Re: Collection "How Petrarca became famous" (till 1450)

51
Thank you, Lorredan. I probably should have said it was the first known European image of the "death-with-bull-type", or perhaps, "death-with-horned-bovine type". And thank you for the detail of the wax coffin: perfect.

Now I want to add that Michael has slightly changed the information about the 2nd oldest extant Triumph of Fame (or Fama, Gloria etc.), at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... detail.jpg.

He now has "c. 1380" instead of "c. 1388," based on information that I sent him. One piece is from a 1984 BNF book, Dix Siecles d'Illuminure Italienne, by Avril et al, p. 89. Here is my scan (click on the image to make it clearer):
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pzqcxlnUylk/U ... 984p89.JPG

That dating was endorsed by Kirsch, 1991, in Five Manuscripts of Giangaleazzo Visconti, Fig. 1, http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6W1e6E4FSAk/U ... 91fig1.JPG

Whatever the exact date, it was certainly before 1388, when Giangaleazzo Visconti conquered Padua and seized the manuscripts, as Avril ("saisi en 1388") and Kirsch (p. 3) point out. But it is more likely close in time to the other manuscript; hence the "c. 1380."

Also, instead of "artist unknown" Michael now has "attributed to Altichiero," again based on information I sent him. Actually, in my view it would be better to say "attributed to Altichiero or his circle," because those making the attribution say either both "Altichiero" and "circle of Altichiero" (Kirsch) or "Altichiero workshop" (Richards). Kirsch has "Altichiero" in the caption to her Fig. 1, above. But in footnote 42, p. 82, she has "circle of Altichiero", for the apparent reason that the 1379 illumination, on which the c. 1388 is based, is reminiscent of the work of Jacopo Avanzo, an associate of Altichiero's: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A5WxDm5KFe8/U ... 991p82.JPG

A second source is the caption for the picture of the c. 1380 in John Richards' Altichiero: an artist and his patrons in the Italian trecento, 2000. He has "Altichiero workshop":
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SLUS4IC-uxU/U ... dsPl37.JPG. In his case, Richards (pp. 125-126) gives reasons for thinking that this c. 1380 illumination is by an assistant, and the 1379, of higher quality and earlier, is by Altichiero himself.

A third source, referenced by Richards, is Robin Simon, "Altichiero vs. Avanzo," in Papers of the British School at Rome 45 (1977), pp. 252-271. Simon (p. 268) says that the frontispiece of the 1379 (6069F) "is now widely accepted as Altichiero's." Simon adds that the attribution to Altichiero of the other frontispiece (6069I, which I am calling "c. 1380") is "less certain". Also (pp. 269-270):
This version is lower in quality and although dependent from Cod. Lat. 6069F it also differs sufficiently, iconographically, to distance it from the Altichiero version executed for Lombardo della Seta and confirm that it should be dated rather later.
How much later? Simon quotes Shorr: "probably toward the end of the century." But surely before 1388! The newer sources give "c. 1380." Avril et al and Kirsch, who give this dating, do not give a reason why. For that I turn to Richards (p. 125), who does not actually give a dating, except after the 1379. He says the book was part of the same project as the 1379, and that it shows signs of being done hurridly:
Volume 6069I uses unrevised, corrupt, and occasionally incoherent, texts of various parts of the DVI [De Viris Illustribus]. It is clear that Lombardo was only concerned in this case to make the older version available in a decent volume, without wasting any time on textual niceties. What probably happened is that Francesco da Carrara, who had presumably discussed the genesis and history of the DVI with Petrarch (the two men had developed a close friendship), asked for a copy of the older version to go with his copy of the final text.
Whoever the artist was, it is part of the outcome of the frescoes of the Sala Virorum Illustrium (or Sala dei Gigante) in the Palazzo Carrara of Padua, all of which except one--its portrait of Petrarch--were lost in an early 16th century fire. These frescoes, overwhelmingly associated with Altichiero, in turn illustrated Petrarch's De Viris Illustribus (the book to which our illuminations are the frontispiece). Petrarch himself, a friend of Francesco da Carrara (il Vecchio, I think), started to write a program for these frescoes, the so-called Compendium). The project was overseen by Lombardo della Seta, Petrarch's secretary (This is in Richards, Chapter 4, among other places. For background on Carrara, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carraresi.) It is unclear whether there was actually a fresco in the Sala portraying the Triumph of Fame, as opposed to triumphs of various individuals. Richards, as against Theodore Mommsen (1952), says there was no room, given Mommsen's reconstruction. For our purposes, it makes little difference. There is no "Triumph of Fame" section in the DVI, just biographies of illustrious individuals.

Richards points out a detail in the c. 1380 illumination (not in the 1379) that he considers taken from Petrarch's "Triumph of Fame" and which is not in Boccaccio, nor described in accounts of the 1335 Giotto fresco in Milan: it is what Richards (p. 132) calls the "beams of light" in the illumination, corresponding in Petrarch to the rays of an unseen sun lighting up the sky and the morning star Venus (http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/read_tr ... e=IV-I.txt).
Quale in sul giorno un'amorosa stella
suol venir d'orïente inanzi al sole
che s'accompagna volentier con ella,
cotal venia; et oh! di quali scole
verrà 'l maestro che descriva a pieno
quel ch'io vo' dir in semplici parole?
Era d'intorno il ciel tanto sereno,
che per tutto 'l desir ch'ardea nel core
l'occhio mio non potea non venir meno.

(As at the break of day an amorous star
Comes from the east before the rising sun,
Who gladly enters her companionship,
Thus came she. From what rhetoricians' school
Shall come the master who could fully tell
What I shall only tell in simple words?
The sky all round about was now so bright
My eyes were vanquished by its brilliancy,
In spite of the desire that filled my heart.)
(http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/read_tr ... ge=IV-I.en)

So we have http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... detail.jpg

There is nothing like these rays in Boccaccio, who has her instead "with a mighty circle all enclosed" (see my lengthy quote at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=858&p=13327&hilit=Boccaccio#p13327). Boccaccio's circle, which Petrarch doesn't mention, is also in this particular illumination, as a lunette (but not in the earlier one, unless you count the white space around her). The illumination seems to combine aspects of both authors. The Florentine depictions of the Triumph of Fame tend to have only Boccaccio's circle, and sometimes leave out even that.

I notice another detail (besides the car and the laurels--which perhaps in Petrarch can be assumed, as Richards suggests) that might be closer to Boccaccio (I say "might" because I don't know either poet well): Fama, in the illuminations, has far fewer laurels than there are riders to receive them. This might suggest that only a few have sufficient virtue to win the carefully aimed laurel. On the other hand, if she is just throwing them into the throng, it could be partly a matter of chance who gets them, among those with sufficient virtue. That might suggest that Fama is neither the same as Renown (which one can have with only the appearance of virtue) nor a matter only of a life with Virtue, but also, for this-worldly Fama, a certain amount of luck: Fortuna, the last and most powerful of the terrestrial Triumphs in Bocaccio's sequence, which starts with Wisdom, then Terrestrial Glory, Wealth, Love, and Fortune (and her servant Death, says Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorosa_visione). At the end there might be another Triumph as well: Celestial Love.

