Fame

Chaucer's "House of Fame" ... which is said (by its own fame) to imitate Italian style ... was written ca. 1379/1380, just in the time, when playing card history started to write its own famous story.

Petrarca's "Trionfi" ended 1374 (short before Chaucers "Fame") with the author's death, possibly unfinished. One of the 6 allegorical figures was "fame" (the 4th of them).

Chaucer's text
http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/chaucer/translation/hf/hf.html

Well, it's an interesting vision and dream of the author ... Chaucers Fame is in cooperation with Aiolus, who works with different trumpets (just don't know, if Petrarca's Fame also worked with this Aiolus symbol ... but seems likely) ....

....

JUST A REMARK HERE (but seems to be important)

The figure of Aiolus was at the begin of our researches a surprize in the composition of the Michelino deck with its 16 gods and somehow it stayed unexplained there, assuming earlier, that it was just a replacing figure for the river-god Peneios ... the four lowest trumps (below the 12 Olympian gods) are:

... 13th (if you count the trumps from below: the 4th): Hercules
14th: (3rd) Aiolus (with a relation to fame)
15th: (2nd) Daphne (who prefered chastity)
16th: (1st) Eros (the personified love)

Petrarcas allegories series was:

1. Love ... Eros
2. Chastity ... Daphne
3. Death
4. Fame ... (representable by Aiolus, as it seems)
5. Time
6. Eternity

and the later Tarot serie was this:

1. Magician
2. Popess ... ( a representation of Chastity)
3. Empress ... (a woman like fame)
4. Emperor ... (a man like Hercules)

and the general card series (courts) in Tarot games (as it survived in its rules) was

1 point: the Valet
2 points: the Knight
3 points: the Queen
4 points: the King

so going through all these different systems, there seem to be a symmetrie between:

4: King - Emperor - Herakles - (Time-Eternity ?)
3. Queen - Empress - Aiolus - (Death-Fame ?)
2. Knight - Popess - Daphne - Chastity
1. Valet - Magician - Eros - Love

Herakles was the 13th Olympian god, he didn't replace another god (he had the antique function to show that man could ascend to heaven, a myth, that was used by Alexander the great and Emperor Augustus for themselves) ... the Jesus-story walked the same or a similar way (ascendance to heaven) and Jesus became the shown figure for Petrarca's sixth allegory "eternity".

The 12 Olympian gods were not always the same, already in antique compositions ...

The reading of Chaucer is quite interesting. The author (who is NOT an admirer of the rude methodes of fame) visits a location behind the palace of fame and observes there, how truth is mixed with wrong stories.

... well, it reminded me to our researches about the true story of Tarot.

For the Michelino deck and the research of its true content:
http://trionfi.com/0/b/
see especially the never finished attempts to analyze the structure and meaning of the Michelino deck composition

http://trionfi.com/0/b/71
http://trionfi.com/0/b/72
http://trionfi.com/0/b/73
http://trionfi.com/0/b/74
http://trionfi.com/0/b/75
http://trionfi.com/0/b/76
http://trionfi.com/0/b/77
http://trionfi.com/0/b/78

Aeolus

God of the winds - is that who you meant, too?



Originally described as Etruscan, but these days many sites and objects formerly thought 'etruscan' are known to be Nabatean.

Well,

I spoke of this Aeolus, of which Chaucer spoke. True, God of the Winds.

"The messenger went speedily and found where, in a rocky cave in a country called Thrace, this Aeolus held the winds in harsh constraint and oppressed them under him until they roared like bears, so sorely did he bind and press them."

In Thrace, northern part of Greece. Likely a Greek god, at least to the mind of Chaucer. The host of Odysseus ... a men with 6 daughters and 6 sons, which married each other.

The god of direction, and the god of the compass, if you want it so .. Your theme ... but with 12 children, not with 16 in the mind of the Greek.

"This messenger cried on high, "Rise up," he said, "and rush quickly until you come to my lady; and take your clarions with you, and hurry forth." And at once he delivered his clarions to a man called Triton to carry, and let go a certain wind, that blew so high and hideously that it left not a cloud in the entire high and wide sky. This Aeolus delayed nowhere until he had come to Fame's feet, and with him the man named Triton; and there he stood, still as a stone."

Fame - first appearance in Petrarca's poem Trionfi (?)
The iconography of the poem "Trionfi" started ca. 1441 (?)

Would be really interesting, if both things are really true.

*******

Chaucer wrote about Fame, as above noted in the earlier part of the thread.
He saw it not very positive and he connected it interestingly to Aiolus.

Aiolus is a figure in the Michelino deck.
http://trionfi.com/0/b/
http://trionfi.com/0/b/71/



The figure below this Aiolus-Fame in the Michelino deck is Daphne.
Daphne has Chastity-qualites.
Chastity is a figure below Fame in the Petrarca poem

The figure below this Daphne-Chastity in the Michelino-deck is Amor
Amor naturally has Love-qualities.
Love is the figure below Chastity in the Petrarca poem.

The Michelino deck was comissioned by Filippo Maria Visconti, probably ca. 1424/25

*******

Likely 1441 this same Filippo Maria Visconti comissioned a card deck, nowadays in a fragmentarious state called Cary-Yale. Inside this card deck is a trump-card, from which Stuart Kaplan and Michael Dummett in their works (1978, 1980) claimed, that it presents World, but from which we since long time argumented, that it means Fame (cause the trumpet in the hand of the Lady; cause the specific arrangement of the deck)



This same deck likely contained a Prudentia.

