Bologna Tarot Questions

Huck

I don't know much about Bolognese minchiate but Lucchese minchiate has men on horses instead of monsters. BTW Huck, going through some of your old posts, you refer to them as being 69-card decks which is out of date. I'll quote here from the IPCS unsolved problems page http://i-p-c-s.org/problist.html :

"[March 2012: An incomplete Orfeo pack in Mr. Stuart Kaplan's collection, that was offered at auction in 2006 (auction catalogue, no. 128), yielded some of the missing trumps, namely: IIII-VI, VIII, XIII, XV, XXII, XXIIII-XXVIII, XXX, XXXIIII. Therefore, it is possible that all Orfeo packs were in fact regular Minchiate packs.]"

It was probably just bad luck that all the previous Lucca decks were found with so few trumps.

hi Ludophone,

the full record at the IPCS page gives ...

"10. An extraordinary type of Tarot pack, using Minchiate designs for many but not all of the cards, with 56 suit cards, the Matto and only twelve trumps (missing all those below the IX, including of course the Bagatto) appears to have been peculiar to Lucca. For what game was this used?
[March 2012: An incomplete Orfeo pack in Mr. Stuart Kaplan's collection, that was offered at auction in 2006 (auction catalogue, no. 128), yielded some of the missing trumps, namely: IIII-VI, VIII, XIII, XV, XXII, XXIIII-XXVIII, XXX, XXXIIII. Therefore, it is possible that all Orfeo packs were in fact regular Minchiate packs.]"

The problem "10" spoke about a 69-cards-Tarocchi-game ... the note of March 2012 includes cards, which belong to Minchiate and so not to Tarocchi and also not to the specific Lucca Tarocchi. So somehow both text belong to different fields, "10" to the Lucca Tarocchi and the other to a game with name Minchiate or Gallerini or Ganellini ...
The producer "Orfeo" (or the man behind this advertisement) might have produced just different decks.

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Lucca is a strange location. It was a city preferred and visited by the emperors, for instance Charles IV, who is under some vague suspicion to have had very early contact to playing cards.
Second comes Prince Fibbia from Lucca, who introduced a not clear playing card game to Bologna ... perhaps. The case is disputed.
Third there is a private research of mine, which had the curious result, that it looks, as if something from the Lucca Tarocchi (17th century or so) with its 69 cards existed in the background of the curious Sola-Busca Tarocchi (1491). A rather complicated topic. Nobody is really interested ... :)

lucca.jpg



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Note: By germini I am referring to the 97-card deck. I believe "minchiate" was a game played with the 78/77 card deck ("trionfi") in the 15-16th centuries before the name was appropriated by the larger deck. Pratesi noted that "tarocchi/tarocco" was the least used term in Florence.

Pratesi gives as last note of Tarocchi production in the Tuscany region a case in 1606.
"The 1606 date for using Tarocchi in Florence is both early and late. Early, because the spread of that game – or, at least, of that name for the game – was rather recent; late, because in the lists of local playing cards I could not find Tarocchi produced in Florence later on. Alongside of ordinary Piccole and Grandi cards, I could only find Minchiate listed."

http://trionfi.com/evx-germini-tarocchi-minchiate

In the same article he notes:
"If we have previously met Germini and Tarocchi, in 1693 we find Minchiate as the object of a new law. Almost a full century has passed since the previous law. It is hardly possible to find either Germini or Tarocchi still mentioned in Florence. Minchiate is by now the common name of the traditional Florentine game. It only remains to understand how much popular this game was at the time, and which was the typical milieu for its practice."

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I also can't agree with the assertion that Charles VI had only 16 trumps all of which survived. While I am no expert on Renaissance handwriting, others have found them numbered which is why they are now given a type A order and Florentine provenance. The Angel is 20, followed by the World 19, etc. This is my opinion: the Charles VI was produced after the strambotti in which case it dates from the early 16th century and lacks the Popess so the deck had only 20 trumps + Fool (77 card in total). The order of the trumps is near identical with the strambotti and exactly the same as germini sans the extra trumps. CVI was either produced in the narrow time frame before germini or coexisted with germini, since trionfi/tarocchi was still mentioned alongside germini until the early 17th century. Here is my non-precise timeline:

Rosenwald trumps (mid 15th)> strambotti (late 15th)> decks with CVI order including CVI itself (very late 15th/early 16th)> germini (very late 15th/early 16th)

Ross already noted the Castello Ursino cards (Kaplan I p. 108/109), from which two trumps (Father Time and World) are rather similar to the Charles VI motifs. Two other trumps are different, the Chariot and a nude woman on a stag, assumed to present Temperance:

Ursinostag.jpg


Another picture was found on a cassone, which had a striking similarity to this woman:

scheggia-2.jpg


The painter of the Ursino cards is unknown as the painter of the Charles VI, but the Cassone is given to "Lo Scheggia" alias Giovanni di Ser Giovanni Guidi ...

http://trionfi.com/evx-lo-scheggia

... who appeared on one of Pratesi's lists of playing card traders in 1447 as a playing card producer.
http://trionfi.com/naibi-on-sale

A famous Medici picture is from Lo Scheggia, the birth tray of Lorenzo di Medici in 1449:

hb_1995.7.jpg


My theory about the Charles VI deck assumes, that it was made for the 14th birthday of Lorenzo di Medici (1463), and that the painter was (possibly) the same painter "Lo Scheggia" (well, maybe, that Scheggia painted only the Ursino cards).