As reflected in the CY tarot, seeing it as an upward sequence as in Petrarch, this might mean that Fortuna must be attained, as well as the Virtues, in order to attain Fama. So I add this to my reasons for considering Fortuna as a missing card in the CY (the other reasons being that it is in the Brera-Brambrilla, a deck in the same style as the CY; that Fortune is a prominent theme in medieval literature; and that luck plays an educational role in the game).

One last comment: looking once more at Callman (1973), I see that she is the one who mixed up the two images, the c. 1379 (6069F) and the c. 1380 (6069I), not Shorr, not Michael, and not me originally (although later I thought I had). The captions on her pictures, as I showed, should be switched. That was driving me crazy!

Love, Death, the Sun, and the Canzioniere

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I found more information pertaining to the 1414 Bologna illuminated manuscript with the illuminations of the Triumphs of Death and Fame (both tentative), which Huck posted (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=868&p=12930&hilit=1414#p12930)
http://194.95.59.225/fileadmin/imagesww ... l81_09.jpg

And chasing the footnotes, I think I found some interesting things, having to do with the Love card and the Sun card as well as the Triumphs of Love and Death.

My text is J. B. Trapp's Studies of Petrarch and his Influence, 2003, discussing illustrations of Petrarch's Canzoniere, which seem to be much more numerous than illustrations of his Trionfi in the period before 1440. He begins (pp. 17-18):
From an early date, it had been customary to mark the division of the Canzoniere into 'Sonetti in vita di Madonna Laura' and "sonetti in morte'with some sort of special decoration--as is already the case in the famous part-autograph manuscript in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican Lat. 3195. It may be that the earliest illustrated Canzoniere was the one written by Paolo for Lorenzo di Carlo Strozzi (d. 1383) in Florence and decorated there, with initials and borders for the first poem of both the 'Sonetti in vita' and the 'Sonetti in morte'. For the 'Vita', a winged Love aims an arrow at Petrarch from the upper margin; in the outer margin stands Laura, laureate and transfixed; in the initial V is Petrarch, writing in his cathedra (Fig. 8); for the 'Morte', Petrarch stands in the initial I, with Laura lying dead, watched by Death, in the outer margin. (73) A little later is the codex written in prison at Venice in 1400 by Andrea da Badagio, of which the illustration has been securely attributed to Cristoforo Cortese (Fig. 9), who was active c. 1410; (74) and a little later still a Lombard codex (Fig. 10 of about 1420-1430.

Footnote 73. Manchester, John Rylands University Library, MS. Ital. 1, ff. 3r and 105r. The decoration may be later than the script. See n. 39 above and, for later developments of this illustrative schema, below, p. 25. See also the roughly contemporary manuscript, written and decorated probably in Bologna and now Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Ms. McClean 173, ff. 1r and 51r; Mann, British Isles, no. 15. [N. Mann, Petrarch Manuscripts in the British Isles]
Footnote 74. London, British Library, King's MS. 321, f. 1r; Mann, British Isles, no. 126.
Footnote 75. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Canonici Ital. 69, f. 1r; Mann, British Isles, no . 183; O. Paecht and J. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, II, Italian Schools,, Oxford, 1970, no. 691, Pl. LXVIII. The Trionfi section of this codex is now Leiden, University Library, MS BPL 2887.
Here are the illustrations that Trapp gives us:
First, his Fig. 8: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t1rusILzI9k/U ... trozzi.JPG, if you want to find the Strozzi devices; but the details relevant here are below:
Image

Cupid is on top, Laura already hit on the right, Petrarch on the left. If we combine this with the image he described but didn't show, we have both the Triumph of Love and the Triumph of Death, as well as the essential details of both the Love and Death tarot cards. To see the relevant image of Death, as well as the corresponding Bologna illuminations, I will need to get the book by Mann.

Here is Trapp's Fig. 9, http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_6Yl0bezIgA/U ... app1-9.JPG, of which the relevant details are below:
Image

Laura is on the right, holding out the laurel to Petrarch, who still isn't looking up from his writing. Typical male behavior. Not very relevant to our concerns.

Here is his Fig. 10, http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q9PVE1HXBZQ/U ... pp1-10.JPG, of which the relevant detail is below:
Image

This is a death scene all right, and a Triumph of Death, but different from the tarot Death card. It is part of a different tradition, of which more later. An interesting thing about this 1420-1430 Lombard manuscript is that it includes the Trionfi, that part now in Leiden.

Another illustrations on the theme of the Triumph of Love is described on p. 21:
A manuscript variously assigned to Lombardy about 1440 and to Venice and Cristoforo Cortese almost twenty years earlier, has an opening miniature for the Canzoniere which shows Love aiming an arrow at Petrarch in a landscape. (88)
Footnote 88. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS. Ital. 549, f. 9r; once owned by Cardinal Mazarin; Pellegrin, France, pp. 153-155 (II, 331-333); Dix siecles d'enluminure, no. 1109, cf. below, n. 124.
Trapp actually mentions another one in the next sentence; but the reference reveals that it is his Fig. 8 again, which he seems to have forgotten he already talked about.

Since my local library has Dix siecles, so I am able to show you the illustration, with Love in the upper right drawing a bead on Petrarch below:
Image

Avril et al say it is from Venice or Padua, 1st quarter of the 15th century, assigned to Crostoforo Cortese, active from 1409 to 1440. It certainly doesn't look Lombard to me. One that is Lombard, c. 1440, on the same theme, is Trapp's Fig. 14,
Image

We see some of the characteristic Lombard grace; the lady's gown would be at home in the Cary-Yale or Brera-Brambilla court cards.

What is particularly interesting for us about the illustration from "Padoue, Venise" that I just showed you is that Avril et al say that the manuscript, 190 parchment folios, is of Sonnetti, Triunfi. In other words, it is another manuscript with the Trionfi. That makes two in this post, to add to the 1414 Bologna (partial) and a 1434 in Ferrara that I mentioned in another post, listed in Wilkins, Petrarch Manuscripts in the United States. So that's four I've found before 1440, none from Florence.

On pp. 27f, Trapp discusses mainly illustrations of the "Sonetti in morte" in the Canzioniere. Here he briefly mentions our 1414 manuscript. After going over some illustrations after 1440, he turns to some before that year:
Laura's death is commemorated in other ways also by illustrations of the Canzoniere. (119) At the beginning of the 'Sonetti in morte' in the early Florentine codex, perhaps of the end of the fourteenth century, which has already been mentioned, Petrarch is standing in the initial I of poem CCXIV contemplating the corpse of a laureate Laura, laid out on her couch in the border opposite. On a frond above her stands Death, bat-winged and skeletal, with his scythe. (120) A North Italian codex, perhaps illuminated in Padua, of which the writing was completed by one Feraldus in September 1414, has a more elaborate death-bed scene, with Laura lying lifeless under a rich architectural canopy. (121) She is surrounded by standing mourners, including a meditative Petrarch (Fig. 20). With this may be compared a miniature by the Master of the Vitae imperatorum. (122) Yet another formulation, early Florentine again, has Petrarch writing in the initial, a skeletal Death with his dart in the border and, below, miniatures representing groups of four people. (123) The initial of another, perhaps Lombard or Venetian, of the second quarter of the fifteenth century, has Petrarch writing on his cathedra below, and Laura lying dead above. (124) In a pair of Florentine examples of the second quarter of the fifteenth century, Petrarch stands gazing at a askeletel corpse in a shallow open grave with a consoling Christ in a a mandorla above (Fig. 21), in illustration of

