through Athens and Thebes, with the larger territory variously called the Morea or Duchy of Athens, with Thebes being the primary capital where mercenary armies of the Catalans or Navarrese Company were based (the latter took the city with the aid of the Latin Archbishop of Thebes in 1379). So Cadmus's Thebes loomed large as a principal base of the crusaders (even if mainly mercenaries), no longer in the Levant proper.

The connection to Marziano's client household to this particular prince: In 1349, Amadeus agreed to a treaty between himself, Amadeus of Geneva, James of Piedmont, and the House of Visconti for mutual defense and assistance, including provisions for Galeazzo II Visconti to marry Bianca of Savoy, sister of the count. Moreover, the Semideus work for Filippo Visconti was nothing less than a fanciful call for him to go on crusade and save Constantinople from the Turkish hordes - the miniatures in the work showing Christian armies conquering Muslims.

Image

The Visconti had also intermarried with Lusignan's of Cyprus, bringing us back to Boccaccio's Genealogy, dedicated to the king of Cyprus. Coupled with the relations to Savoy and his own crusading the background for Mazriano's own work has to be seen in that light: How can Western (Greco-Roman/Crusading) culture triumph over the Muslim (with Persia/Phoenicia being their historical antecedents)? Petrarch creates a model of the gods behind the opposing forces in Syphax's palace, on an idea based on Capella. Rome triumphs over Syphax and one could necessarily conceive of these gods in their proper Roman form - but Petrarch does not show that, only goes on to show Scipio's victory (which he then fixates on in his Triumphs). Marziano arguably does that - a more purely Roman version of Syphax's palace fresco - with the DSH, both having an eye on contemporary calls for crusades. Visconti have pagan notions of genealogical descent from these very gods, specifically Venus, hence Marziano's updating of Petrarch. They also had direct claims to the families leading crusades - the House of Savoy and the Lusignan of Cyprus, the latter for whom Boccaccio wrote his own Genealogy of the Gods. Thus an imagined archaic 16 primordial letters (is Boccaccio merely taking that number from Capella?) parallels the 16 divisions of the skies where the pagan gods hail from; all but natural for Marziano's own project to use that number. Cadmus's origins in Phoenicia (an archaic name for the Holy land) merely point the way for the West to reclaim its historical birthright, both pagan (16 letters of the alphabet) and Christian (Jerusalem to the south of Tyre, the last beachhead the crusaders had).

Phaeded

Re: Revisiting 16 in Cappella, Petrarch, Marziano...and Boccaccio

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Phaeded wrote: 27 Jun 2022, 16:56 Cadmus, a Phoenician who immigrates to Greece and takes over Thebes, creates the Greek alphabet...oddly with 16 letters. Grammar, and the discussion of letters, is the next book in Capella that follows the marriage of Mercury and Philology in which the 16 divisions of the sky are discussed.

The passage in question, from Book II.63:

There are also those who think that while [Cadmus] was sitting by the Hippocrene fountain and thinking, he invented the shape of sixteen letters which were later used all over Greece. Similarly, Pliny in his Natural History says also that he discovered the Theban quarries and how to allow gold with metals, although Theophrastus says he did this while he was among the Phoenicians…. (Boccaccio, Giovanni. Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, Volume 1: Books I–V. United Kingdom: Harvard University Press, tr. Jon Solomon, 2011: 291)
Thus an imagined archaic 16 primordial letters (is Boccaccio merely taking that number from Capella?) parallels the 16 divisions of the skies where the pagan gods hail from; all but natural for Marziano's own project to use that number.
I highlighted Pliny and your question because it seems to me that Boccaccio was reading Pliny here. I'm not sure if he's the earliest source for the explicit number of letters attributed to Cadmus. Herodotus might be the oldest reference to the legend, but he doesn't mention a number of letters, and Boccaccio doesn't seem to know him in any case.

As interesting as the familio-political connections are, I'm not persuaded that Marziano based his scheme on any reverence in particular for the number sixteen. He himself explains how it works.

Four moral categories. Four heroes to each category. Thus 4x4=16. That's it. The number sixteen is just a by-product of his conceptual architecture.

Of course there is good reason to believe that Marziano was an astrologer. Maybe not a professional, or an official ducal astrologer, but someone who knew how to use it. We can give him knowledge of Cappella, too. He was well-educated.

