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

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mikeh wrote: 07 Jun 2023, 00:43 ... Then we have Vasari in vol. III saying "before 1438" for Brunelleschi's return to Milan, to work for Visconti and the duomo. But that might just be the 1430 trip. In 1438 he went to Rimini, Saalman says. Before that, there was the installation of the tiburia in Florence, which I'd think would restrict Brunelleschi's trips.

Late 1439 seems to me rather late for proposing the tarot. But none of these dates for Milan (unlike Mantua, Ferrara, and Rimini) are very secure.
I read through the last few pages and don't see a cogent trajectory for this mass of research as it relates to tarot in any manner whatsoever, and certainly there is still not a scrap of evidence pointing to tarot before 1440. Is this all still related to the hypothesis that Brunelleschi, strictly brought in for work on a fortress or duomo, saw Marziano's deck in Milan and that inspired him to come up with the ur-tarot in Florence? Anyone care to concisely state the Brunelleschi(-Alberti?) theory as it now stands?

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM FACING THE BRUNELLESCHI HYPOTHESIS: NO TIME FOR A TRIFLING CARD PROJECT 1439-1440
Most importantly, the Duomo's lantern and the exedra (built 1439–1445) occupied most of the remainder of Brunelleschi's life, covered in minute detail in Howard Saalman's Filippo Brunelleschi: The Cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore, 1980 and his Filippo Brunelleschi: The Buildings. 1993/2010.

...the basic question about Brunellesci’s 1439 model design for the tribune morte over the polygonal piers under the drum and cupola: why did he make them round, why were they in better accord with the round form than with the polygonal (‘quella che seguita glianghoj’? All we know about the history of the cathedral project makes it clear that a design for the pier terminations was part of the great cathedral model of 1367 and from the context of the 1439 decision by the opera it is equally certain that the original design of the tribune morte was, in fact, polygonal, substantially resembling the tile-covered vaults of the adjoining octagon arms.

In these same years Brunelleschi, in whose architectural thinking the issue of visibility and compressibility was a fundamental competent of the larger goals of simplicity, clarity and homogeneity, was consistently involved in decisions regarding the visibility of his building project at a distance. Consider in this context the creation of a piazza in front of the new church of San Lorenzo (Chapter IV, 2), his river piazza project for Santo Spirito (Chapter X, 3), the campaccio of the Scolari Oratory (Chapter VIII, 4), the special character of his Sala Nuova design of the Parte Guelfa (Chapter VI). (1993: 411)

So in 1439 the literal culmination of the Duomo's dome - the lantern and its support structure atop the dome - was being treated in a revolutionary manner by Brunelleschi in a way that deviated from the original conception and manner just re-approved by the Cathedral Works in 1439; that problem demanded his utmost attention, as did the ultimate design of the lantern (which ultimately went to Michelozzo). On top of that are the four other design projects he "was consistently involved in decisions" of each.

"Oh, by the way, can you cram in the design of 22 [14 to my mind at this time] subjects for a novel card-playing game?"

The Duomo opera, Cosimo ("finish S. Lorenzo!), the Parte Guelfa would all have been apoplectic. The hypothesis is beyond straining the bounds of credulity.

Phaeded
Last edited by Phaeded on 11 Jun 2023, 19:02, edited 1 time in total.

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

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Ross Caldwell wrote: 11 Jun 2023, 18:52 Hi Phaeded -

I've written a lot in response to your query here, but I haven't posted it. Obviously, it's not concise. But I'm trying to be!

I hope you're not in a hurry.
We've all got all the time in the world...until we kick. ;-)

Just check the additional information I just added above, from Saalman; its a central problem for your theory. I'll also be bumping the Scheggia info and adding to that.

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

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Phaeded wrote: 11 Jun 2023, 19:05
Ross Caldwell wrote: 11 Jun 2023, 18:52 Hi Phaeded -

I've written a lot in response to your query here, but I haven't posted it. Obviously, it's not concise. But I'm trying to be!

