MikeH
Anyone in the vicinity of New York City by April 17 of this year (2016) will have a rare opportunity to see in one place (the Cloisters) many of the oldest extant luxury playing card decks there are, including selected cards from two of the three oldest extant tarot decks, the "Visconti" aka "Cary-Yale" (CY) and "Visconti di Madrone", and the "Visconti-Sforza", aka Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo (PMB). For the masses (i.e. free), there is also an extensive website about the cards being exhibited, at http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2016/world-in-play . And for those not lucky enough to be in New York, for $25 plus postage, there is also a picture-filled catalog of the exhibition. There are exactly four paragraphs on the tarot cards. Well, that is better than the website, which has seven sentences (repeated) plus an amusing catalog description for the 2 decks.
For the "Visconti Tarot", the website description (called a "checklist" in the catalog) has:
Among the cards shown on the website, we see a female knight. That detail had been omitted from the checklist, which calls into question the assertion about the "fourteen cards in each suit"..
After all this, plus the assurance that there were exactly 22 special cards, I had to get the catalog itself, to see what further revelations lay in store. In the back are the identical "checklist" entries as on the Website. But there is also an essay by the curator, Mr. Timothy Husband. There we find the "prior to 1447" reiterated, without the "c. 1450", but no statement of how many special cards there were. However we are told that
However there are indeed other revelations. One is that there are sixty-nine surviving cards in all, contradicting the "checklist" number of sixty-seven. The Beinecke Library website does indeed both show 67 and state that there are 67 in all.
About the tarot, Husband says (p. 76):
He goes on to describe the trick-taking game that was played with these cards, in which the special cards served as trump cards. But they were not the first of this sort:
Husband does not mention in this connection the Marziano deck (also called the Michelino, for the painter); extant is a detailed account by the designer Marziano, who verifiably died in 1425. It most assuredly had a special hierarchy, taking precedence over the suits in trick-taking, of its 16 highest cards, which were Greco-Roman "deified heroes". It was verifiably designed for Filippo Maria Visconti, too (http://trionfi.com/marcello-martiano-da-tortona).
Husband says that besides the "Visconti" deck, there was another early luxury tarot deck, called the "Brambilla", "almost certainly painted for Filippo Maria Visconti before his death in 1447." While no one disputes that it was done before 1447, who it was done for remains undocumented, as far as I know. It has Visconti heraldics in the suit cards, but there were many Visconti.
For the third deck, the "Visconti-Sforza", the website gives the same "c. 1450" dating as for the "Visconti" deck. But Husband tells us in his essay that it was done for Francesco Sforza "shortly after 1450" (p. 78). How he knows that he does not say. The only documentation of that time period, 1452, is for a deck with the Milanese ducal heraldics desired by Sigismondo Malatesta (http://trionfi.com/etx-sigismondo-pandolfo-malatesta), indeed by a highly praised workshop in Cremona. I am not aware of a consensus about when the "Visconti-Sforza" was done. Besides 1452, 1455-1460 has been proposed ("Quello carte de triumphi che se fanno a Cremona': tarocchi dei Bembo, ed. S. Bandera and M. Tanzi, Milano 2013, p. 50); and there is Dummett, who proposed "early 1460s" in one of his last essays (Artibus Historia 56 (2007), pp. 15-26; for relevant quote see http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=365&p=4888&hilit=Benedetto+Bembo#p4912).
The "checklist" for the "Visconti-Sforza" reports that the deck had 21 trumps plus the Fool, but that two are missing. How they know that they are missing, as opposed to never being produced, is not said. Husband in his essay makes no statement about the total number of special cards in this deck.
The checklist states that there were "Seventy-eight cards, of which seventy-four survive (six by a different artist, ca. 1480)". A dating of ca. 1480, or more precisely, 1480-1490, is in fact upheld by a consensus of art historians (Bandera and Tanzi, pp. 50 and 52), who attribute the six cards in a different style to Antonio Cigognara. Among playing card researchers, this attribution is occasionally disputed, e.g. by Dummett in the Artibus article.