But, it seems to me, if he used divination, he would have first used astrology, and, secondly, geomancy, which uses both astrology and the sixteen geomantic figures. This is why, when I tried to devise a divinatory use of the cards for my book, I based it on the months-zodiac-Olympic gods equation. From the zodiac you can equate signs to geomantic figures, and from that to the 12 Olympic gods, replacing Vulcan with Bacchus. The remaining four more-or-less fall into place. But this was as much imagination as I allowed myself, to remain "in period."

Re: What are the documents for Marziano's dates?

505

...Petrarch’s Africa....

The 16 gods and the line they are so named in the Latin text:

140 Iupter

145 Saturnus

150 Neptunus

156 Apollo

174 Frater iunior (Apollo's younger brother, Mercury)

179 nova sponsa (Mercury’s new wife, Philology)

182 Perseus

186 Maurotis (Mars - this genitive is used also by Ovid, Met.6.70 and Vir. Aen. 8.630)

191 Vulcanus

198 Pana (Pan)

200 Iovis soror (Jupiter’s sister, Juno)

204 Minerve

212 Venus

219 Puer (boy = Cupid: puer alatus nec acutis plena sagittis = “This boy was winged, full of sharp arrows” on Venus’s lap)

224 Dyana

232 Cibele (“Last is mother Cybele” – then come the underworld gods, clearly separated from those of the heavens).

....

Of the six Petrarchan gods replaced in the DSH - Saturn, Philology, Perseus, Vulcan, Pan, Cybele - it is fairly clear why Hercules replaces Perseus and Daphne replaces Philology (although this last, from the perspective of Petrarch’s oeuvre, is basically an equivalence). I’ll speculate in my next reply as to why Saturn, Vulcan, Pan and Cybele were replaced and by whom of the heroum.


I never offered that explanation for why Marziano used and replaced 6 of Petrarch’s 16 gods from his Africa, since we subsequently chased more angles that popped up - Conty, "black" Venus, spotted vs white doves, etc. Before I provide all of the relevant interrelated sources, the argument in a nutshell:



The Ovide Moralise tradition had been allegorically applied to chess - Alexander Neckham’s (‘Albericus’) Liber ymaginum deorum of c. 1200, the anonymous Echecs amoureux of c. 1380, and Evrard De Conty's medieval commentary on the same in his Livre des échecs amoureux moralisés of c. 1400 - Marziano did the same for the new game of cards in c. 1412. From the pictorial version of Ovid-derived productions called the Libellus, we find all of Marziano’s gods save Daphne and Cupid, the arch-Petrarchan themes from whom Marziano of course took them. The Libellus tradition itself is derived from Petrarch’s Africa book III where we find 16 ‘celestial’ gods, on which all scholars now agree (the heart of the subject matter below). Marziano edits the ultimate source of Petrarch (partially and oddly with Petrarch, i.e., Daphne and Cupid), because Marziano’s context is not the description of a pagan palace/temple but the suits of playing cards, for which he invents the moral categories Virtue, Riches, Virginities and Pleasures. Marziano’s invention was not the received fourfold suits of cards, not the category of Ovid’s gods, not even the suits of birds (arguably from German luxury decks) – Marziano’s invention was to select and group the gods as exemplary of his four moral categories assigned to suits, which was his novel contribution.



The basics on the Ovide Moralise from Panofsky (whom is central for several aspects of the subsequent research, inclusive of mis-counting the gods in Petrarch’s Africa).
The knowledge of classical mythology, so necessary for understanding of all Roman writers, was systematically cultivated and was summarized in the “Mythogaphus III [Third Vatican Mythographer] – the work of an English scholar traditionally referred to as ‘Albricus of London’ and possibly the identical with he renowned Alexcander Neckham (died 1217) – which was to remain the standard mythological handbook up to Petrus Berchoisis’ [Pierre Bersuire] introduction to his Metaphorphosis Ovidiana moraliter explanta (1340 [hereafter Moralizatus] and Boccaccio’s Genealogia deorum….” (75)


From Neckham, anonymous versions in the vernacular with illustrations, as noted by Dieter Blume:


1315 and1318: the anonymous Ovide moralisé was written in the vernacular, instead of Latin, at the request of the French, queen Jeanne de Bourgogne



1320: Giovanni del Virgilio lectured on it University of Bologna, where “Virgilio and his students were mainly interested in the erotic sections of the text” (Blume 185)



1334: Florentine notary Arrigo Simintend redacted Metamorphoses into the Florentine volgare. Between 1350 and 1360 later Florentine ‘interactive readers’ added illustrations to the text, including Daphne



1340 Pierre Bersuire [Berchorius] wrote the Ovidius moralizatus at the Papal court of Avignon, a sort of biblical commentary in which 80 MS survive, the earliest illustrated version being from Bologna, dated between 1350-1360, most likely for Bruzio Visconti as the erased viper stemmi was rediscovered, among other clues (('Visualizing Metamorphosis. Picturing the Metamorphoses of Ovid in Fourteen-Century Italy', in: Troianalexandrina. Anuario sobre literatura medival de materia clásice, Bd. 14 (2014), S. 183 – 212, 194). 185-87).