Tu che dagli altri, che 'n diversi modi
legano 'l mondo, in tutto mi disciogli,
Signor mio che non togli
omai dal volto mio questa vergogna?
Che 'n guisa d'uom che sogna
aver la morte inanzi gli occhi parme;
et vorrei far difesa, e non o l'arme. (125)

Footnote 120: Manchester, John John Rylands University Library, MS Ital. 1, f. 105r; cf. above, pp. 9, 18.
Footnote 121: Muenchen, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS. Ital 81, f. 105r; Sottili, Germania Occidentale no. 82; Samek Ludovici, Pl. 7; see also below, p. 44.
Footnote 122: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana MS. Barb. Lat. 3943, f. 115v; cf. the miniature in the poor relation, on paper, of this codex, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS. Barb. Lat. 3954, fol. 100r; Vattasso, Vaticana, no. 158.]
Footnote 123: Cambridge: Fitzwilliam Museum, MS McLean 173, f. 51r; Mann, British Isles, no. 15.
Footnote 124: Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS. Ital. 549, f. 115v; Pellegrin, France, pp. 153-155 (II, 331-222); cf. nn 48, 88 above.
Footnote 125: Ll. 84-90; Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS. Strozzi 172, f. 103r; Samek Lucovici, Pl. 22; cf. n. 91 above; and Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS. Pal. 184, f. 105.
Footnote 120 tells us that what he has described, more fully than before, is the Strozzi Canzioniere manuscript's Triumph of Death scene. Footnote 121 tells us that his fig. 20, of the 1414, is the same as the one Huck posted, which I linked to at the top of this post. Footnote 122's ms. 3954 is the same as for the Lombard Triumph of Love of Trapp's Fig. 14. Footnote 123 refers us to a ms. new to us (another reason for me to get Mann's book). From footnote 124, we can conclude that this is the Triumph of Death paired with the Triumph of Love that Avril et al identified as Venetian or Paduan, by Cortese. One of the illuminations of footnote 125 is below, his figure 21. The whole page is http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1UWxvDkeoyA/U ... pp1-21.JPG.
Image

The skeleton gives this Florentine illumination the look of the tarot Death card. However our 1414 illustration is still a puzzle.

Trapp speaks of it again on p. 29:
Of extant dated codices the earliest to contain an illustration of anyone of the Trionfi was written in North Italy in 1414, and perhaps illustrated at Padua; (129)
Footnote 129: Muenchen, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS. Ital 83; Sottili, Germania Occidentale no. 82; below, n. 139.]
And on p. 33:
The first dated Trionfi manuscript to have been illustrated is Italian, the writing of its text having been accomplished in September 1414. (39)
Footnote 139: Muenchen, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. Ital. 83, f. 146; Carandente, Fig. 37; Samek Ludovici, Fig 8; cf. above, n. 121.
Why he calls it Cod. Ital. 83 in these footnotes, but Cod. Ital. 81 earlier, I don't know. The reference to Ludovici is different, too. But later, on p. 175, he gives us the original citation again; so I suppose that is the correct one.

In his chapter 3, on the Triumph of Death in tapestries, Trapp discusses the 1414 illumination again (p. 175). Since he is focusing on particular details, I will repeat the link: http://194.95.59.225/fileadmin/imagesww ... l81_09.jpg

After first noting that it is quite different from the iconography established for the Trionfi in Florence later, Trapp says:
Leaving aside the question of whether any of the six ladies seated in the chariot shown in the miniature represent the Fates, we may decide that the figure in the incomplete initial below is Clotho with her distaff confronting the poet....
Well, here I thought it was Death holding his arm and something else upright in triumph!

The remainder of the paragraph describes another illumination; for some reason he doesn't include a reproduction in his book. However I have located it in another book, so you can refer to it as you read about it.
In a manuscript of some quarter-century later, there is no room for doubt. This is a Trionfi codex executed in Lombardy and illustrated by the Master of the Vitae imperatorum, who was active in Milan during the 1430s and 1440s. (12) No procession is depicted in the miniature at the head of this manuscript's Trionfo della Morte. In four unequal compartments it shows, to the left, the dead of all ages and conditions and, to the right, the aged and emaciated coming forward as if to embrace their death. (13) In the centre, above, is Death in person, a cloaked, skeletal figure, with long, curled and flowing golden locks, standing on a sort of stage above a white-clad Laura-Chastity, her eyes closed. A bow is held against Death's body by the left hand, while the right is extended over Laura's head, as if to pluck a hair from it. (14) There is a refulgence behind Death's shoulder. In the lower centre compartment sit three female personages, who do not figure in Petrarch's text. They are the three Fates: Clotho with her distaff, Lachesis measuring out the thread of life, Atropos reaching to cut it with her shears.
Footnote 12. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS. Barb. lat. 3943, fol. 170v; Samek Ludovici, I, pp. 118-9; II, Pl. XIII; A. C. de la Mare, 'Script and Manuscripts in Milan under the Sforza', in Milano nell'età di Ludovico il Moro. Atti del Convegno internazionale, Milan, 1983, p. 399.
Footnote 13. Trionfo della Morte, I, ll. 73-81.
Footnote 14. Trionfo della Morte, I, ll. 113-4.

Here is the illumination in question, scanned from Giovanni Carandente, I Trionfi nel primo Rinascimento, 1963. I will give a reproduction of the whole page, and other pages, in my next post.
Image

Trapp next shows us another Trumph of Death, from Naples, "by an artist with affinities to Niccolo Rubicano, who was active in that city 1451-88." (p. 175). He continues:
A skelatel death (MORS DIRA), is standing on the corpse of a beheaded king towards the rear of a gold chariot drawn by a pair of serpents and a pair of dragons.

Image

Here the three fates are clearly labeled: "ANTROPOS [sic] cuts the thread held by LACHESIS as it comes from the distaff of CLOTO [sic]," Trapp reports (p. 176). I have put up the whole page at http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-njVLFr0MnfU/U ... app2-1.JPG

After that, Trapp takes up the trail in France. There is a ms. done in 1503 intended as a present to Louis XII that combines this un-Florentine motif with the usual Florentine chariot, oxen, and people being run over. In this case, "la mort" stands on a white-clad figure annotated "laure"; she is the same "laure" as shown in the preceding panel on a chariot led by un-Petrarchan unicorns and chaste humans, i.e. chastity as well as Laura. Here is that part:
Image

And the whole page at http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Om3ZX5gYNsI/U ... app2-3.JPG, or in color with the earlier scene, showing Chastity/Laure on her chariot, Death riding toward her on a bull, at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... -death.jpg.

Finally, around the same time, there are three other French manuscripts, each with a minimum of text and a maximum of illuminations; perhaps they are intended as model-books for tapestries. Here is one, with not only the individual Fates labeled but also the body they trample on, CHASTITE .
Image

From there, of course, we get easily to the Flemish tapestry we all know, which is also a Triumph of Death:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dionysokolax/387556177/

So perhaps the figure in 1414 is not Death but Clotho. In any event, it becomes Clotho by the time of the Charles VI and the BAR Sun card, which feature just such a lady with a distaff under a sunlit sky. The message seems to me clear: she is the agent of death, after which will come the glorious resurrection by Christ, our Sun. Because of the sun, the card is not a Triumph of Death; rather, it is a Triumph over the Triumph of Death.
Image
Last edited by mikeh on 17 Jan 2013, 19:09, edited 1 time in total.