There is also the question of how many artists were involved in the "first artist" cards. Bandera and Tanzi posit two, of which the second, Ambrogio Bembo, may have only been involved with the pip cards.
Finally, about all three decksl:
Perhaps it is a good thing that we are only given five paragraphs plus two "checklists" on these most ancient extant tarots. The real value of the book, and the exhibition, is that of putting the tarot decks into the context of other luxury decks of the time, especially those of Germany. We on tarot forums seldom do that (Huck excepted). Husband points out examples where similarity of poses on Italian and German cards suggest the use of model books of a common source. He also gives useful criteria for telling whether a deck was made only for show or perhaps also for play. Speaking of the Stuttgart Playing Cards of c. 1430, he observes:
For the "Visconti Tarot", the website description (called a "checklist" in the catalog) has:
The "c. 1450" dating is supplemented in the blurb above this description, which says they were "probably made for Filippo Maria Visconti, the last duke of Milan of that name, prior to his death in 1447."The Visconti Tarot
Workshop of Bonifacio Bembo (Italian, active ca. 1442–77; died before 1482)
Italian, Milan, ca. 1450
Paper (pasteboard) with opaque paint on tooled gold ground
Suits: Cups, Swords, Batons, and Coins
Fourteen cards in each suit: King, Queen, Knight, Knave, 10 through 1, plus twenty-one trump cards and one Fool
Seventy-eight cards, of which sixty-seven survive
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (ITA 109)
Among the cards shown on the website, we see a female knight. That detail had been omitted from the checklist, which calls into question the assertion about the "fourteen cards in each suit"..
After all this, plus the assurance that there were exactly 22 special cards, I had to get the catalog itself, to see what further revelations lay in store. In the back are the identical "checklist" entries as on the Website. But there is also an essay by the curator, Mr. Timothy Husband. There we find the "prior to 1447" reiterated, without the "c. 1450", but no statement of how many special cards there were. However we are told that
Fig. 94 is precisely that female knight of swords.The Visconti tarot, the older pack, diverges from the standard: it has as many as six court cards per suit, including a male and female of all ranks (fig. 94).
However there are indeed other revelations. One is that there are sixty-nine surviving cards in all, contradicting the "checklist" number of sixty-seven. The Beinecke Library website does indeed both show 67 and state that there are 67 in all.
About the tarot, Husband says (p. 76):
I did not know that so much was known about the game at that point (i.e. the 1440s and 1450s). A reference would have been nice. I do know that the earliest reference so far is to "carte a trionfi" in Tuscany of 1440.The earliest references to tarot all date to the 1440s and 1450s, and all fall within the quadrilateral defined by the northern cities of Venice, Milan, Florence, and Urbino.(46: Dummett, The Visconti Sforza Tarot Cards, p. 5) Because of the complicated nature of the game by that point, it is likely that it had begun evolving earlier in the century.
He goes on to describe the trick-taking game that was played with these cards, in which the special cards served as trump cards. But they were not the first of this sort:
To read what Dummett says about Karnoffel in a later book Il Mondo e l'Angelo, 1993, find "Karnoffel" at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1019&p=15162&hilit=Karnoffel#p15162. The earliest documentation is Nordlingun, Bavaria, in an ordinance of 1426. The game did not have a special trump suit, however, but simply used one of the four suits as trumps, by the random turning over of a card.Trump cards were apparently invented in Europe, but perhaps not in Italy. The first trumpcard game appears to have originated in Germany in the 1420s with a game known as Karnoffel in which a suit of trump cards could beat only cards of a lower rank.(48: Michael Dummett, "Kartenspiel des 15. Jahrhunderts und das Hofamterspiel," in Dummet et al Hofamsterspiel, Berumte Kartenspiele, ed. commentary vol. (Vienna: Platnik, 1976), pp. 70-71,
Husband does not mention in this connection the Marziano deck (also called the Michelino, for the painter); extant is a detailed account by the designer Marziano, who verifiably died in 1425. It most assuredly had a special hierarchy, taking precedence over the suits in trick-taking, of its 16 highest cards, which were Greco-Roman "deified heroes". It was verifiably designed for Filippo Maria Visconti, too (http://trionfi.com/marcello-martiano-da-tortona).