[Whether Marziano had access to the Bruzio Visconti MS, the brother of the signore of Milan, Lucchino Visconti, but ruled Lodi, is something I’ve not ascerrtained].


Petrarch’s Africa thus finds itself in a flourishing trade on works dealing with Ovid, but profoundly transforms it, as Seznec notes:




Petrarch preserves only those details which have the value of images; as a humanist and man of taste, he disregards what was meant to improve or instruct. But stripped this to essentials, the ‘images of the gods’ which he traces one after the other with his elegant and precise hand, form a little repertoire at once clear, detailed, and likely to be of immediate ise of the artist who turn to it for incorporation. In short, we find in this third canto of the Africa the prototype of a Libellus de imaginibus deorum; better still,, as we shall soon see, we find in it the true model of our Libellus.



But the road which leads from Petrarch to the ‘second’ Albricus is not a direct one. Once again the figure of the gods, to which the classicizing poet had attempted to restore their purity of contour, are to serve as themes of medieval allefogory. Between the Africa and the Libellus comes the Ovide moralise’ composed in Avignon, around 1340, by Petrarch’s friend, Pierre Bersuire, following the counsels of the poet and the lines of his Africa. This Ovide moralise’, is in fact a sort of appendix to the Reductorium morale, the great work in which Bersuire laboriously, in thirteen books, gave moral meaning to the Liber de proprietatibus of Bartholomaeus Anglicus. In order to complete this vast work of moralization, he added to it three more books: the fourteenth treats of the marvels of nature, the sixteenth of difficult passages in the Bible. As for the fifteenth, it brings us the Metamorphoses, interpreted according to the same principles and with the same intent. (174)




The Ovid tradition then gets abridged first by Petrarch in his Palace of Syphax chapter in his Africa, which achieved a separate life when shared with Berchorius, who enlarges Petrarch;s number of gods, who in turn in turn is enlarged by the anonymous author of the Libellus de imaginibus deorum, which was to have the greatest impact on depicting the Roman gods. What is at odds here is the need for a handy abridgement and the equally compelling need to be exhaustive/encyclopedic, which we find in Boccaccio’s work, yet another friend of Petrarch. If one has no need of or is ignorant of Petrarch’s organizing principle of 16 gods (more on that shortly) then the natural inclination to make the list more inclusive naturally followed.



A summarizing "cheat sheet” of sorts for the above, since many of these names are derivative:

• Ovid is the source material, supplemented with late Roman works such as Fulgentius, Servius, Macrobius, Capella, etc.

Liber = Neckham/Albricus, which condenses this material.

Ovide Moralise = the allegorizing tradition one finds especially in France

• Petrarch’s Africa does not share the Ovid name of course, but he owned a copy of Neckham and being based in Avignon early on was of course exposed to the Ovide Moralise tradition.

• Ovid Moralizatus = Berchorius, Petrarch's friend, which expands the number of Petrarch’s gods, but still an abbreviated number

Libellus (originally assumed to also be by Neckham) = an anonymous tract that expands the gods yet further from Berchorius, yet still abbreviated. 14 of the 16 gods named by Marziano appear in this work.

• Conty, et al also use the Libellus.

Re: What are the documents for Marziano's dates?

506
What is never asked is: why did Petrarch feel compelled to abridge the number of gods in the first place? The answer is his description of Syphax’s palace is derived from Capella’s 16 divisions of the heavens from whence hail the gods, with the smoking gun being the presence of Mercury’s wife, which is only found in Capella.



But does Petrarch even use 16 gods in Book III of his Africa?