Re: Collection "How Petrarca became famous" (till 1450)

53
Since yesterday, I revised my previous post just a little. An illumination important for showing the alternative portrayal of the Triumph of the Death, with the three Fates, was described (by Trapp) but not shown. Interlibrary Loan sent me a book with the requisite picture, so I inserted it into the post at the proper place. If you happened to have read that post on the day I posted it, it is probably worth re-reading that description; it is the picture I got from Caradente, of the Triumph of Death in Bibl. Vat. Barb. lat. 3943.

This manuscript, which contains both the Canzoniere and the Trionfi, has fairly interesting illuminations, in that there is a Canzoniere illumination on the theme of the Triumph of Love, and at least three Trionfi illuminations, perhaps more. It is of Milan, attributed to the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum or his workshop; he worked c. 1430-1450 (he seems to have died 1459). Since people probably don't know too much about this Master, here is what the Grove Dictionary of Art says about him:
( fl 1430-50). Italian illuminator. He is named after the manuscript of the Italian translation of Suetonius' Vitae imperatorum (Paris, Bib. N., MS. it. 131), copied in 1431 for Filippo Maria Visconti, 3rd Duke of Milan. The artist's style continues the Lombard tradition of the late 14th century and the early 15th, and he may have trained with Tomasino da Vimercate. Both illuminators painted in clear, bright colours, and they shared a repertory of decorative features combined in elaborate initials and borders, incorporating both naturalistic and fantastic foliage. The stylized figures that people the initials and miniatures painted by the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum appear to be direct descendants of those in the work of the earlier illuminator, although they are shown with a more controlled animation and a greater interest in modelling. The influence of Michelino da Besozzo may account for the Master's fluid drapery style, in which deep and curling folds are combined within a simplified contour. In general, his highly finished and precisely painted miniatures are not naturalistic in style, their emphasized lines contributing to an overall sense of pattern and decorativeness.
(http://www.answers.com/topic/master-of- ... eratorum-2)

He or his workshop continued working in the Sforza regime, at least at the beginning. Painted Page, p. 63 shows a Filelfo Satires, c. 1453, "attributed to the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum". The initials at the bottom are "FR PH", which I take to mean Francesco Philelpho.

In my previous post I gave Trapp's black and white version of the page from Bibl. Vat. Barb. lat. 3943 showing Cupid aiming his arrow at Petrarch, who is looking at Laura. Caradente (p. 35 of I Trionfi nel primo Rinascimento, 1963) reproduces the whole page it is on, in color:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sZafiyY8DCU/U ... at3943aJPG
It raises several questions. Who is this "G. S." at the bottom? I would assume not Galeazzo Sforza--he would be G. M. S., if he ever had himself referred to in that way. Or to take an actual example, GZ MA (http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosiero:Ga ... _1464_.jpg; this would seem to be1466 or later, since it calls him "DVX" at the top). And are the border decorations characteristic of a particular time, other than 1430-1450? It would be nice to know if it was done before or after the illuminated Triumphs in Florence, which started, as far as we have evidence, in 1442.

Caradente also reproduces two illuminations to the Trionfi in black and white (p. 48). Trapp talked about the Triumph of Death in the passage I already referred to. The other is a Triumph of Fame.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tuKANoLRick/U ... 943bc1.JPG

And in addition he shows us the Triumph of Chastity (p. 49).

Image

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WBcP1UOrW2Y/U ... t3943d.JPG

These are all from the same manuscript. The style and imagery seems very independent of anything in Florence.

One other thing before I end this post. What I got Caradente for in the first place was for its reproduction, in color, of the other illustration in the 1414 Bologna (or Padua, if you believe Trapp) Trionfi. Here it is (p. 42).
Image

larger at http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WgfxEAku5wI/U ... he1414.JPG

I don't know what to make of it. For a Triumph of Fame, it is very gloomy looking. And the text on the page is, as I quoted from Shorr (1938, p. 103), that of Petrarch's Triumph of Death.

Caradente has quite a few excellent reproductions of Triumph illuminations and cassone from the period 1440-1500, including several from 1440-1450, which are not in the WikiMedia Commons collection. I will look on Google Images to see if they are there. If not, I will try to post some of the ones that aren't, before I have to send the book back. I wish I could scan them all, but the book is too fragile for that.

Note: the day after posting originally, I added a few comments about initials at the bottom of pages. And to my previous post, I added a link to the Wikimedia Commons full color image of the 1503 French Triumph of Death (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... -death.jpg), of which I had only myself posted a black and white image.
Last edited by mikeh on 10 Feb 2013, 02:50, edited 7 times in total.

Giovanni Carandente: I Trionfi nel Primo Rinascimento

54
Hi, Mike,
mikeh wrote:Caradente has quite a few excellent reproductions of Triumph illuminations and cassone from the period 1440-1500, including several from 1440-1450, which are not in the WikiMedia Commons collection. I will look on Google Images to see if they are there. If not, I will try to post some of the ones that aren't, before I have to send the book back. I wish I could scan them all, but the book is too fragile for that.
Thanks very much for posting these, especially the larger, color version of the 1414 illustration. It's really great to see better pictures of what we're talking about -- the signal/noise ratio in Tarot is so low to start with.

Best regards,
Michael
We are either dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, or we are just dwarfs.

Re: Collection "How Petrarca became famous" (till 1450)

55
In comparing the 1414 Triumph with angel and cart, I was disconcerted by the "gloomy" off-white coloring. However I see the same coloring on the angel of Domenico di Michelino's Triumph of Fame later (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... 1442-2.jpg). So there is really no reason not to consider it a Triumph of Fame. I assume that the color is meant to convey the feeling, not of death, but of after-death.

I have come across a fresco on the theme of the Triumph of Death that has been said to have been inspired by Petrarch's "Triumph of Death." First, here is the passage in Petrarch. After speaking admiringly of Chastity and her troup, he says (my emphasis):
And as a gentle heart wins honor, so
The troop was moving onward joyously,
When I beheld a banner dark and sad,
And a woman shrouded in a dress of black,
With fury such as had perchance been seen
When giants raged in the Phlegraean vale,
Came near..."
http://petrarch.petersadlon.com/read_tr ... e=III-I.en

And here is the scene on the fresco, in the Camposanto of Pisa (a cemetery for the rich next to the Leaning Tower; they used ancient Roman sarcophagi for their own remains):
Image