I hope you're not in a hurry.
We've all got all the time in the world...until we kick. ;-)

Just check the additional information I just added above, from Saalman; its a central problem for your theory. I'll also be bumping the Scheggia info and adding to that.
Oh no problem with what Brunelleschi might have been doing or not. I don't theorize that he alone invented the game, or spent much time at all on it. "Trifling" is in fact the best way to describe it. The mathematical part at least would have been trivial for a mind like Brunelleschi's. They could have come up with the game of Triumphs on the back of an envelope, so to speak. The subjects of the trumps and their sequence, the moral dimension or programme, would have taken more consideration, like composing a poem. Its complexity, as a group effort, is probably why its origins are obscure, and why no one claimed its invention. Quite possibly the "first edition," as it were, was not a best-seller, and it was only after it got pirated that it started to take off. That, and the taste of rich people for luxurious versions.

Brunelleschi has the role of Prometheus, in this theory. He saw Filippo Maria's game, played it with him, took note of its structure, maybe got a copy of the text (even one in Italian that I suppose Visconti needed), and brought the idea of a morally symbolic trump sequence back to Florence.

But I'm not sure your idea that he had no time for intellectual pursuits is sound, in any case. He could walk and chew gum at the same time. He had a life outside of work. He liked to think about intellectual and moral subjects, too. The inventory of his possessions after his death shows that he owned a copy of the four major Prophets, apparently a rare thing, and he was particularly interested in Dante's Inferno. Take note of what Eugenio Battisti says about the origin of the famous diagrams of Hell that Girolamo Benivieni included in his Dialogo di Antonio Manetti cittadino fiorentino circa al sito, forme et misure dello 'Inferno' di Dante Alghieri poeta excellentissimo (1506):
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http://www.rosscaldwell.com/battisti/dante.jpg
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https://archive.org/details/filippobrun ... t/mode/2up

Manetti was not quite 23 when Brunelleschi died, so the impression he made on the young man who had at most six or seven years to learn from him, shows that he was still enthusiastic about these intellectual subjects right up to his death. Brunelleschi had no wife or natural children, only his adopted son Andrea Cavalcanti, "Il Buggiano," so his "family" consisted of this circle of friends, some of whom Battisti lists (from Manetti's list at the end of the Novella del Grasso Legnaiuolo; an important name linking Manetti and Alberti, mentioned by Battisti here, is Cristoforo Landino), including of course Lo Scheggia and Feo Belcari (who went on to create sacre rappresentazioni, including a reform of the San Giovanni procession). In other words, Manetti's diagrams of the Inferno could have been among the sorts of things he and Brunelleschi worked on in the last years of his life.

Manetti's manuscript of Dante from 1462 (Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze, Naz. II.I.33), with the marginal illustrations Battisti mentions, is here, the diagrams for the Inferno are on folios 3r, 24v, 45r, 79v, 82v, 83v, - https://archive.org/details/fondo-nazio ... 3/mode/2up

You'll recall Marziano's reading Dante with Filippo Maria. Dante could have been what Marziano lectured on in Florence. Brunelleschi and Marziano could have met in Florence if the latter taught there in the 1390s, or again in Milan, if his first visit was before the end of 1422, after which Marziano appears to have retired to his property in Tortona. Nothing unusual to be interested in Dante, of course, but it is notable that it was particularly notable chez Brunelleschi.

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

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Phaeded wrote: 11 Jun 2023, 19:05
Just check the additional information I just added above, from Saalman; its a central problem for your theory. I'll also be bumping the Scheggia info and adding to that.
Speaking of central problems for a theory, here's a point you missed in January -
Ross Caldwell wrote: 07 Jan 2023, 10:18
Phaeded wrote: 04 Jun 2022, 22:40 I'm not proposing him for the ur-tarot (for which I suggest Bruni)
The 3 January 1444 arrest and fining of two men for playing charte a trionfi in the San Simone district suggests that the game did not have such high origins as with the (still living) Chancellor of Florence. Rather, it had obscure origins and its legal status was apparently not settled until 1450.