The reason this has not been identified in modern research is due to at least three factors: 1) Petrarch replaces the scholarly gibberish of his source Capella, with more clear-cut and identifiable gods so the connection to the prime source is somewhat occluded from the get-go; 2) Italica Silius's Punica, a classical Roman source for Scipio’s feats, was rediscovered in 1417-18, right after Marziano invented his tractatus (assuming your date of 1412), so Petrarch’s imagined Africa (relying on fragments of Livy) – for which previously the medieval world had no other source for this famous time period of Rome – fell quickly into obscurity (unlike his other works, such as the trionfi); 3) contemporary scholars have been focused on tracing the development/descriptions of individual gods, with an overall count being besides the point. Before addressing point #3 in more depth, the 'gibberish' of Capella:




Capella's 16 regions.jpg




Two scholars do in fact provide counts – Panofsky and Chance. Oddly both have different lists(!) of gods but somehow both came up with the same number - 14 - which derives from the Third Vatican Mythographer, thus going back to Neckham, and not focusing on the text of Petrarch’s Africa. First Chance (from an earlier post of mine in this thread):


… at least one scholar, Jane Chance, notes just 14 [gods]:



The catalogue of the gods in the Africa to which Bersuire refers appears in a description of the palace of Syphax, covered with precious stones representing the planets and zodiacal signs (3.111-35) and with gilded bas reliefs of fourteen ‘gods and heroes’ (3.138-39) (as in Ovid Metamorphoses 2.1-18, the description of the Palace of the Sun) and other creatures such as Pegasus, the fauns, and the satyrs….(Jane Chance, Medieval Mythography, Vol. 2: From the Schools of Chartres to the Court of Avignon, 1177-1350. 2000: 346).



Although Bersuire borrows from the third Vatican mythographer, Fulgentius' Mitologiae, the Ovide Moralise, Petrarch, Isidore, and the first two Vatican mythographers (1.127; 2.48), for the graphic detail used in his visual depictions of the gods his source is Petrarch, as Bersuire acknowledged in the same prologue to the Ovidius [Ovidius Moralizatus]:



Because I was nowhere able to find either written accounts or pictorial representations of the images of the gods set forth in an orderly manner, I had to consult that eminent teacher Francis Petrarch….(ibid, 344-45)



[Chance further notes:]



The sources for Petrarch’s catalogue are almost certainly Isidore’s Etymologiae 8.11 (a copy of which he acquired in Avignon, Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (or else Remigius of Auxerre’s commentary on Capella, because the marriage of Mercury and Philology is mentioned in 3.179-80, and the Third Vatican Mythographer, or else the mythography’s short version, the Libellus. (ibid, 345)



[… Chance’s own sources lead us to Pepin’s The Vatican Mythographers, from which work we learn:]





By the fourteenth century the [Third Vatican Mythographer] was called Scintillarium poetarum, or simply Poetarius. Indeed, Petrarch owned a manuscript of it and referred it as ‘Poetarius Albrici.’ (Third Vatican Mythographer, 13, in Ronald E. Pepin, The Vatican Mythographers, 2008: 9)

[and]

There follow fourteen detailed chapters on these gods, goddesses and heroes of classical mythology: Saturn, Cybele, Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Pluto, Proserpina, Apollo, Mercury, Pallas, Venus, Bacchus, Hercules, Perseus…The book closes with a chapter on the twelve signs of the zodiac, recounting mainly how each was created and placed in the heavens.(ibid, 10)



And there we have it: The detail of fourteen gods comes from the Third Vatican Mythographer (hereafter TVM) - one of Petrarch’s own sources for his Africa; Chance must have misreported that detail as also the same number employed by Petrarch.




So Chance maddeningly admits Petrarch uses Capella’s Mercury and Philology and yet she does not count the latter even when named (nor Venus’s son Cupid, also named).



And Erwin Panofsky? He buries what is at the heart of the matter in a 4(!) page footnote from pp 78-81 in his Renaissance And Renascences In Western Art, 1960. The most relevant passage:


Berchorius [Bersuire’s Latinized name) extensively borrowed from the latter’s Africa – increasing, however, the number of Petrarch’s ecphrases from fourteen to seventeen (by the addition of Bacchus, Hercules and Aesculapius) and rearranging their sequence in such a way that the seven planetarian divinities, arranged in astronomical order, are placed at the beginning of the list. …it served as the basis for a more ‘popular’ little handbook in Latin, the so-called Libellus de imaginibus deorum (reprinted after Vatican Library Cod. Reg. 1290). Here the long-winded moralizations were eliminated while the number of items was doubled by the addition of Aeolus, Janus, Vesta, Orpheus, Perseus, and Ceres, and by the substitution of the Twelve Labors of Hercules for his single image. (79)




At this point it will be helpful to turn to Panofsky and his “synoptic” table and his version of the gods in Petrarch (the 14 gods used by Marziano in the Libellus column are highlighted in yellow):





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[In the above the Libellus is not in question and I’ve not verified Berchorius since its incidental to the problem at hand, but Panofsky’s list is egregiously wrong, which is somewhat shocking for a scholar of this caliber.]