Husband says that besides the "Visconti" deck, there was another early luxury tarot deck, called the "Brambilla", "almost certainly painted for Filippo Maria Visconti before his death in 1447." While no one disputes that it was done before 1447, who it was done for remains undocumented, as far as I know. It has Visconti heraldics in the suit cards, but there were many Visconti.
For the third deck, the "Visconti-Sforza", the website gives the same "c. 1450" dating as for the "Visconti" deck. But Husband tells us in his essay that it was done for Francesco Sforza "shortly after 1450" (p. 78). How he knows that he does not say. The only documentation of that time period, 1452, is for a deck with the Milanese ducal heraldics desired by Sigismondo Malatesta (http://trionfi.com/etx-sigismondo-pandolfo-malatesta), indeed by a highly praised workshop in Cremona. I am not aware of a consensus about when the "Visconti-Sforza" was done. Besides 1452, 1455-1460 has been proposed ("Quello carte de triumphi che se fanno a Cremona': tarocchi dei Bembo, ed. S. Bandera and M. Tanzi, Milano 2013, p. 50); and there is Dummett, who proposed "early 1460s" in one of his last essays (Artibus Historia 56 (2007), pp. 15-26; for relevant quote see http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=365&p=4888&hilit=Benedetto+Bembo#p4912).
The "checklist" for the "Visconti-Sforza" reports that the deck had 21 trumps plus the Fool, but that two are missing. How they know that they are missing, as opposed to never being produced, is not said. Husband in his essay makes no statement about the total number of special cards in this deck.
The checklist states that there were "Seventy-eight cards, of which seventy-four survive (six by a different artist, ca. 1480)". A dating of ca. 1480, or more precisely, 1480-1490, is in fact upheld by a consensus of art historians (Bandera and Tanzi, pp. 50 and 52), who attribute the six cards in a different style to Antonio Cigognara. Among playing card researchers, this attribution is occasionally disputed, e.g. by Dummett in the Artibus article.
There is also the question of how many artists were involved in the "first artist" cards. Bandera and Tanzi posit two, of which the second, Ambrogio Bembo, may have only been involved with the pip cards.
Finally, about all three decksl:
Whether he was a "Milan court painter" at the time the decks were made is not discussed. Also, he would have been quite young at the time of the Visconti decks, too young to head a workshop. But at least Husband does not go so far as to say that the cards were painted by Bonifacio himself. With other decks in the exhibition, it is obvious that different painters were involved. So Husband knows to be cautious.All three decks are attributed to the workshop of the Milan court painter Bonifacio Bembo.
Perhaps it is a good thing that we are only given five paragraphs plus two "checklists" on these most ancient extant tarots. The real value of the book, and the exhibition, is that of putting the tarot decks into the context of other luxury decks of the time, especially those of Germany. We on tarot forums seldom do that (Huck excepted). Husband points out examples where similarity of poses on Italian and German cards suggest the use of model books of a common source. He also gives useful criteria for telling whether a deck was made only for show or perhaps also for play. Speaking of the Stuttgart Playing Cards of c. 1430, he observes:
I leave it to others whether these criteria sheds any light on the use to which the Italian cards in question were put. Husband appears to think that all of these decks were made purely for show.The largest of all the early playing cards, these are made of six layers of paper glued together to make pasteboard. Some of the paper has watermarks that have been identified with a paper mill in Ravensburg and can be dated between 1427 and 1431; this, along with the style, supports the generally accepted date of about 1430. The corners of these cards are rounded, and there is some wear, particularly on the gold ground. Because the wear is on the high relief areas of the cards’ uneven surfaces, it evidently resulted from
the abrasion caused by stacking one card on another over the centuries. There is no wear or accumulated grime concentrated along the lower edges, where cards are typically handled—a further indication that they were intended primarily for visual delectation.