I don't find your theory on the Ur-Tarot persuasive at all, but it just occurred to me that this was a way to argue for the improbability of some of your premises, such as it having been civic propaganda or conceived by the most prominent official in the city.

For the text, see pages 5-7 of Franco Pratesi's article here http://naibi.net/A/424-GIGLIO444-Z.pdf

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

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The 3 January 1444 arrest and fining of two men for playing charte a trionfi in the San Simone district suggests that the game did not have such high origins as with the (still living) Chancellor of Florence. Rather, it had obscure origins and its legal status was apparently not settled until 1450.
One of the men was the son of a notary (Pratesi writes, http://naibi.net/A/78-CARDS.pdf, "Dei due giocatori coinvolti sappiamo solo che uno era figlio di un notaio" - of the two convicted players we know only that one was the son of a notary). This is a profession requiring education, even if they didn't make much money. It was the popular base for humanism. Even Bruni started as a notary.

San Simone was where the prison was, so the man might have been there to pick up or deliver a document relating to a prisoner for his father, whiling away a long wait by playing cards. An illegal game is not the best choice for such a place. In any case, 1444 is not at the origin of the game. Higher-class people tend to set the fashion trends for those below, who are often quick to follow.

It seems to me that if there is a connection between Marziano's game and Trionfi, the game would likely have been played in the court circles of Lombardy before 1440, where they already knew how to play the same game with different subjects.

Ross, your argument (stated elsewhere) seems to be that such cards as the Bagatella, the Hanged Man, and the Devil are not the kind of cards Filippo would have liked, but would have appealed to a popular clientele. Well, as Phaeded and I agree, the game might well not have started out like that, but rather was more what we see in the Cary-Yale in subjects, and with more like 14 trumps (or precisely 16, the same as Marziano's). Florence would have only controlled the eventual consensus composition, being the major craft center.

Filippo, as a man of increasing piety, would have favored and even desired such subjects as seen in the Cary-Yale, including the theological virtues, it seems to me - at least as much as Cosimo and Malatesta, and more than the general population of card players. For such a man of piety, the Marziano subjects would have seemed too human, most with negative as well as positive traits, despite being called "heroes." They were not so suitable for a game designed to prepare one "to be aroused to virtue," as Marziano had declared the game's purpose.

Moreover, they were not suitable educational tools in a state that upheld the model of Plato's Republic, more or less (a text first translated by Uberto Decembrio, then by his son Pier Candido, Filippo's secretary) for the regulation of morals; Plato had said there that poets' stories about gods such as Zeus, whom they called "dispenser alike of good and of evil to mortals" (Republic II.379d-e), etc.,should be suppressed. Changing them to "heroes" is no help: heroes should serve as models to emulate.

The final product, of course, did have negative cards, but the later orders in the various centers tend to suggest that they were late additions, done after the competition between centers had been replaced by efforts toward cooperation starting in the 1450s. The cards in common between the Cary-Yale and the later Italian orders of triumphs mostly vary in where they go in the sequence from one center to another. Most of the rest keep the same placement everywhere: the Bagatella, the Pope, the Hanged Man, and the five from Devil to Sun, everywhere in precisely the same order (added later: although the Pope and Death can be explained as natural dividers). Most would likely have been added in a period of increased cooperation among centers vs. the earlier competition.
Last edited by mikeh on 19 Jun 2023, 09:50, edited 2 times in total.

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

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mikeh wrote: 19 Jun 2023, 02:44
The 3 January 1444 arrest and fining of two men for playing charte a trionfi in the San Simone district suggests that the game did not have such high origins as with the (still living) Chancellor of Florence. Rather, it had obscure origins and its legal status was apparently not settled until 1450.
One of the men was the son of a notary (Pratesi writes, http://naibi.net/A/78-CARDS.pdf, "Dei due giocatori coinvolti sappiamo solo che uno era figlio di un notaio" - of the two convicted players we know only that one was the son of a notary). This is a profession requiring education, even if they didn't make much money. It was the popular base for humanism. Even Bruni started as a notary.

