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Re: help identification tarot of marseilles

21 by mikeh
Huck wrote,
8 Justice, 7 Force, 6 Temperance, 5 Love, 4 Emperor is part of the Minchiate order. These 5 cards appear not in the Lucca Tarocchi.
Please, Huck, nobody has so much as speculated that these cards might be part of a Lucca tarocchi. The idea is absurd, even without those cards, because of the cavaliers. It is perhaps part of a Lucca minchiate.

I do not see that the presence of French writing shows much. Italy had lots of diplomats and tourists from France (also the other way, e.g. Marie de' Medici), and some of them would buy local curiosities. For example Charles Rainsford, an English naval officer, picked up a minchiate pack in Naples, he said, in 1771. More precisely, in the margin next to a discussion of the 78 card pack, he writes "I have a pack of 93 from" - i.e. an incomplete deck, so useless for playing - and on the next, at the bottom, a line separating it from the rest, "I first saw it in Naples, in the year 1771".
viewtopic.php?p=23037#p23037
People with money would buy older rather than newer decks, not to play, but just to look at the pictures, have something historic, and perhaps compare them with French minchiate of the time (yes, we have at least one thread on that). Then it gets discarded.

What is more of interest is when all this was recycled. Rosele, why do you say that the book was bound, with the covers and binding it had before you ripped them apart, before 1700? What's your evidence? If it's good, you really have something (not that you don't already).

P.S. Wait -I'm not so sure about comparing these cards to Rainsford's purchase, because they aren't cards, they're proof-sheets. Did tourists buy proof-sheets? Well, maybe an antiquarian would, or a buyer of bulk lots of printed material, including imported material, which he would then sort and try to sell. Etteilla got his start in that trade. The notes seem to relate to the cards. Otherwise I'd agree that it's just standard recycling in the same general region. It's a puzzle.
Last edited by mikeh on 23 Apr 2021, 15:21, edited 4 times in total.

Re: help identification tarot of marseilles

23 by rosele
mikeh wrote: 23 Apr 2021, 14:25 Huck wrote,
8 Justice, 7 Force, 6 Temperance, 5 Love, 4 Emperor is part of the Minchiate order. These 5 cards appear not in the Lucca Tarocchi.
Please, Huck, nobody has so much as speculated that these cards might be part of a Lucca tarocchi. The idea is absurd, even without those cards, because of the cavaliers. It is perhaps part of a Lucca minchiate.

I do not see that the presence of French writing shows much. Italy had lots of diplomats and tourists from France (also the other way, e.g. Marie de' Medici), and some of them would buy local curiosities. For example Charles Rainsford, an English naval officer, picked up a minchiate pack in Naples, he said, in 1771. More precisely, in the margin next to a discussion of the 78 card pack, he writes "I have a pack of 93 from" - i.e. an incomplete deck, so useless for playing - and on the next, at the bottom, a line separating it from the rest, "I first saw it in Naples, in the year 1771".
viewtopic.php?p=23037#p23037
People with money would buy older rather than newer decks, not to play, but just to look at the pictures, have something historic, and perhaps compare them with French minchiate of the time (yes, we have at least one thread on that). Then it gets discarded.

What is more of interest is when all this was recycled. Rosele, why do you say that the book was bound, with the covers and binding it had before you ripped them apart, before 1700? What's your evidence? If it's good, you really have something (not that you don't already).

P.S. Wait -I'm not so sure about comparing these cards to Rainsford's purchase, because they aren't cards, they're proof-sheets. Did tourists buy proof-sheets? Well, maybe an antiquarian would, or a buyer of bulk lots of printed material, including imported material, which he would then sort and try to sell. Etteilla got his start in that trade. The notes seem to relate to the cards. Otherwise I'd agree that it's just standard recycling in the same general region. It's a puzzle.
I still have problems replying to posts, as well as with my English. I try to post again.The cover is in parchment, and instead of a cardboard to make the structure rigid they put about twenty pieces of paper, including the tarot cards.
to save money they recycled parchment and paper (which could be used to produce other paper, not for writing but to produce cardboard.

Re: help identification tarot of marseilles

25 by mikeh
Rosele wrote,
provo a mandare altre foto
In Google-ish English: "I will try to send more photos."

Thanks for staying with this, Rosele. And if you need to, it's okay with me for you to write in Italian - or French or Spanish. I can try to translate, although there are others on this forum better qualified and can correct me or step in themselves. Your discovery is of much interest.

And Huck: I apologize for my tone on the issue of the deck not being a tarocchi. You were just making an observation that is necessary to keep in mind, and I got defensive for some reason; it was past my bedtime (6 am my time), I needed to stop but I couldn't quit.

