Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:
Michelino is the only one, and it's fairly clear why Marcello described it as such - it had a "trump" suit of 16 gods and heroes, and four suits of birds. The subject matter has no relation to the standard subjects of trionfi, so it can only the structure that makes him give the comparison.
Pseudo-Mantegna E and S-Series - AGAIN - is not a "tarocchi", and we only know that name from the late 18th century. You have not shown me this German reference, and I challenged you earlier that if it refers to Mantegna's Trionfi, it is talking about his engravings of the Triumph of Caesar.
I've given you earlier a link,
http://trionfi.com/0/m/10/
and if you're not satisfied, you may research more in the web, "Danhausen", "Wolgemut", "Roman Triumphs" will guide you to find snippets here and there, for instance here ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=Gj4zOn ... ut&f=false
And this is a picture of the project ...
And it's said, that there were about 360 woodcuts in the project, from which ca. 60 survived, so they had
with security a broad understanding, what a "Roman triumph" is, and surely not your "only my 22".
Boiardo's poem doesn't use the term "trionfo" to describe the whole game; as far as I know, we don't have Boiardo's manuscript, and rely on Viti's edition, only published in 1523.
With the exception of Marcello's usage, those are pretty lame examples of what you are claiming.
From Viti (and Viti was dead in 1500):
"L’altre veramente tucte sono in due parte divise: una contene vintuno
Trionfi e 'l macto; l’altra contiene quaranta carte de quatro giochi, e de esse ancora sedeci figure in sedeci carte depinte: et in questo con el commune gioco de carte esso conviene. Li giochi son quattro: uno è Amore, l’altro Speranza, il terzo Gelosia, el quarto Timore."
http://trionfi.com/0/h/03/
The game is "fourfold", and the gods are 4x4=16; he divides them thus for the moral, thematic purpose of the game. He then adds four suits of birds, also corresponding to the thematic division, each under its king. But the ORDER of the gods is distinct, above the four suits, and does not follow the thematic moral division - it simply goes from 1 to 16. The PRACTICAL, actual and real structure of the game is four suits and a suit of gods. The first thing Marcello notes about it is the 16 gods and heroes - he doesn't first note the four suits and THEN that the highest cards in each suit are gods and heroes.
Even without Marcello's description, this is how I would read the text.
As usual, you may interpret what you want. And possibly you're lucky in this case, that not many are interested in this detail.
... .-) ... Even Michael parted the opinion, that there are 4 suits without specific trump suit.
A specific trump suit very much does exist, but Marziano didn't have the language for it - as far as I can tell, it constitutes the invention of the idea of an extra, permanent trump suit. It also adds weight to the scenario of Visconti-court invention of the game of Triumphs, a point I was meaning to get back to Mike on.
You're right, that the trumping rules in normal games with suits and without extra trump suit "constituted" the really independent trump suit in the course of development... and then it existed as a 5th suit.
But despite this weight, and with it the ability to claim the idea of a permanent trump suit was only invented once, I prefer to believe it was invented more than once - another time perhaps in Florence or Bologna, and another time perhaps wherever the Leichtenstein'sche cards were made (taking the position that the Imperial suit is a trump suit). This of course allows you to imagine multiple inventions, which is true - but I would maintain that only one got the name of "Triumphs" when it was invented, and that is the one that gave its name (trumps) to the concept (which pre-existed the name obviously).
The world is big and there are many persons, it isn't really believable, that the idea of a predefined trump-suit only once jumped out of the hat of the great magician. Actually you can use even a four-card-suit-system in the manner, that one suit is used as predefined trump suit as for instance in the German game Herzblättchen or the English game Spades. This is a very usual idea.
That the genre then was called "Trionfi cards" (probably according a poem of Petrarca) and got a great very specific development likely happened only in Italy.
It's an absolute normal circumstance in card games, that trumps have a ranking between themselves, and that an other order exist, according which a card deck is parted in suits. And trumps can be parts of different suits. Later Tarot decks have another quality, as trumps are then presented as an own suit, but this is not given in the case of the Michelino deck. I think, we discussed this detail often enough.
I'll state unequivocally -
the gods and heroes of Marziano's deck are not part of the suits of birds! They are their own suit. The
fourfold theme covers the whole deck, but it has
two manifestations - as four suits of birds under kings,
and as a suit of gods with its own order. The gods are not "court cards" in the bird suits. Jupiter, Apollo, Mercury and Hercules are not numbered 15, 14, 13 and 12 of Eagles.
Hm ... crying with (!) doesn't help, other persons also have an opinion and an interpretation. We've no confirmation, that Marziano used the numbers 1-15, but Johannes of Rheinfelden did it in 1377 in his 60-cards deck. And we've a broad tradition, that Ober and Unter were used as trumps, as for instance in the special deck of Meister Ingold 1432, but Kings not, although the Kings were higher in the suit - but the Ober and Unter would be higher, if they meet the King in a trick, if a game is played, in which Ober and Unter as trump are used. That might sound paradox to the ears of somebody, who doesn't know such games, but it is simply broad spread custom and no very specific mystery.
Actually we've in the relation of card suits only two alternative logical positions, either an individual trump belongs to an independent trump suit or it belongs to another suit ... in this case each individual trump is assigned to one of the 4 suits and so an independent 5th suit with trump function simply doesn't exist. Now in the actual game Marziano seems to assume, that players always want to play the game, he's thinking of, and he defines a trump row, using court cards of 4 suits as trumps. This is a second rule, which is added to the already existing rule of the 4 suits, not intended as a contradiction ... but probably already far spread custom between players, nothing revolutionary.
When the player arrive and play actual games, they don't ask Martiano, what he thought, how they should play. So there is a third rule and this says, that actually the players anyway use their freedom in the choice of the game. It's to expect, that they occasionally experiment and play new games or try variants. So there is another rule, and that is, that there is no rule, what players do with the cards. Some throw them out of the window, others collect them, some use them as note book, some divine with them. Some even play chess with them. Some others research their history.
The trumps are not part of the suits, which are birds. The fourfold division into four kinds of virtue and vice is a thematic or conceptual division, which applies to the gods and the birds, but the suits and the gods are practically and physically distinct. This is the only thing that could have made Marcello compare it to a Trionfi pack. The gods were clearly ordered in a separate hierarchy.
The suits are combination of birds and other values, like Virtues, Riches, Virginity, Pleasure.
Ah, there I said it again.
Yes.