San Simone was where the prison was, so the man might have been there to pick up or deliver a document relating to a prisoner for his father, whiling away a long wait by playing cards. An illegal game is not the best choice for such a place. In any case, 1444 is not at the origin of the game. Higher-class people tend to set the fashion trends for those below, who are often quick to follow.
Good points Mike. I agree with pretty much everything you said in that post. I have something to add as well, but it requires a lot of work before it can be presented properly, and I keep getting bogged down with a million other things, including an article that I'm trying to finish about Venetian cards in the 16th century and which I really need to submit to The Playing-Card asap...

But basically, I've found some further substantial evidence to reinforce the hypothesis that the tarot deck is descended from an earlier deck that was clearly centered on Petrarch's Trionfi cycle. Together with the evidence that we already had (the original name of the tarot deck and game, the presence in the deck of Time, Death, Love, Chastity, and probably Eternity and Fame too, and the remarkable coincidence of tarot emerging in the historical record at exactly the same time as a trend of illustrating the Trionfi cycle with one image for each subject), I think we now have enough to be confident that this is indeed the origin of the Trionfi game, i.e. a game which almost certainly had fewer trumps than in the standard sequence (a number of trumps closer to that of Marziano's game), and which was far more narrowly focused on the six Petrarchan Trionfi. That game and deck then underwent various modifications in later stages, ultimately resulting in the standard sequence by about 1440.

And that of course then continued to undergo modifications, in various times and places. Like all card games, tarot has always been in a continuous state of evolution and change. Some moments in the course of that evolution are simply more momentous than others. The emergence of what we think of as the "standard sequence" is arguably the most momentous moment of all, but it is, I think, now quite clear that it was nevertheless just one moment in a long and changing story. It is not the story's fixed and immutable starting point.

I know I can't expect anyone to accept this conclusion until I present the evidence, and that is going to take a while, because there is so much involved that I may well end up having to write a book (although I really hope I don't). But I felt that I should at least say something about this, rather than just sitting on it silently.

Now I will get back to all those other things I need to be doing...

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

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Thanks, Nathaniel. Good to hear from you. I agree with almost everything you said. I need more persuading that the fad of Petrarch illustrations (in manuscripts and cassone) in Florence starting around 1440 shows anything about the game, except that the game's popularity, with cards associated by those familiar with them to Petrarch's poems, probably stimulated the demand for the illustrations. It may have gone the other way, but I can't see how that supposition is justified. That the poems had the same name and themes as six of the cards is something else, obviously preceding the game, as did editions with no illuminations, or just one, with a smaller demand. Also, the associations to Petrarch probably contributed to the game's popularity.

Ross has a different explanation for the "trionfi" name of the game, having nothing to do with Petrarch. It has to do with the "deification" in Marziano's title, the "raising of the triumphator to godlike status." It is worth reading.

https://www.academia.edu/101986254/From ... d_florence

He gives examples, but none from the cards themselves, much less the Cary-Yale. When you go to the cards, Petrarch abounds (at least six times). This is not to say that Ross is wrong about a relationship to Marziano in what the special suit involves, a higher level of being. But it is not euhemerism, even in a generalized sense of raising historical persons to godlike status, as in Ross's example of the depictions of St. Thomas Aquinas in heaven. Nor are the cards about particular persons' triumphs, as in the examples from Marziano that Ross cites, even if there may be references to particular persons or families in the designs.

