RIP Girolamo Zorli
Posted: 02 Sep 2023, 02:03
It is with sadness that I report here the death of tarot historian Girolamo Zorli, age 76, whose funeral was on August 28. I asked Andrea Vitali to write up something on his contributions to the field. With a few particulars added by Huck (on the Wayback Machine links) and myself (on his appearances in The Playing Card), I present it in English here.
Girolamo Zorlì attended the Galvani Liceo Classico in Bologna and graduated in law from the university of that city. A passionate lover of Italian card games, he was an active member of the Bolognese Tarocchino Academy from its foundation. He wrote two books on the Bolognese tarocchino, Il Tarocchino Bolognese, Forni, Sala Bolognese, Bologna 1992, and Il Tarocchino bolognese, Storia e regole del gioco, Pendragon, Bologna 2020, as well as the more general Tarocchi e Carte nel Rinascimento - Racconti, (Forni, Sala Bolognese, Bologna 2013).
His "convincing" (per Thierry Depaulis, The Playing Card, 38:1, p. 11) analysis of Lollio's ca. 1550 Invective in terms of a three-handed tarocchi game with 62 cards was used by Dummett and McLeod as their basis for describing the game in their A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack: The Game of Triumphs, Supplement (2009). He wrote a summary in English of why 62 and why three-handed in The Playing Card Vol. 36, no. 2 (Oct.-Dec. 2007), p. 84. In the same issue, John McLeod wrote about Zorli's taking him around Bologna to play the game at local working-men's clubs, mentioning "shortcuts for counting up the values of the combinations" that the players used in the game of Occocento (pp. 157-8). Previously in that journal (26:3, Nov.-Dec. 1997, p. 89) Zorli had written, again in English, "Bolognese Tarocchino: 'Sequenza' Cards,'" about the scoring of sequences in relation to the numbers on the trumps (I have just posted that essay at viewtopic.php?p=26170#p26170). Another print essay on the game of tarocchino still available, in Italian, is in the catalog Antichi giochi e Tarocchi a Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, 2014, pp. 33-43.
On the internet, he created the site www.tretre.it, which he expanded over time with numerous essays on 15th-18th-century texts about tarot and other games. Among many others will be found essays on the Venetian game of Trappola as described in 1525, Francesco Berni's account of Primiera in 1528, and Girolamo Cardano's of the same game in 1540, as well as a full analysis of the Lollio-Imperiali exchange.
This site tre.tre.it, active until 2017, is still accessible via the "Wayback Machine," at https://web.archive.org/web/20170129145 ... tretre.it/. The section on playing cards is at https://web.archive.org/web/20170130110 ... -di-carte/.
As an aside: I only met Girolamo once, visiting Faenza in 2014, for dinner on a night when the only place open anywhere near us served only pizza. Unfortunately, I was much in the dark about tarocchino at the time (and still am, I fear). I credit him with introducing my wife and me to the real deal, very simple but fantastic with the proper ingredients and preparation (which Italians take for granted); the kind he selected ("Margherita," which we then had never heard of and sounded very bland) became a staple for us elsewhere in Italy.
Anyone else with additions about Zorli (or pizza), or corrections, or reminiscences, please feel free to post.
Girolamo Zorlì attended the Galvani Liceo Classico in Bologna and graduated in law from the university of that city. A passionate lover of Italian card games, he was an active member of the Bolognese Tarocchino Academy from its foundation. He wrote two books on the Bolognese tarocchino, Il Tarocchino Bolognese, Forni, Sala Bolognese, Bologna 1992, and Il Tarocchino bolognese, Storia e regole del gioco, Pendragon, Bologna 2020, as well as the more general Tarocchi e Carte nel Rinascimento - Racconti, (Forni, Sala Bolognese, Bologna 2013).
His "convincing" (per Thierry Depaulis, The Playing Card, 38:1, p. 11) analysis of Lollio's ca. 1550 Invective in terms of a three-handed tarocchi game with 62 cards was used by Dummett and McLeod as their basis for describing the game in their A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack: The Game of Triumphs, Supplement (2009). He wrote a summary in English of why 62 and why three-handed in The Playing Card Vol. 36, no. 2 (Oct.-Dec. 2007), p. 84. In the same issue, John McLeod wrote about Zorli's taking him around Bologna to play the game at local working-men's clubs, mentioning "shortcuts for counting up the values of the combinations" that the players used in the game of Occocento (pp. 157-8). Previously in that journal (26:3, Nov.-Dec. 1997, p. 89) Zorli had written, again in English, "Bolognese Tarocchino: 'Sequenza' Cards,'" about the scoring of sequences in relation to the numbers on the trumps (I have just posted that essay at viewtopic.php?p=26170#p26170). Another print essay on the game of tarocchino still available, in Italian, is in the catalog Antichi giochi e Tarocchi a Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, 2014, pp. 33-43.
On the internet, he created the site www.tretre.it, which he expanded over time with numerous essays on 15th-18th-century texts about tarot and other games. Among many others will be found essays on the Venetian game of Trappola as described in 1525, Francesco Berni's account of Primiera in 1528, and Girolamo Cardano's of the same game in 1540, as well as a full analysis of the Lollio-Imperiali exchange.
This site tre.tre.it, active until 2017, is still accessible via the "Wayback Machine," at https://web.archive.org/web/20170129145 ... tretre.it/. The section on playing cards is at https://web.archive.org/web/20170130110 ... -di-carte/.
As an aside: I only met Girolamo once, visiting Faenza in 2014, for dinner on a night when the only place open anywhere near us served only pizza. Unfortunately, I was much in the dark about tarocchino at the time (and still am, I fear). I credit him with introducing my wife and me to the real deal, very simple but fantastic with the proper ingredients and preparation (which Italians take for granted); the kind he selected ("Margherita," which we then had never heard of and sounded very bland) became a staple for us elsewhere in Italy.
Anyone else with additions about Zorli (or pizza), or corrections, or reminiscences, please feel free to post.