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One not needlessly invoke Marziano’s emphasis on “celestial” gods to rule out Pluto – Petrarch himself very clearly does this himself in the text: “last [ultima] is mother Cybele” The list ends, Pluto follows her but on a lower course of decoration that is not of the ceiling. The underworld headed by Pluto and his consort Proserpina comes next, but why does Panofsky not name Proserpina (Persephone), as Chance does? But that’s all academic – Pluto and his wife are naturally not on the heavenly vault and among those gods.



Then there is Panofsky’s sloppiness of naming in parentheses Gorgons and Perseus after Mercury. One could have listed numerous more demigod in association with the primary gods, but Petrarch’s interest and guiding principle here is familial – the ancillary divinities have no role in the genealogy of the main gods named. And the gods not listed by their proper name are specifically highlighted with a familial relationship. So if one wants to not count Mercury’s new wife (nova sponsa), Philology, because she is not named as such, then one needs to strike Mercury himself ( Frater iunior), Juno Iovis soror, and Venus’s son Cupid Puer. Sponsa, frater, soror, puer (boy = son in this connection), are all familial relationships among the highest gods proper. The Di consentes, with the four gods added, includes the somewhat dubious Perseus, but he is no less a son of Jupiter than is Hercules, who is included in all of the subsequent lists. And as we shall further explore below, it is unfathomable for Petrarch, of all people, not to have included Cupid and Philology (the latter reworked as Daphne/Laura in later works)



Part of the confusion is that Petrarch proceeds in circular descriptive fashion that has gods/goddesses standing next to one another to whom they have no primary connection, and the temptation for Panofsky and Chance seems to have been not to count them if they seemed as mere attributes to a more important god, especially if they were not explicitly named in the case of Philology and Cupid. But that is pure folly – Actaeon, for instance, is featured for Diana but he is no spouse and certainly no familial relation, hence no reason to count him (and no one does…so why Panofsky even bother to mention “Gorgons” in parens?).

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Here is the full English translation of the passage leaving no doubt as to how many proper gods are on Syphax’s ceiling, which I enumerate (the Latin names of the gods were provided above at the top of this post):