Around 1500, as you suggest for the Charles VI, Lo Scheggia was dead (died 1486), and also the suspected owner of the Ursino cards, Alessandro Sforza (died 1473).

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Added: Lo Scheggia was brother to Masaccio, a famous painter, who died young.

One of the pictures attributed to Masaccio is Adam and Eve driven out of paradise:

220px-Masaccio-TheExpulsionOfAdamAndEveFromEden-Restoration.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaccio

This motif choice became typical for the Minchiate tower later:

d0511315.jpg


d0511415.jpg


d0511515.jpg
 

Ludophone

Great find on Lo Sheggia.

the full record at the IPCS page gives ...

"10. An extraordinary type of Tarot pack, using Minchiate designs for many but not all of the cards, with 56 suit cards, the Matto and only twelve trumps (missing all those below the IX, including of course the Bagatto) appears to have been peculiar to Lucca. For what game was this used?
[March 2012: An incomplete Orfeo pack in Mr. Stuart Kaplan's collection, that was offered at auction in 2006 (auction catalogue, no. 128), yielded some of the missing trumps, namely: IIII-VI, VIII, XIII, XV, XXII, XXIIII-XXVIII, XXX, XXXIIII. Therefore, it is possible that all Orfeo packs were in fact regular Minchiate packs.]"

The problem "10" spoke about a 69-cards-Tarocchi-game ... the note of March 2012 includes cards, which belong to Minchiate and so not to Tarocchi and also not to the specific Lucca Tarocchi. So somehow both text belong to different fields, "10" to the Lucca Tarocchi and the other to a game with name Minchiate or Gallerini or Ganellini ...
The producer "Orfeo" (or the man behind this advertisement) might have produced just different decks.

I'm not sure if Lucca had a tarocchi pack other than minchiate, at least by the mid-17th century. In Pratesi's 1996 article on Lucca cards (http://www.naibi.net/A/59-LUCCA-Z.pdf), he provided a 1672 price list which listed minchiate but he could find no mention of tarocchi or any special deck unique to Lucca.

It should be noted that the game of minchiate is here quoted at first place and with its traditional name. If a peculiar game and pack for Lucca was used, it has left no trace here. It can thus be supposed either to have been introduced later on, or to have been locally known as, and used instead of, ordinary minchiate.
...
I have not yet been able to find any local explanation, nor even explicit mention of this strangely reduced pack. By the end of the 17th century the most popular card game appears to have been minchiate, as elsewhere in Central Italy. It seems probable that the reduction of the pack, as proved by packs coming from the 18th century, originated not only within the pack, but also within the game of minchiate, instead of in classical tarot.

With the added note from 2012 where the missing trumps were found, it seems more likely that all these decks were minchiate and that it was just shear accident the trumps weren't found until recently. I can't find Kaplan's lot 128 in Christie's. If it has cards unique to Lucca like the human knights, then it must be for domestic consumption. We know that Ligurian ganellini was identical to Tuscan and Roman minchiate except for the added arie found in a few decks. Pratesi went back to Lucca in 2013 and found that the largest deck being produced in 1810 was 52 cards. http://www.naibi.net/A/213-OCTROI-Z.docx

Where did you find that Orfeo deck? Is it from the same deck as Depaulis' jeu et magie?
 

Iolon

it was just shear accident the trumps weren't found until recently.
Thanks Ludophone, this is exactly what I also think, not only for this deck, but also for the Charles VI and other 15th Century decks.
 

gregory

Can any of you geniuses tell me which deck this one is from ? I think it is one of the good and OLD ones, but....
 

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Philippe

Tarocchino al leone

I'm not aware of a fac-simile. Contrariwise, Fournier museo del Prado has edited the Minchiate al leone
 

gregory

Wow thanks :) No wonder I couldn't find it.... The Minchiate al Leone I have.
 

Ludophone

Can any of you geniuses tell me which deck this one is from ? I think it is one of the good and OLD ones, but....

That's definitely from tarocchino, probably from the mid-18th century or earlier. Compare it with this: http://www.britishmuseum.org/resear...?partid=1&assetid=1599997001&objectid=3056191

It can't be minchiate since the Florentine angel always blows from two trumpets since the 16th century hence the local name of Trumpets. This is the angel from the minchiate al leone reproduced by Ediciones del Prado: http://a.trionfi.eu/WWPCM/decks07/d05114/d0511440.jpg
 

gregory

No I do know it wasn't the Minchiate al Leone - I only said I had it when Philippe mentioned that it had been issued.