In the same year 1441, as above already mentioned, started these Trionfi-poems with pictures with a version for the Malatesta-family.

In this same year 1441 it was 100 years ago , that Petrarca became poetus laureatus in Rome 1341.

Likely in honour of this condition in Florence took place 1441 a literary competition between the Florentine poets, interestingly sponsored by Pietro di Medici, father of Lorenzo.

Around the same time in Germany the poet Enea Piccolomini, later called Pope Pius II., was made poetus laureatus by Emperor Fredrick III, likely by reminding him, that Italy deserves after 100 years a new poetus laureatus.

So there were a lot of things happening around "Fame" in this year 1441 - which, as one should perhaps point out, not astonishingly started with a
1.1.1441, a day, about which curiously a document exists, which possibly tells something about Tarot.

http://trionfi.com/0/d/

****

In 1449 Lorenzo de Medici was born and his father Pietro, who 1441 sponsored the poetical festivity, commissioned a Tondo with a Fame-picture.

*****

Recently I wrote a hypothesis about the Charles VI deck, that it had only 16 cards and that it was made ca. 1463 and that it contained a Prudentia, but not a Fame figure, although it possibly was made for Lorenzo de Medici.

... it was named "Charles VI from 1463 with 16 trumps" to point out, what's the theme of the thread.

... now the theme gets drowned there in the fine details of an iconographical "Fame" discussion, as if the titled idea is totally absurd and has nothing to say. Although the card "Fame" isn't in the deck ...

Hi Huck,

Huck said:

In the same year 1441, as above already mentioned, started these Trionfi-poems with pictures with a version for the Malatesta-family.

Click to expand...

No, for your research, the earliest known illustrations (no longer surviving or recognized as such) were actually commissioned by Piero di Cosimo de' Medici from Matteo de' Pasti, in 1441. There is a letter where Matteo mentions it, it is published and is accessible on the web via JSTOR and others, but I haven't seen it. Matteo was in Venice at the time when he sent the letter.

All the known illustrated versions of the Trionfi are later than this.

(edited to add - you might have thought of Malatesta because Matteo de' Pasti also worked on the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, in the 1450s)

Ross

Hm, we made a request to the owner of the Petrarca site, and I think, he answered something about Malatesta ... not Sigismondo, but the brother (?)

But I might err.

Well, would be somehow nice, when it's still 1441. Actually a precise dating would be interesting in all this 1441 features to decide, which factor possibly was the cause and which others were dependent. Likely a major cause was, that it looked, as if a longer peace would result in 1441 ... and another, that the communications during the council Ferrrara/Florence 1438/39 (which happened during the war) had opened a lot of literary chances, which waited for this peace to develop as the flowers for the first sunny days.

Old Byzanz had also a tradition of triumphal festivities, somehow likely less broken than the Western Roman tradition and stronger related to the older Roman customs.

"Trionfi" and "Fame" or two ideas, which belong by their nature together, not only "with Petrarca".

Hi Huck,

The precise date of Matteo's letter appears to be 24 January, 1441.

Put
"matteo de pasti" +1441+trionfi

in the google books search, and you will find some fragments, but they are enough for the date (google claims they can't show the rest because of somebody's proprietary rights over public domain documents (don't get me started) i.e. the text is actually in the public domain, but my showing it to you is a copyrighted act, and everything in the showing is thereby subject, in some possibly prosecutable sense, to copyright (or some such legalese that companies like google don't want to get mixed up in).

For the letter itself, you'll have to do it the old fashioned way (look up the source, and check in a library, text or JSTOR or another electronic journal collection).

Ross

Well, the 24th of January 1441 is obviously after the 1st of January 1441, and interestingly rather short after this. Pietro di Medici and Leon Battista Alberti organised this poetical tournament in 1441 in Florence.

Alberti is since long under suspicion to have been a relevant visitor in Ferrara (which he definitely was) also in matters of the Trionfi cards. It's not impossible, that he was during the Christmas time 1440/41 just in Ferrara.

When he came back a few weeks later and told Piero about new cultural developments at the courts of the noble people, Piero might have written his letter rather spontaneously.

But the letter was from Matteo .... the exchange between Florence and Venice likely took some time.

Huck said:

When he came back a few weeks later and told Piero about new cultural developments at the courts of the noble people, Piero might have written his letter rather spontaneously.

But the letter was from Matteo .... the exchange between Florence and Venice likely took some time.

Click to expand...

It seems that Matteo had been commissioned earlier, and was reporting something. It was illustrations for a manuscript of the whole poem (at least six illustrations), so the commission was given before. How long? I have no idea. I would guess - a couple of months. Thus late 1440.

In any case, it is from Piero, who like Filippo was mainly a reader of books and a thinker, not a man who loved public life.

Ross

Ross G Caldwell said:

It seems that Matteo had been commissioned earlier, and was reporting something. It was illustrations for a manuscript of the whole poem (at least six illustrations), so the commission was given before. How long? I have no idea. I would guess - a couple of months. Thus late 1440.

In any case, it is from Piero, who like Filippo was mainly a reader of books and a thinker, not a man who loved public life.

Ross

Click to expand...

Pietro was younger then, when he made this show of the poets, he likely was different in this time.
When it was earlier, it tells us, that the "Trionfi" idea was generaly in the air ... likely cause the council. They had 3 religious festivities during the council in Florence with "rappresentatione". I guess, this formed the taste on it.

Would be nice to know more about them. It might well be, that Piero played a leading role there.