While they hastily examined the twelve signs with their roving gaze, they marveled at the work and followed each one. From all directions, flashing with gold, the splendor of gods, the beauty of heroes, and the deeds of ancestors met them. [1] Jupiter, proud on his exalted throne, scepter in hand, stood before the others, brandishing a thunderbolt. Jove’s shield bearer was raising an Idean youth to heaven in its talons. Then with heavy step and sad in old age came rustic [2] Saturn in rude appearance, adorned with covered head and grey cloak and bearing hoe and scythe, a father devouring his children. Then a fire-breathing dragon, holding the end of its twisted tail in its mouth, was coiling itself in great circles. Not much further on could be seen [3] Neptune, spreading his horns in an immense ring and baring his nimble trident against the confined waters, swimming in the deep sea as massed Tritons and Nymphs wandered around and showered their distant water king with praises. His horse, summoned by an earthquake, rises from the sea and beats the sandy beach with his swift hooves. Next was long-haired [4]Apollo, with a beardless face–here a boy, here a youth, and with not much time having passed, hoary. His sacred horse was standing before his feet, swift and raring, shaking the ground; he champed at his bit. Beside him sits a strange and immense monster with a three-mawed mouth. He is calm and charmed by the one who protects him. On his right he has a dog, but on his dark left a hungry wolf, and in the middle is a lion. These heads are joined together by a coiled serpent and show that time is fleeting. Indeed, the image of the cithara seemed to sing to the ears with a quiet, plucking song. On Apollo’s back were a quiver, a winged bow, and arrows. And monstrous Python was there, lying in the twisting cave of Cirrha. Here too was the shade of sweet, fragrant, verdant laurel in gold that was the desire of Greek and Italic poets and revived the nine Muses in their lea. You would suppose that they charmed the enduring stars with songs of different types in different octaves. [5. Mercury] Apollo’s younger brother comes by his side. His face itself proves him malicious. He bears a rod twisted with snakes. His head wears an exquisitely decorated cap, and winged sandals surround his feet with shining feathers. The rooster stands at attention, and Argus is slain by his curved sword. His [6 Philology] young betrothed sits at his left; she glories in her exceptional beauty but seldom rejoices at the sight of her dowry. Near her stands the scandal of the Gorgon sisters. [7] Perseus, severing the snake-haired head with his fraternal sword, with neck turned back and fixed on his mirror. Here too are the old man turned to stone; the monster born from blood, a winged steed; and the sacred font of the nurturing Muses. After them comes the raging image of deadly [8]Mars standing on his bloody chariot. Here is the wolf. Here are the Furies, hoarsely shrieking miseries. He stood with a gleaming helmet on his head and flail in his hand. Here too is [9]Vulcan with his disgrace. By craft he looks on his wife’s hidden betrayals and prepares to leave but is hindered by his lame foot. The mob of gods looks on him, and the stars ridicule the limping husband. Now you could see [10]Pan, chest decorated with stars, holding his horns and ruddy face skyward. His shaggy legs stiffen, he treads in caves on goat’s hooves, and, like a shepherd, he carries a crooked staff. His large pipe, crafted by him of seven reeds, sings out. Close by, holding her scepter, sat the [11. Juno] queen of goddesses, Jove’s dear sister and exalted wife. Her head has been veiled on high in a glorious cloud, which Iris, appearing in various colors, encircles, and peacocks lick the footsteps of their mistress. Next is the armored image of dreadful [12] Minerva, the Virgin, as they say. In her right hand is a long spear, and her lofty helmet shakes its crest. A crystal shield bearing a Gorgon’s face protects her. At night, a bird flies near the goddess as she peers into the shadows. The Cecropian field gives birth to fresh olives. She who was born from Jove’s brow mocks Venus’ shameful birth, her sister’s foul origin. Nude [13]Venus, wanton, made up in rose and purple, drove a conch, swimming in the sea, where, it is said, was the goddess’ disgraceful birth. Always keeping doves, she was accompanied by three naked girls, of whom the first was turned away from us, but the other two fixed their gaze on us, their fair arms entwined in the other’s. Neither was absent the [14. Cupid] winged boy nor the quiver on his back, full of sharp arrows, nor his deadly bow. Flinging one of his many, he left one stuck in Apollo. At this the high ones rumbled in heaven. The naughty boy hid in the lap of his dear mother. Then [15] Diana fills the entire wood with choirs of Dryads. Oreades and nimble Fauns and Satyrs follow, stamping in a circle, and Diana’s dear shepherd snores in a green meadow. At that shining spring, wretched Actaeon spied her bathing her most beautiful arms; just then he himself was suddenly torn apart by his dogs’ teeth. The sacred doe dies for her, but the goddess cannot in this way be satisfied by the Scythian altars. Last is mother [16] Cybele, to whom no land was dearer than Ida. The aged woman was sitting, spreading out her massive frame and awesome with her key and scepter. Dignified by varied dress and mother of many, she had upon her head a lofty crown made of Phrygian ramparts. Indeed, the ancients say she bore all the gods and the Thunderer himself. It may be truly said that from her capricious womb the same goddess brought 48forth the savage giants, who were for centuries an unspeakable pestilence upon the earth. She is carried on a chariot by the mastered necks of lions. [link to pdf of translation with introduction: https://baylor-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/han ... sequence=1

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Before proceeding to Marziano’s six replacement ‘heroes’, an extended sidebar on why Petrarch – who himself has heavily emended Capella – included Philology when only Capella is a source for her; quoting Bernardo on an early work of Petrarch, a comedy:





[quoteThere is evidence that from a very early age Petrarch had been intrigued by the possibility of personifying the general concept of learning or culture in a female figure” (170).

[He then goes over the scraps of information we have for the lost comedy]:

Fam. II, 7.5, Petrarch letter to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna: “You will remember in my Philology, which I wrote only to drive out your cares through entertainment [same sentiment echoed in Marziano’s prologue], what my Tranquillinus says: ‘the greater part of man dies waiting for something.’ And so it is.” (170). [Bernardo states that it looks like the comedy may have been written for Cardinal Colonna, whose large extended family in Rome, many holding important positions in the Church, may have inherited the manuscript and thus circulated it among clerical circles so perhaps Marziano was familiar with it via his participation in the Church, but my argument depends on nothing more than the Africa].

Fam. VII.16.6. Petrarch letter to humanist Lapo di Castiglionchio, thanking him for an oration of Cicero but can’t send his PP: “I do not deny that at a somewhat tender age I wrote the comedy you request bearing the title of Philologia. Unfortunately it is located far from here, you will learn from our common friend who bears this letter [Boccaccio!] what my opinion of it is, and the degree to which I consider it worthy of the ears of learned men such as yours” (170-171).