I didn't realize that the new photo at the bottom of Huck's post was another from Roselle's bunch. That is a real card, not part of a proof sheet, of the Tarot de Marseille type. I will do some searching. It's close to Payen, https://www.tarot-de-marseille-heritage ... n1713.html, but with a different back. All the ones at Tarot Heritage in fact have pointed beards, and this one doesn't.

Added: it's two different Fool cards, different sizes, even. The left side is similar to Payen and others on Tarot Heritage. The right side is something else. Now we need the dimensions, and definitely the reverses of the bits you've shown us.

The back that you've shown us is similar but not identical to that of the Noblet and Tarot de Paris, both c. 1650 and of Paris. But it's only similar and probably common. See https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b ... rk=64378;0
Last edited by mikeh on 24 Apr 2021, 09:39, edited 1 time in total.

Re: help identification tarot of marseilles

26 by Nathaniel
rosele wrote: 24 Apr 2021, 07:37 I still have problems replying to posts, as well as with my English. I try to post again.The cover is in parchment, and instead of a cardboard to make the structure rigid they put about twenty pieces of paper, including the tarot cards.
to save money they recycled parchment and paper (which could be used to produce other paper, not for writing but to produce cardboard.
Grazie mille Rosele! Questa scoperta è estremamente interessante!
Come ha detto gia Mike, se vuoi scrivere in italiano, fallo pure, si può tradurre, non c'è problema.

I have one question: you said "The manuscript was written from 1750 onwards, but the book was certainly bound before the beginning of the 1700s." What do you mean by "the manuscript"? How is it possible that the binding is older than the "manuscript"?

When I first saw these sheets, I thought they were probably printed outside Italy, because the cards obviously did not have the borders made from folded-over backing paper that is so typical of Italian cards in the 17th and 18th centuries (and which can be seen on Huck's photos of the Lucca cards in this thread). This is what normally creates the border of black dots around the image. On Rosale's sheets, that border of dots is simply printed directly onto the card. So the designs used on these sheets were obviously copied from Italian cards, but they were printed by someone using a different manufacturing method than the usual Italian method.
Such cards could theoretically be from Piedmont, because the Piedmontese cardmakers did not fold the backing paper over in this way. But Rosale's discovery of the French writing means that these sheets are much more likely to be from France. They might have been made for export into Italy, especially to Liguria or Tuscany, but it's also possible that they were made for players in France: in Game of Tarot (p. 343) and Il Mondo e l'Angelo (pp. 262-267), Michael Dummett records evidence of minchiate being known outside of Italy in the 18th century, including in French-speaking regions.

Re: help identification tarot of marseilles

29 by Huck
Nathaniel wrote: 24 Apr 2021, 09:37 They might have been made for export into Italy, especially to Liguria or Tuscany, but it's also possible that they were made for players in France: in Game of Tarot (p. 343) and Il Mondo e l'Angelo (pp. 262-267), Michael Dummett records evidence of minchiate being known outside of Italy in the 18th century, including in French-speaking regions.
We discussed earlier a "Minchiate Francesi", made c. 1660 by the French designer Poilly ...

search.php?keywords=francesi
... with a lot of very nice pictures ...
Image
It was a time, when a Medici heir married a French princess.
Marguerite Louise d'Orléans, a granddaughter of Henry IV of France, was married to Cosimo III by proxy on 17 April 1661 at the Palais du Louvre. She arrived in Tuscany on 12 June, disembarking at Livorno, and made her formal entry to Florence on 20 June to much pageantry. As a wedding gift, Grand Duke Ferdinando presented her with a pearl the "size of a small pigeon's egg."

The marriage was unhappy from the start
... from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosimo_II ... of_Tuscany

If I remember correctly, Florence had totally stopped to produce Tarocchi decks and made only Minchiate games since the 1630s.
Huck
http://trionfi.com

Re: help identification tarot of marseilles

30 by mikeh
Huck, earlier you asked about the backs of the Lucca minchiate cards. Here is the rest of the top half of p. 68 of the article I was citing earlier.
You asked about the backs of the Lucca Minchiate. Here is the rest of one part of a page (p. 68) that I posted earlier.
Image

But that is not all. There is a complete Minchiate in the Lucca Museum of the "Alla Fama" type, he says, meaning its backs have a man holding a spear and the words "ALLA FAMA" below him. It seems that with some partial decks it is not clear whether they are minchiate or tarocchi, and because the cards are so similar, it is possible to combine cards from different types (he calls them A and B, where A is clearly Minchiate and B simply unclear) with the same backs; he thinks the Kaplan deck is of that sort. One style of back has Orpheus playing his violin and the word "ORFEO", another has a man holding a spear and ALLA FAMA,. a third has a young woman holding a fan and below her the words "D'LUCCA". The author does not favor the hypothesis that the tarocchi decks had 69 total cards.
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