This and another detail are on p. 300 of Rawsky's Petrarch's Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul, vol. 3, 1991 (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UBOUIEl5e6U/U ... l3p300.JPG). He shows the complete fresco, partially destroyed in 1944, on p. 299 (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vNmw9hOQhtk/U ... l3p299.JPG). It is attributed to Francesco Traini, who flourished 1320-1360. Of this scene Meiss says (Francesco Traini, 1983, p. 41):
Death is seen flying over a group of dead people towards a garden, where are gathered together a number of noblemen and women. Death is conceived as an old woman in a black dress, with claws on her feet, a figure quite different from other representations of Death at this period, such as in a fresco by a follower of Bartolo di Fredi in Lucignano, (136) and a fresco in the Sacro Speco, Subiaco. In these Death takes the form of a skeleton. The representation of Death in the Camposanto may have been inspired, as Hettner and Dobbert have pointed out, by Petrarch's Trionfo della Morte, where Death is described as an old woman in a black dress. (137) From Petrarch derives, ultimately, the name given to the whole composition--Trionfo della Morte.
Footnote 136. Van Marle, op. cit. [Development u. s., 1925] II, 506.
Footnote 137. D. Dobbert, "Triumph des Todes," Reportorim fuer Kunstwissenschaft, IV, 1881, pp. 1-45. H. Hettner, op. cit., p. 103ff. Petrarch's conception derives from antique sources.
One might ask, could the artist have known of Petrarch's poem? In Petrarch and his world, by Morris Bishop, 1963, p. 296, I read:
According to Wilkins's authoritative studies, Petrarch wrote the first three sections of the Triumph of Love in 1338, when his love for Laura was only twelve years old. He returned to the task intermittently, writing a part of the Triumph of Death soon after Laura's own death in 1348.
The problem is that the fresco now appears to have been done before 1342, earlier than previously thought. Rawski, in his caption to his reproduction, gives 1330-1340. It seems to me possible that Petrarch could have seen the fresco once he had returned to Italy. According to Bishop, Petrarch was in Parma, May 19, 1348, when he heard the news of Laura's death. After that he made his way slowly to Rome for the Jubilee in 1350, and Pisa is between Parma and Rome. Petrarch had actually lived in Pisa for a few years as a boy, in between Florence and Avignon. But as Meiss says, the conception derives from ancient sources.

If nothing else, the discussion shows that it has been assumed by art historians that the first three Triumphs were in general circulation in Italy by the 1350s.

Writing the Trionfi

56
Hi, Mike,
mikeh wrote:One might ask, could the artist have known of Petrarch's poem? In Petrarch and his world, by Morris Bishop, 1963, p. 296, I read:
According to Wilkins's authoritative studies, Petrarch wrote the first three sections of the Triumph of Love in 1338, when his love for Laura was only twelve years old. He returned to the task intermittently, writing a part of the Triumph of Death soon after Laura's own death in 1348.
The problem is that the fresco now appears to have been done before 1342, earlier than previously thought. Rawski, in his caption to his reproduction, gives 1330-1340. It seems to me possible that Petrarch could have seen the fresco once he had returned to Italy. According to Bishop, Petrarch was in Parma, May 19, 1348, when he heard the news of Laura's death. After that he made his way slowly to Rome for the Jubilee in 1350, and Pisa is between Parma and Rome. Petrarch had actually lived in Pisa for a few years as a boy, in between Florence and Avignon. But as Meiss says, the conception derives from ancient sources.

If nothing else, the discussion shows that it has been assumed by art historians that the first three Triumphs were in general circulation in Italy by the 1350s.
I don't know what art historians you are referring to, but as I have been pointing out since at least 2006, (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TarotL/message/50392), Petrarch's Trionfi are widely considered to have developed in at least two, more likely three phases. Each phase comprised a coherent pair. When he was young and foolish, he wrote triumphs of love and chastity. This was a unified structure, and was related to various other works from Ovid to Francesco da Barberino's Documenta Amoris. As an aside, here are some images from that work.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... berino.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... berino.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... amoris.jpg

After the Black Death and Laura's death, he wrote the Triumph of Death and Triumph of Fame. Again, a perfectly understandable pair of subjects, and quite complete. Near the end of his life, he took a more medieval-Christian approach and wrote the Triumph of Time and the Triumph of Eternity. Again, perfectly coherent and understandable. Here is the beginning of Wilkins' 1963 article, "The First Two Triumphs of Petrarch":
Wilkins wrote:Petrarch's six Triumphs - those of Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity - do not constitute a single poem. They were not written continuously; they are not all of the same character; and they were never assembled in a finished whole.

The first two Triumphs were written probably within the years 1340-1344, and certainly while Laura was still living. The next two were written not long after her death, which occurred in 1348. The last two were written toward the end of Petrarch's life. There is a chasm in thought between the Triumph of Chastity and the Triumph of Death: Chastity triumphs over Love, Fame over Death, Time over Fame, and Eternity over Time; but Death does not triumph over Chastity.

There is no reason to suppose that when Petrarch finished writing the Triumph of Chastity he had any idea of writing any additional Triumphs. The first two Triumphs, then, may well be considered as constituting a twofold poem, complete in itself.
In his introduction to Lord Morley's Tryumhes of Fraunces Petrarcke (1971), D.D. Carnicelli agreed with Wilkins. Because he attempted the most detailed reconstruction of Petrarch's writing of the Trionfi, I'll quote him at some length. (His entire introduction is worth reading.)
Carnicelli wrote:In 1338, when Petrarch was thirty-four, he acquired a house in the lovely hamlet of Vaucluse.... It was during this period of his life that he began work on a series of "triumphs", Italian poems in terza rima whose basic metaphor Petrarch had probably drawn from descriptions of triumphal pageants in the works of classical authors such as Ovid and Lactantius and from the Roman triumph itself....

In May 1341, the month after Petrarch's coronation as poet laureate in Rome, the poet accepted an invitation to spend the summer in Parma.... At this point, the two poems were probably conceived as companion pieces, but there is no reason to believe that Petrarch had yet envisaged the full series of six trionfi as beginning with the "Triumph of Love" and concluding with the "Triumph of Eternity"....

In 1348 Petrarch must have been particularly conscious of the power of death; it was the year of the Black Death, and the year in which death claimed three of his closest friends: in May he received word of the death of his friend and kinsman Franceschino degl'Albizzi; on May 19 came the shattering news of the death of his beloved Laura; and in July he learned of the death of his old friend and patron Cardinal Giovanni Colonna. It is little wonder then that thoughts of death seem to have obsessed Petrarch in this terrible year, and that the little poetry he wrote reflects that concern. Three of Petrarch's twelve eclogues were completed in that year, and all three are directly or indirectly about death.... Before the end of 1348 Petrarch added a capitolo of the "Triumph of Death" to his two earlier trionfi....

In the following year, probably still distraught by the loss of his closest friends and stunned by the ravages of the Black Death, Petrarch completed the second capitolo of the "Triumph of Death"....

In this same period (1349-1350) Petrarch conceived of a fourth triumph, one of "Fame over Death", and he completed a capitolo in which he presented the figure of Fame leading a procession of more than a hundred figures from classical and biblical literature. This capitolo, however, was later discarded, and its contents were redistributed among two other capitoli written to replace it....

There is ample evidence that at various times between September 1356 and September 1360 Petrarch revised, retouched, or recopied the "Triumph of Love". By 1370 he had completed, and revised, apparently to his satisfaction at that time, four triumphs, those of Love, Chastity, Death, and Fame. Petrarch probably thought of these four trionfi as a logically unified series, though there is no reason to believe that before 1370 he had thought of completing the series by adding the "Triumph of Time and the "Triumph of Eternity". Nevertheless, at some time between 1370 and 1374 Petrarch completed a relatively short "Triumph of Time" in which he depicted the defeat of Fame at the hands of Time; in the course of the trionfo the poet realizes with great sadness that Fame is a fragile and evanescent as the human body itself and that the quest for Fame is the greatest of human vanities. The final "Triumph of Eternity", written between January and February 1374, describes how the poet finally places faith in God's mercy and aspires to eternal salvation. The old world disappears, and before him appears the vision of a new world in which Time itself has no meaning and in which those who have placed their faith in God will enjoy perennial bliss. At the Resurrection, concludes Petrarch, Laura will appear to him in all her splendor and he will love her even more than when she was alive.