• Life of Petrarch (De vita et moribus Domini Francisci Petracchi), Bocaccio. “Boccaccio not only suggests Petrarch actually surpassed Terence in his comedy, but refers to it with the title of Philostratus….justification for Boaccaccio’s use of this title may be found in the letter from Petrarch to Barbaro da Sulmona….alludes to his comedy as “Philologia Philostrati”…. (172). [Bernardo notes Philostratus is “a man overcome and overthrown by love.”].



Putting together all these scanty facts about Petrarch’s comedy, certain significant conclusions can be reached. The title itself, Philologia Filostrati, suggests the combining of a rather learned subject with a love theme. It also reveals a third possible character in the play in addition to Philologia and Tranquillinus. This in turn suggests a possible threesome reflecting three perspectives, learning, loving and living [I would have preferred cupidity versus learning, with the contemplative life as the resolution….all of this echoed in the trionfi of Cupid versus Chastity]. Finally, the verse cited in Fam. II.7.5 implies a moral-philosophic theme that had apparently attracted the attention of Petrarch’s closest and most influential friends. In all of this, there seems to be no evidence disproving our original assumption that the concept or character of Philologia was a borrowing or at least an echo of Capella Capella’s elaborate allegory of the wedding of Philology with the god, Mercury”Bard (Aldo S. Bernardo, Petrarch, Laura, and the Triumphs 1974: 172).[/quote]





Scipio – in addition to the Africa (for which Petrarch was crowned in Rome as laureate poet in 1341), - and Philololgy cum Daphne/Laura would remain central to Petrarch to the degree that the question is not why did Marziano use Petrarch, but how could not have?

• The ekphrastic description of the palace of Syphax (Africa 3.87-262) was an excerpt available before the long-delayed publication of the Africa itself, notably as early as 1339-40 in the hands of Petrarch’s friend Pierre de Bersuire.

• Petrarch’s first two trionfi, Cupidinis and Pudicitaie, were written as a pair in c. 1352 before Petrarch’s first stay in Milan. The Africa’s hero Scipio is featured alongside Laura/Daphne in their journey together to the temple of Patrician Chastity in Rome.

• Petrarch based in Milan 1353-1361 where he apparently invented the family imprese and motto of a bon droyt, worn on the person of Filippo Visconti in his medals and of course trionfi decks.

• Scipio was the featured hero in Petrarch’s treatise on “famous men” [ Scipio “…was to occupy the central position in the De viris illustribus. Three progressively enlarged versions of his biography survive dating from 1338-39, 1343, and probably 1353. For a study of the three redactions, see Guido Martellotti, La vita di Scipione l’Africano (Milan and Naples: Ricciarardi, 1954). Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works. Ukraine: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Eds. Armando Maggis and Victoria Kirkham Scipio, 2009: 382).

• The intimately related subject of the Aeneid (the mythical background to Petrarch’s “historical” Africa), is in the same Venus-based Visconti genealogy in Gasparino Barzizza, and an early project of Decembrio c. 1419 was to translate the Aeneid (stopped after 89 lines, but continued in 1428).





Marziano’s Six Replacement ‘Heroes’ to those in Petrarch’s Africa



Marziano, to reiterate, created a matrix of moral categories for the four suits and it is those that drove him to seek suitable (pardon the pun) replacements, as a particular god/goddess could best exemplify the category into which they were being placed. The method he employed was otherwise straight forward – the replacements were in almost every case cognates for those gods/goddesses replaced. I would also point to the close relations between the Valois and Visconti and that Pizan’s Ovide-inspired Othea was likely a source for the pictorial program employed by Marziano (perhaps carried over into the CY, whose “World” trump with an allegorical divinity on an arcing cloud nimbus looks precisely like those used in the Othea - and note it was first dedicated to Valentina Visconti’s husband Duc d’Orleas).



* Daphne for Philology. See above. It is the centerpiece of Petrarch’s personal mythology and indeed he himself moved away from the Philology-related comnedy of his youth for the Daphne/Laura symbol. While Philology was chaste she was married – Daphne instead confers the



* Hercules for Perseus. Cognates in that both are Greek heroes sired by Zeus. Perseus was associated with Persia (even in Pizan) and why used for a Carthaginian-related king – they hailed from Phoenicia and allied with Persia during the classical era wars with ancient Greece. Hercules is associated with bringing civilization to Italy/Rome and a model for Virtus, hence the preference here (Visconti had no connection to Perseus).