Rather, they are on a higher level of being in the sense of a type, or concept, or nexus of concepts as opposed to a particular instance, which the poets - and sometimes the law - personified. Petrarch is generalizing in his poetry, especially his titles. That's what allegory does, too. You can talk about a bunch of lovers who abandon reason in their frenzy, or about Cupid with his arrows, or both. It is also like the Pythagorean theorem, which triumphs every time one makes a right-angled triangle. Or the formulas of Special Relativity, which triumph every time they send a satellite with an electronic clock into orbit. Or one of Plato's favorite examples, the Bed, which rules over the furniture maker in making beds; it might be indicated by a playing card, too, called "Bed", as opposed to a particular bed. In the same way, Temperance rules over the person who practices that virtue.

Added later: The above is not quite right, because in that sense the court cards are also types, and the number cards, too, with higher numbers triumphing over lower ones. These are somehow lower-level types, but I don't know how to characterize the difference. Maybe it's in subject-matter, I don't know: Kings less exalted than Emperors, the numbers from 1 to 10 somehow less exalted than the virtues and the life issues Petrarch talks about.

In any case, the road from Marziano to the Tarot, on this higher level of being, passes through the virtues and also through Petrarch, for the particular types it draws on.

I, too, am working on a longer piece, although so far not with much else about the Petrarch connection. Here is a slightly edited version of what I have on Petrarch in relation to the Cary-Yale, in the context of what I wrote in my previous post:
Judgment (written on the card, and spoken of in the poem) can represent Eternity, while the World shows a personified Fama, her attribute of the trumpet in one hand and a crown in the other, above a lone knight in a this-worldly setting. The Chariot, its lady holding a jousting shield, corresponds to Petrarch’s Pudicizia, who in the poem holds one as a defense against Cupid. The only Petrarchan missing is Time, between Fame and Eternity ..., even if the Tarot’s old man holding an hourglass, sometimes referred to as Time, never was that high in the trump orders. Or perhaps the card depicted the sun, which Petrarch personified at the beginning of the poem and gave a long monologue. The other missing trump . . . is likely the Wheel, one of the triumphs of Boccaccio’s Amorosa Visione and present in the Brera-Brambilla, another Visconti deck. . . . Moreover, there was (and still is) a large fresco of the Wheel in the former Visconti palace on Lake Maggiore, which the duke would have known well. Whatever the missing cards actually were, these two are surely reasonable enough.

This set of sixteen makes perfect sense in terms of the preceding culture. Empress and Emperor are natural superiors to the four kings and queens and may have been used in “VIII Imperadori.” Superior to them are the seven canonical virtues, Fortune’s Wheel, and the six triumphs of Petrarch, three of them (Love as personified by Cupid, Death, Time) difficulties facing anyone, the other three (Pudicizia, Fame, Eternity) virtuous triumphs over those difficulties. The early name of the game, trionfi, is even the same as the collective name for these poems.

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

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A possible insight on Marziano's Juno and its connection to the CY King of Coins.

A potential influence for Marziano, or perhaps his artist, I've argued for from time to time is that of Christine de Pizan's Epistre Othea (c. 1400), especially the illuminated manuscript made for the Queen of France, Isabelle (combined with other works of Pizan), surviving in the British library as Harley MS 4431, dated 1410-c 1414. https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDispl ... ey_MS_4431

Background on the patron: Isabeau of Bavaria (or Isabelle; also Elisabeth of Bavaria-Ingolstadt; c. 1370 – September 1435) was Queen of France from 1385 to 1422. She was born into the House of Wittelsbach as the only daughter of Duke Stephen III of Bavaria-Ingolstadt and Taddea Visconti of Milan. At age 15 or 16, Isabeau was sent to France to marry the young King Charles VI; the couple wed three days after their first meeting.

So in Isabeau we not only have a Filippo relation (still alive when the Marziano was created) but through her additional connections to the royal house of France (in addition to Valentina Visconti, Duchess of Orleans for whom the Othea was originally written but he's assassinated in 1407) and the imperial Palatinate Elector House of Wittelsbach (the Golden Bull of 1356, the Palatinate was recognized as one of the secular electorates, and hereditary imperial vicar of Franconia, Swabia, the Rhine, and southern Germany from where the early German luxury cards come from). But from either Isabeau or Valentina, the Visconti court could have gotten a copy (and Pizan is herself Italian).