What Petrarch conceived the final form of the Trionfi to be we will of course never know; indeed, it is likely that he had no final plan for the work and that the various capitoli merely suggested themselves to him as he grew older and matured intellectually. In this respect the poem was a living organism that, like the Canterbury Tales, grew and matured with its author and reflected the breadth of his experience and learning. What is certain, however, is that Petrarch thought of the poem as one of the most important of his literary creations, one that was every bit as important as the Canzoniere and perhaps even as important as his epic Africa; he therefore returned to the work with regularity from 1338 until his death in 1374. For the modern reader, the Trionfi remains precisely what the medieval and Renaissance exegetes claimed it to be: an intellectual and spiritual autobiography in which the poet's private joys and sufferings are fused with his scholarly experiences to produce a panoramic view of the growth of the poet's -- and Everyman's -- soul from youthful obsession with love to the mature search for salvation.
Earlier scholars who have endorsed this developmental reconstruction of the Trionfi, to one extent or another, apparently include Carlo Calcaterra ("La prima inspirazione dei Trionfi del Petrarca", 1941) and Ezio Raimondi ("Originalita dei Trionfi", 1951). In the 1990 Petrarch's Triumphs: Allegory and Spectacle, several authors seem to accept some version of the developmental analysis, including Richard C. Monti.

It is also worth noting that in the late 15th century, when printed version of the Trionfi were very popular, they were almost always published with commentaries. These were extensive, often longer than the poems, and they tended to treat the poem as a kind of Ages of Man motif in which Everyman goes through these phases of life, which correspond to the apparent development of the poems in Petrarch's own life.

Best regards,
Michael
We are either dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, or we are just dwarfs.

Re: Collection "How Petrarca became famous" (till 1450)

57
Thank you for your comments and additions, Michael. I should have been clearer. Yes, everyone knows that the Trionfi was written in stages, just as you and your citations say. The quote from Bishop that I gave says the same. I meant to be addressing a different question: were the Trionfi also read in stages, too, or only after all six were done? That is, would the first two have been circulated early, to an eager public, then at some point in the 1450s the first three, and then the first four after that (the one on Fame before revision), all before his death?

I looked in some of Wilkins' writings, and that of others as well, but couldn't find anybody addressing that question (even Trapp, who you think would). If you know where Wilkins does address it, I'd love to know. The reason the question is of interest is in relation to whether the Triumphs of Love, Chastity, and Death can safely be quoted in relation to imagery of these Triumphs at a time when there were few if any manuscripts available of the whole poem--for example, the imagery of the fresco in Pisa, or the Carrara frescoes in Padua, which was started before Petrarch's death, probably finished before there was any edition of the whole Trionfi. It also relates to Marco's quotation from the Triumph of Chastity at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=917&p=13585&hilit=Chastity#p13585, after which Ross wondered whether Petrarch's line about Chastity's shield could be assumed as known in that form at the time of the CY.

My point about the "art historians" is that it appears that Meiss and the people he cites in footnote 137, Dobbert and Hettner, seem to take it for granted that the Triumph of Death, and the line about the lady in the black dress, was known at the time the fresco was done, meaning for them some time in the 1550s, before the artist, Traini, stopped producing work. These historians were not amateurs in this field, but whether they were right is to be sure another question.

Also, in some of the manuscript editions detailed by Webb in Petrarch Manuscripts in the British Isles, both before and after 1440, I saw two versions of the "Triumph of Fame" occasionally listed. That suggests to me that the first version was circulated first, as well as his revised version later. But I don't know if I'm right in this interpretation. I'll show you what I mean. For "Fama" both an "early redaction" and a "late redaction" are included. It's on the second page below, p. 413. I include the first page so you have the whole listing for this ms., Webb's no. 192. (You click on the image once it comes up to make it bigger.)

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VDUVyNeD3DU/U ... bb192a.JPG

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8w9mgYAcDUk/U ... bb192b.JPG

Re: Collection "How Petrarca became famous" (till 1450)

58
Since yesterday, I revised my previous post just a little. An illumination important for showing the alternative portrayal of the Triumph of the Death, with the three Fates, was described (by Trapp) but not shown. Interlibrary Loan sent me a book with the requisite picture, so I inserted it into the post at the proper place. If you happened to have read that post on the day I posted it, it is probably worth re-reading that description; it is the picture I got from Caradente, of the Triumph of Death in Bibl. Vat. Barb. lat. 3943.

This manuscript, which contains both the Canzoniere and the Trionfi, has fairly interesting illuminations, in that there is a Canzoniere illumination on the theme of the Triumph of Love, and at least three Trionfi illuminations, perhaps more. It is of Milan, attributed to the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum or his workshop; he worked c. 1430-1450 (he seems to have died 1459). Since people probably don't know too much about this Master, here is what the Grove Dictionary of Art says about him:
( fl 1430-50). Italian illuminator. He is named after the manuscript of the Italian translation of Suetonius' Vitae imperatorum (Paris, Bib. N., MS. it. 131), copied in 1431 for Filippo Maria Visconti, 3rd Duke of Milan. The artist's style continues the Lombard tradition of the late 14th century and the early 15th, and he may have trained with Tomasino da Vimercate. Both illuminators painted in clear, bright colours, and they shared a repertory of decorative features combined in elaborate initials and borders, incorporating both naturalistic and fantastic foliage. The stylized figures that people the initials and miniatures painted by the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum appear to be direct descendants of those in the work of the earlier illuminator, although they are shown with a more controlled animation and a greater interest in modelling. The influence of Michelino da Besozzo may account for the Master's fluid drapery style, in which deep and curling folds are combined within a simplified contour. In general, his highly finished and precisely painted miniatures are not naturalistic in style, their emphasized lines contributing to an overall sense of pattern and decorativeness.
(http://www.answers.com/topic/master-of- ... eratorum-2)

He or his workshop continued working in the Sforza regime, at least at the beginning. Painted Page, p. 63 shows a Filelfo Satires, c. 1453, "attributed to the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum". The initials at the bottom are "FR PH", which I take to mean Francesco Philelpho.

In my previous post I gave Trapp's black and white version of the page from Bibl. Vat. Barb. lat. 3943 showing Cupid aiming his arrow at Petrarch, who is looking at Laura. Caradente (p. 35 of I Trionfi nel primo Rinascimento, 1963) reproduces the whole page it is on, in color:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sZafiyY8DCU/U ... at3943aJPG
It raises several questions. Who is this "G. S." at the bottom? I would assume not Galeazzo Sforza--he would be G. M. S., if he ever had himself referred to in that way. Or to take an actual example, GZ MA (http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosiero:Ga ... _1464_.jpg; this would seem to be1466 or later, since it calls him "DVX" at the top). And are the border decorations characteristic of a particular time, other than 1430-1450? It would be nice to know if it was done before or after the illuminated Triumphs in Florence, which started, as far as we have evidence, in 1442.