* Aeolus for Vulcan: both based in the same geographical location of Sicily/Aeolian islands (e.g., Pindar's First Olympian Ode) and related natural phenomena - volcanic movement/smoke and winds produced from the same region. Aeolus is central to the Aeneid in blowing Aeanas and crew to Carthage/Africa, and is emphasized as a dire sign for Hannibal in the final showdown with Scipio in Book 7 of Petrarch’s Africa, where the Aeoloian islands and region are named (line 355) and where the oncoming force against Hannibal is likened to Polphemus’s cave under mount Aetna (where Vulcan had his forge) and where Turbidus Eolio will appear like a baleful comet, linking the winds to the celestial gods (line 838 Terribilis, qualis pastor Poliphemus ab antro / Turbidus Eolio, uel qualis ab ethere tristis. https://petrarch.petersadlon.com/read_africa.html?s=7 )/



* Bacchus for Pan. Cognates for sexual wantonness, and either would be suited in Pleasures, however “Liber” was more connected to Rome and a more civilized god who brought wine. Featured in Pizan, Harley 4431 f. 106: http://www.bl.uk/IllImages/Ekta/mid/E070/E070017.jpg



* Vesta for Cybele: Both closely associated with the earth, but the suit of Viriginity drives the search for a cognate here which can only be explained by Cybele’s famously strange male priests were castrati: A gallus (pl. galli) was a eunuch. Marziano all but describes Vesta and her followers as nuns - a sort of pagan religious order. Although Marziano does not bother to strictly adhere to gender sameness in the suits, he does in Virginities and Vestal virgin simply trumps Cybele, who was sullied with a male lover, Adonis.



Finally,

* Ceres for Saturn: This one looks prima facie the weakest of all, particularly with the gender change, but Marziano himself provides the straight-forward answer in his tractatus: “[Ceres] was engendered of Saturn”. Moreover, Ceres is one of the few deities listed in Capella, in region 5 in the Etruscan system. The familial and food connections allowed her to be placed in Pleasures along with Bacchus – both featured in Pizan (Harley 4431) and in the Vat. Reg. Lat 1290 MS of the Libellus, where, like Saturn, she holds a sickle, thus a cognate in turns of production of the earth:





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That’s all six replacements.

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Although Chance and Panofsky chose to overlook Cupid, Marziano did not, following Petrarch who has him sitting on his mother Venus’s lap. Again, the famous early trionfi of Chastity and Love beg for the inclusion of Daphne and Cupid. Not a replacement and instead featured in a sense in bringing up the rear, driving all before him in a sense, precisely as in Petrarch's Triumph of Love.



Petrarch was central to Visconti ideology - any other source requires special pleading. Scipio, along with Daphne/Laura, was central to Petrarch’s own mythology. Petrarch’s Africa's ekphrasis of Syphax’s palace, again, circulated independently of the Africa itself. Its preposterous to think of Filippo’s main humanist was ignorant of this work and that Daphne’s appearance in the tractate is unrelated to Petrarch’s oeuvre. Filippo Visconti had a life-long obsession with Petrarch to the very end of his life when he commissioned Filelfo to write a commentary on the Canzoniere in 1445, not for publication, but in compliance with a request of Filippo Maria Visconti. Moreover the 1438 Semidei produced for Filippo points directly to Capella. The court’s interest in Capella has to go back to Marziano; it was simply elaborated into other court humanists’ projects.



Why Petrarch adapted Capella for his Africa requires both a grounding in the overall plot of that work as well as the one underlying it, Vergil’s Aeneid (more on that in the replies, if anyone cares, but this post is already too long). I’ll note that Marziano likely had access to Petrarch’s own heavily annotated manuscript with the famous Simone Martini Frontispiece of Virgil, ca. 1344, now held in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana (the manuscript contains Virgil’s Bucolics, Georgics and Aeneid, accompanied by Servius’ exegesis, among other texts). Acquired by the Visconti in 1388 when they conquered Padua.



The genius of Marziano is to recognize what Petrarch was doing in his Africa and note its applicability to "fourfold" card playing (any number of gods would necessarily have to be divisible by four, but Petrarch's work was ready-made for that). Being grounded in the same late Latin texts such as Capella, that came much more readily to mind than it would to a modern scholar interested in more primary documents like the Punica and all of the other subsequent discoveries unveiling lost Roman history (or a more narrow interest in the iconographical development of individual gods, such as in Seznec or Panofsky).



Finally, a nod to Huck – yes chess had a role, but only in the sense of applying the burgeoning genre of allegorical Ovid to a still fairly novel game, chess having provided the precedent. There is no evidence whatsoever that Marziano could have conceived of half of theses gods as “pawns” (if anything they were all susceptible to being the pawns of Cupid…but that’s just a metaphor, for a divinity-obsessed duke engaged in his own love affairs).



Phaeded

PS Capella:
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