Not me, Ross. Your scenario seems to me eminently reasonable, and I would think Rene I would be part of it. On this point there is Depaulis, in my translation (from
http://tarotinfrancebefore1500.blogspot.com/, where I also have scans of the original):
These two decks and the booklet associated with them were therefore handed to Isabelle in early 1450. René seems to have inherited the property of Isabella, who died in 1453, and René in turn decided, in 1480, that his collections would mostly go to enriching those of King Louis XI of France, his cousin.
I did have a different scenario for a 1480 French reference to "triumphs" than that favored by Depaulis, but that is another story, in a different part of northern France.
Phaeded wrote (in yesterday's posts)
In the period we are talking about, one is not merely famous for being famous (e.g., Kim Kardashian in our own damned times), one was famous for something...and that something was always Virtue in general, or the canonical virtues named specifically, especially prudence when it came to rulers (and almost op[posed to them having overcome Fortuna through the virtues).
Well, Fame is still different from Prudence, with different attributes. Prudence did not have a crown as an attribute. The crown does imply Fame worthy of a Prince, literally or metaphorically. And yes, Fame is for something, and in a prince probably many of the virtues, and in the CY including all seven. That is why the card is at or near the end of the sequence. But Prudence is a virtue for everyone, not especially rulers. That's why it would have its own card.
Phaeded wrote,
And yet the theologicals, much more prominent alongside the cardinal virtues in Florentine public spaces than the Petrarchan motifs, are dismissed as coincidental in the CY?
I took some pains to say that they weren't coincidental: they are logical extensions of the four virtues present previously. There is the lack of anti0types on the Fortitude card, in contrast to their presence on the theologicals, to suggest that the designs were not conceived in one fell swoop.
Phaeded wrote
And your glossing of Petrarchan Eternity for tarot's Judgement is not born by the examples we have of either.
Well, that is true, except for a "God the Father" at the top of the CY and PMB cards. These are all independent works (I mean the poems, the cards, the Petrarch illuminations), and the Petrarch illustrations don't match the poems in all respects either, as many have pointed out, even when the poems are on the same pages. Petrarch's idea is that Eternity triumphs over Time. It is this idea of one thing triumphing over another that is of interest in devising and playing a card game. The Last Judgment Judgment is the cards' version of the triumph of Eternity over Time. That hasn't happened yet in the CY and Florentine World cards, which is why it is second to last. The PMB "second artist" World card shows the New Jerusalem, which is somehow beyond Time. In that case the World card is last.
Phaeded wrote,
Petrarch is familiar to tarot because he's part of the same culture that produced Dante.
The difference is that in the 1440s there did not suddenly start appearing in Florence numerous similar cassone paintings and illustrations in manuscripts of Dante's
Divine Comedy.
Phaeded wrote
So you've ignored my limiting caveat - Medici art (explicitly commissioned by them, and at least implicit of their power in Florence) - and none of the examples you gave above are from the corpus of commissioned Medicean art.
I have perhaps misunderstood you. I will have to think about this one.
Added a little later: First, the halberd has a meaning independently of "Medici art", and was used as such in art of the time. Military prowess brings fame. My examples are relevant to that extent. I do not think "Medici art" is a valid name for a specific tradition in art, in which alone the halberd has meaning, defined by two examples. I would think both examples are defined by the object's natural meaning and the general tradition in art. What might make the ChVI Chariot card an expression of Medicean power is the "palle" on the chariot (unless that is simply a device to indicate who the deck is for). Is it only in relation to the Pazzi conspiracy that a condottiero holding a halberd would be appropriate? I don't think so. Cosimo had been exiled in the early 1430s, and after that took control. So any reasonable time after that would seem appropriate.
There is one thing from your previous post, of Nov. 25, that I should have addressed (again). It is pretty fundamental, so I will try again.
Phaeded wrote:
mikeh wrote: ↑
23 Nov 2019, 01:02
As far as your detailed historical account of Giusti and Sforza, you have presented nothing to indicate that the game was not invented earlier than 1440.
That's because there is nothing to explain away - ZERO pre-1440 evidence. And if you would take the time to actually read all of Giusti's giornali, you would see that Giusti was in frequent contact with Malatesta (and the Florentine war commission, the Dieci) before Anghiari, so it begs the question: if Florence was previously making tarot, why did Giusti wait until 1440, after Anghiari, to gift tarot to Malatesta...in the presence of the allied army, fresh from its triumph at Anghiari, that arrived from Florence into Malatesta's domains? Neither Giusti nor anyone else mention trionfi as existing pre-1440.
Of course there
is evidence to explain away, namely the evidence that Maggio presents for the Alessandro Sforza being pre-1440 (similar in nature to what you give for 1475, namely, historical events), and that Fiorini, and Belossi before her, present for the Rothschild cards being pre-1440 (in this case stylistic; I have reproduced and translated their writings at
http://rothschildcards.blogspot.com/). To be sure, Giuisti probably sent the deck to Malatesta because it was a high-prestige item and served to express Florentine gratitude. That says nothing about tarot before that deck.
More basically, I don't follow why "there is nothing to explain away" or "Neither Giusti nor anyone else mention trionfi as existing pre-1440" is in any way decisive. Let me repeat: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. For example, there is no evidence that I ate breakfast every day last week. I didn't record it, nor do I even remember. I can only go by present habits, and my past habits if someone happened to record them, to make an educated guess. The past, of course, is not the sum total of evidence, or even evidence and memories. But what is it? Among other things, it is an a priori framework in which evidence and memories available in the present are placed, with more or less probability, sometimes even with certainty, filling in the gaps with inferences, again with more or less probability, and leaving the gaps empty when nothing can be inferred. (I don't mean
a priori in a strict Kantian sense: it is not prior to all experience of everyone.) We can argue from present evidence, and past evidence we do have, to a past that goes beyond direct evidence. Thus Ross says that the tarot might be as early as 1438: it is a matter of later evidence (summarized in a chart) being used to make an inference. And why Dummett (with Depaulis and Decker, 1996, p. 27) gave 1410 as "the earliest date with any claim to plausibility" , but "probably around 1425; and "perhaps 1428-30" (in
Il Mondo e l'Angelo, 1993), and "about1420" (in "Where do the virtues?", 2004) . This was at a time when 1442 was the earliest documented reference to "trionfi"; now it is 1440, but that is not much of a difference, as far as projecting into an unknown past.
Dummett after his retirement in 1992 wrote a couple of books of philosophy, not hard to understand, that addressed the question of truth in relation to the past, in which he distanced himself from his earlier views. This new stance, I think, helped him to comment better on tarot beyond direct evidence. Perhaps tarot researchers should read them (as well as, of course, taking more seriously his post-retirement works on tarot). I discussed these philosophical works at
viewtopic.php?p=15094#p15094 (although with zero interest on the part of others, even though it was a thread on methodology). Especially relevant in the present context is the section of that post called "truth and the past".