Caradente also reproduces two illuminations to the Trionfi in black and white (p. 48). Trapp talked about the Triumph of Death in the passage I already referred to. The other is a Triumph of Fame.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tuKANoLRick/U ... 943bc1.JPG

And in addition he shows us the Triumph of Chastity (p. 49).

Image

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WBcP1UOrW2Y/U ... t3943d.JPG

These are all from the same manuscript. The style and imagery seems very independent of anything in Florence.

One other thing before I end this post. What I got Caradente for in the first place was for its reproduction, in color, of the other illustration in the 1414 Bologna (or Padua, if you believe Trapp) Trionfi. Here it is (p. 42).
Image

larger at http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WgfxEAku5wI/U ... he1414.JPG

I don't know what to make of it. For a Triumph of Fame, it is very gloomy looking. And the text on the page is, as I quoted from Shorr (1938, p. 103), that of Petrarch's Triumph of Death.

Caradente has quite a few excellent reproductions of Triumph illuminations and cassone from the period 1440-1500, including several from 1440-1450, which are not in the WikiMedia Commons collection. I will look on Google Images to see if they are there. If not, I will try to post some of the ones that aren't, before I have to send the book back. I wish I could scan them all, but the book is too fragile for that.

Note: the day after posting originally, I added a few comments about initials at the bottom of pages. And to my previous post, I added a link to the Wikimedia Commons full color image of the 1503 French Triumph of Death (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... -death.jpg), of which I had only myself posted a black and white image.

More on the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum

59
This is a continuation of my post at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=858&p=13432#p13432, regarding the Master of the Vita Imperatorum, a Lombard illuminator active between 1418 or so and 1459, of whom I posted three illustrations to an editon of the Canzoniere and Trionfi, dated by Trapp, 2004, and others to c. 1440. If so, it would be perhaps the earliest example of more than just one of the Petrarchan Triumphs, the Triumph of Fame (possibly two, if the second illustration of the 1414 Bologna ms. is a Triumph of Death). I have since found two more Triumph illustrations by the same artist, at least one of which is one of the six. I get them from Lutz S. Malke, "Contributo alle figurazioni dei Trionfi e del Canzoniere del Petrarca," in Commentari: Revista de critica dei storia e dell'arte, XXVIII, 1977, pp. 236-261. First, a Triumph of Love, from the same manuscript as the other three I already posted, Vat. Barber. Lat. 3943, this one on f. 157v.
Image

For the whole illumination and Malke's annotation, see http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HryvUzQpbVM/U ... atorum.jpg.
Like the others, it is spare in its details. All we see is a cupid without ornamentation except his arrows, leading his four horses, with a group of those enslaved to him below. There are ruts in the road, and behind him the usual decorative pattern customary in Lombard miniatures.

Malke has one more by the same master, this one on f. 191 of the same manuscript. It is not at all clear to me what this is. Given the page number, it does not illustrate the Canzoniere; and according to Malke the Triumph of deth is on f. 170. So I would assume it is one of the two Triumphs not yet displayed, either Time or Eternity. From the speed indicated, it is of Time.
Image

Again it is primitive and has nothing in common with the Florentine triumph series.

Because of its primitiveness and early estimated dating, I wanted to know more about the manuscript, and especially the "G.S." at the bottom of one of the pages, which has Laura crowning Petrarch at the top, http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sZafiyY8DCU/U ... at3943aJPG. I found something, such as it is, in a Vatican catalog of 1950, Miniatures of the Renaissance. It led me in an interesting direction, and I think to an answer to who "G.S." is, at the bottom of the page of an illumination I showed previously, Laura crowning Petrarch. The illumination in question is this catalog's exhibit 45, shown along with the Triumph of Chastity which I showed earlier, http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WBcP1UOrW2Y/U ... t3943d.JPG.

Here is what they say. I include the data about the manuscript.
PETRARCH. The Canzoniere and the Trionfi, preceded by a note on Laura, together with the "Vita del Petrarca" by Antonio da Tempo and the "Rime" of Simone Forestani Serdini and Malatesta de' Malatesti.

Barb. lat. 3943. Middle of xvth cent; mm. 226 x 144, ff. 272. PLATE V.

Beautiful allegorical miniatures of the Lombardy school. Initials in gold and colours. Arms of the Malatesta family and of the Sforza family of Pesaro.

Folios 166v and 17r on view, temporarily placed side by side. The former has a miniature representing the Triumph of Chastity and also an ornate initial. The latter (reproduced in Plate V) has a miniature representing Petrarch transfixed by Love who is about to receive the crown from a little girl; beautiful border on the margins, ornate initial and arms of Giovanni Sforza, nobleman of Pesaro.
Now we have a candidate for the "G. S.", whose initials are at the bottom of the page. The only problem is that Giovanni Sforza, as far as I can tell, wasn't even born until 1466. If so, this manuscript is much later than scholars since have thought. It is even later than they themselves put it, "middle of xvth cent." Also, Trapp did not mention this dating. Was he unaware of this publication, or did he not think it worth replying to?

I would think that if the illuminations were later, they would show some of the attributes associated with them in Florence but missing here, as they do in other cities distant from Milan, such as Padua, Ferrara, and Verona.
(Examples, all from the late 15th century: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EvLV5YPiO2k/U ... age-14.JPG, Triumph of Love in {i]Painted Palaces[/i]; http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W_y_xnFhgrU/U ... vano94.JPG, Paduan, Plate 24 of Caradente; http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r39ZwNU8M3k/U ... erona2.JPG, Mantua, in Caradente; http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UYyIp__IF10/U ... onese2.JPG, Verona, in Caradente.

We are supposed to see the arms of the Malatesta and Pesaro Sforza families. The only arms I see on this page is a rampant lion between the G and the S.
Image


That would seem to be the arms of Allesandro Sforza, as seen in the Rogier van der Weyden painting, http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitxer:Rog ... iptych.jpg. Huck pointed it out to me once at, viewtopic.php?f=12&t=334&p=5352&hilit=Alessandro#p5352. It is stylized differently, but in each case there is something between the lion's paws.
Image


I see that Alessandro had an illegitimate daughter, Ginevra Sforza, born in 1440 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Sforza). This is a better candidate for "G.S.", I think. She grew up to marry Sante Bentivoglio, ruler of Bologna, and later his successor, too, and was a famous patron of the arts (and friend of witches, as Ady relates if you scroll down a bit from my previous link). So my guess is that the manuscript was a birth present to her, at a time when Francesco Sforza was in the service of Filippo Maria Visconti. It would certainly be something worth treasuring. Perhaps was appropriated by Papacy when Julius II routed the Bentivoglio in c. 1506. It did end up in the Vatican, after all.

I see that Allessandro got Pesaro in 1444 for 20,000 Florins from Galeazzo Malatesta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galeazzo_Malatesta), although the Pope considered it his and excommunicated Malatesta the next time he tried the same trick (selling papal property). So maybe the manuscript was also to honor the Malatesta, since it contained the poems of Malatesta de' Malatesta IV, 1379-1429. also known as "Malatesta dei Sonetti" for his poems, and help forge an alliance between the two families.