A very narrow but specific connection between the Othea and Marziano is the figure of Juno. In Pizan's encyclopedic work, 14 of Marziano's gods are covered - Aeolis is oddly not, considering both the Greek fleet headed to Troy (where Hector, to whom the letter of Othea, an allegory of Prudence, is directed) and Aeneas's ships were severely affected by that god (but presumably Aeolus is implied in the Neptune illumination - see the broken mast in his image below), and Vesta (but like Marziano, she has several goddesses portrayed as nuns such as the Tiburtine Sibyl, as Marziano implies Vesta to be). Of the 14 gods/goddesses shown below, most are self-evident, but Juno is not (2nd from bottom right)- she looks almost male and holds the money bags above her "children" devoted to financial pursuits:

Image

In MS Harley, f. 118r, Juno is listed as "goddess of wealth, presiding over an assembly of men counting money". The entry in Pizan's Othea text itself:

Gloss 49
Juno is the goddess of possessions according to the poets' fables, and because great effort and exertion are needed to hold and acquire possessions and riches, and because such effort can distract from acquiring honor, and since honor and valor are more praiseworthy than riches, just as the kernal is worth more than the shell, Othea advises the good knight that he should not place his thoughts and happiness so that the pursuit of valor is abandoned. On this subject Hermes says that poverty is worth more in accomplishing good than sinfully acquired riches, for worth is eternal, riches vain and frail.

Allegory 49 [the Christian moralization of the same, a'la the Ovide moralise tradition]
We can likewise take Juno, with whom it was said that one should not concern oneself too much and who represents riches, to mean the good spirit should scorn wealth....[and so on, more moralizing, quoting Saint Bernard, etc.]"

Christine Pizan. Othea’s Letter to Hector. Tr. and introduction: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, ‎Earl Jeffrey Richard, Iter Press, 2017: 84).

What Marziano says of Juno, that is in addition to the good deal he says of her in connection to Chastity:

They add a beautiful but noisy bird, covered in eyed feathers; because rich men are adorned, but noisy, and many eyes are required for gaining and watching after riches and earthly things. They assign her one colourful rainbow, welcome in appearance, but quickly disappearing. In fact the abundance of earthly things must be estimated at the light of this: that in a short time it can perish and flow away. However, it would seem to be good for the present purpose to omit the chariot and the arms which our Virgil assigns.

In both Pizan and Marziano then we have an explicit aversion to riches, with Marziano adding the odd connection of the noisy peacock watching over said riches (if you've not been around that bird, they squawk and screech worst than roosters, per my experience of the feral flock of them in Coconut Grove/Miami).

Look now at the three surviving CY Kings (Batons is missing) - only one has peacock feathers on his headdress and he is literally averting his gaze from the offered coin and gesturing "no" with his hands:

Image

We can say the peacock feathers - not worn by the other kings - is merely the artist's need for variety. Or we can recognize the precedent of the Marziano deck in which the peacock is specifically linked to watching over riches which is precisely what the CY King of Coins is doing the opposite of. It is possible Marziano took the Juno/riches trope from a common source also used by Pizan (e.g., Boccaccio, Gen.deo. IV.35: "...earth with its riches and kingdoms, over which Juno is preeminent." Tr. Solomon, V. 1, p. 521), but her artist also uses a bag of coins in Juno's hand and coffers of coins on possession of her "children" below (ignoring all her other attributes), which the CY king stands as an anti-type of. Given the strong connections between the Pavia and Paris courts, I'd argue for an influence of Pizan here. At all events, there has to be a genetic connection between the Marziano Juno and the CY King of Coins via the peacock feathers and coin.

Phaeded
Last edited by Phaeded on 08 Sep 2023, 18:25, edited 3 times in total.