The next question is, are the triumphs here influenced by a trend in Florence? We know that Francesco had spent quite a bit of time in Florence before he came back to Filippo in 1441. On the other hand, these Milan triumphs show none of the attributes developed by 1442 in Florence, and there are none known there before Apollonio's in 1442, except for the de' Pasti letter to Piero d' Medici in late 1441. But likely Sforza knew of them; so he might have thought it would be good to commission such a manuscript himself. One could ask similar things about the CY tarot cards, of course, toward what several here have proposed, but of which I had not yet seen any evidence, that the CY is a Visconti response to a fad in Florence. This manuscript might count as evidence in favor of that position, if a few holes were filled in. It is something to ponder, and especially, investigate further. I will pursue this line of thought further in another post.

More on Allesandro Sforza's tarot

60
This post continues where my last one left off, with Alessandro Sforza as the one by or for whom a Trionfi manuscript was made in Lombardy c. 1440 with a series of illustrations of the different Triumphs by a Lombard artist known as the Master of the Vitae Imperator, and thus probably with the help of his brother Francesco.

I am mostly going to summarize relevant information that Huck already obtained and thought through.

Besides a Trionfi manuscript, Allesandro seems also to have had a tarot deck made, of which we have a strange Temperance card, which Huck has related to a painter named Lo Scheggia (aka Giovanni di Ser Giovanni Guidi). The association is based on how the breasts are shaped on a nude attributed to him. This would have been on the inside of the lid of a cassone--which one, would be something worth knowing.
(http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php? ... ostcount=1

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Huck points out that Lo Scheggia is a known painter of tarot cards, 1447-1450, identified by Pratesi at http://trionfi.com/naibi-on-sale.

This painter is also of interest because he is the brother of Masacchio, whose Eve is reminiscent of the Fuoco card of 18th century Minchiate. Masacchio is connected to Minchiate in another way, too, by way of the poet Luigi Pulci, who used the word "Minchiate" in 1466 and painted into the same fresco series by Masacchio's successor Filippino Lippi. See Huck's post 7 at http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php? ... ostcount=7.

But back to Lo Scheggia. He also painted numerous Petrarchan Triumphs, most famously, scholars now think (differing from some in the past, such as Caradente) the birth tray for Lorenzo de' Medici, and other triumphal scenes, many of them linked to by Huck. He is worthy of investigation.

In this regard, I need to point out that in the past scholars have assigned work now identified as his to others, or vague descriptors in lieu of a name. For one, his work used to be attributed to a painter known as "the master of Adimari." Huck links to the "Cassone Adimari" at http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassone_Adimari. This was painted in mid-century, but was intended to represent a famous Adimari noble wedding of 1422 in Florence. Carandente, for instance, just refers to the "master of the Adimari" while at the same time being adamant that the painter of certain Petrarchan cassoni is identical with that of the Adimari wedding chest. On Wikipedia, this chest is attributed to Lo Scheggia: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... irenze.jpg

But the Getty, more cautiously, says "possibly Lo Scheggia":
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illus ... /119706858

So then, perhaps "possibly Lo Scheggia" for Petrarchan cassoni that are similar in style to the Adimari. I don't know if the Getty has any.

Also, the main such cassone of this type, of which four Triumphs are preserved, used to be thought what de' Pasti was working on when he wrote Piero de' Medici from Venice. Here is Caradente:
Nel 1441, Matteo de' Pasti, medaglista e miniatore, scriveva, come abbiam detto, a Piero de' Medici, da Venezia, per chiedere in qual modo dovesse eseguire le illustrazioni dei Trionfi del Petrarca che il duca gli aveva commesse. E chiedeva se dovessero esserci cavalli o elefanti al carro della Fama e se dovessero seguire il coreo parsonaggi illustri, "omeni famosi vecchi", o gente qualunque del seguito, "scudèri e demiselle". Da questa lettera di un artista che nel 1441 aveva però soltanto fama di miniatore, non di pittore, alcuni stuiosi titennero di ricavare elementi sufficienti per attribuire a Matteo de' Pasti le quattro parti di un oggetto o di un mobile, di forma ricurva, oggi agli Uffizi (Figg. 51-54), Tav. VII), che stettero anche al Museo Horne, e chi il Bernson suppose nei suoi Indici come parti di un tamburo (132).

(In 1441, Matteo de 'Pasti, medalist and miniaturist, wrote, as we have said, Piero de' Medici, from Venice, to ask in what way he should do the illustrations of the Triumphs of Petrarch that the Duke had commissioned. And he asked if there should be elephants or horses to the chariot of Fame and if they follow the procession of celebrities, "illustrious old men", or any of the following people, "Scuderi and demiselle" . From this letter of an artist who in 1441 had, however, only the reputation of a miniaturist, not a painter, some scholars thought to derive sufficient evidence to attribute to Matteo de 'Pasti the four parts of an object or a piece of furniture, of a curved shape, today in the Uffizi (Figs. 51-54), Plate VII), which also was at the Horne Museum, and which Berenson supposes in his indices as part of a drum (132).
If so, we are back to Piero de' Medici, commissioner of Lorenzo's birth tray. But actually, considering that the paintings in question are on a piece of furniture with curved sides as opposed to corners, so that the image bends, it is fairly unbelievable that he would have worked in Venice on such a thing.

I won't give a translation, as it just explains the curved surface. I translated the next two pages, too, but all it does is to say how confused scholars have been and to justify his ascription of the Triumphs to the painter of the Adimari wedding chest. In another post I will upload Carandente's black and white pictures of these early Triumphs, which give details missing from the ones in color on the Web, and give links to the others.

It is in general still difficult to make attributions, owing to how painters copied ideas from one another, put them in their sketchbooks, and reused them in the most bizarre ways. I will end this post with a few examples of how the "reclining youth" appears in other contexts. Its original context is probably as the inside of the lid of a cassone. Naked ideal young men and women were typically put there. Here is Paola Tinagli, Women in Italian Renaissance Art, p. 27 (http://books.google.com/books?id=hMB_ys ... 22&f=false)
Once placed in the bedroom of the newly married couple, the cassoni were not only repositories of clothes: when opened, many of them; reveal, inside the lid, representations of reclining male and female ideal figures (Figure 2). These were almost always nude, and were painted there to convey an allegory of love, or with apotropaic functions: it was believed that the contemplation of of physical beauty would help the conception of beautiful children.
The picture is of a not quite nude woman (wearing a g-string) lying with her head on a pillow. She goes on to talk about the cassoni theme of Petrarch's Triumphs as easily understood "allegories of the progress of the soul" (same page). On the next page she says that the Adimari chest was done by Lo Scheggia in 1420. Well, he would have been about 14 years old!

So here again is the one Huck found similar to the Sforza card:
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And now here are some similar reclining people, usually Samson having his hair cut at the bottom, e.g. this one, from the "workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni and workshop of Marco del Buono", 1453-1455. There are similar vines.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apoll ... 898-fm.jpg)

In another one, the vines are removed:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings ... love-30752
According to the Victoria and Albert, this is by the same workshop a decade later.

And this manuscript, whose probable scribe was active in the 1450s, per http://www.textmanuscripts.com/manuscri ... Literature&:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UWrW81IVlt4/U ... ioAmor.jpg
Well, they copied from each other. Samson's breasts here seem somewhat comparable to those in the Allessandro Sforza card, although the figure on the card looks considerably more feminine than Samson--or, perhaps, to the "reclining youth" which Huck compares her to.
Last edited by mikeh on 12 Feb 2016, 06:01, edited 1 time in total.