Huck
Dear Huck,
You're not exactly right about the Medici heraldry. In 1465 it changed from 6 "palle" to 5 "palle". The top ball changed in the bigger blue one with the three French lilies. Before that date the number of balls varied at lot, between 11 or 12 to 5 or 6. There are also versions with 8 and 7 balls. You can find the seven balls version on the tomb of Bishop Benozzo Federighi in the Santa Trinita church and also on one of the corners of the Palazzo medici. It seems that Cosimo di Medici prefered this 7 balls version. For me dating the Charles VI deck between 1460 (the return of Ercole I of Este) and 1465 is fine. This fits well in my theory about the development of the 22 trump structure.
I know about your chessboard theory, but I do not believe it. Yes, the Cary Yale Visconty had very probably 16 Trumps, but this was related to the Michellino deck and not to the Chess game. That is also the main reason why every suit had 16 cards. The best theories are often the simplest to explain, so for me the Charles VI deck was the first deck with 22 cards, ordered by Ercole of Este in Florenze. This 22 trumps structure is something that was confirmed by the second Este deck, made in Ferrara on the occasion of the wedding of Ercole I of Este.
The six Medici palle mostly have the same size.
It's true, that the Medici had different numbers of palle in their development. But it seems, that the six palle with one filled with French fleur-des-lis became the most used symbol after 1465.
"Family members occasionally used different numbers of balls; evidence of this can be still be seen around Florence: San Lorenzo's Old Sacristy contains both a shield with seven balls, while another on the ceiling has eight, and Cosimo I's tomb in the Cappelle Medicee displays only five."
from http://www.theflorentine.net/lifestyle/2012/03/the-medici-balls/
The old sacristy of San Lorenzo was finished 1440. Cosimo I was the the first grand-duke of Tuscany. Perhaps somebody had then the opinion, that this was a new level for the Medici. But later generations stayed with the six palle, as one finds them often at the playing card back sides of Minchiate decks or at the Fame card:
Italian Wiki and other sources tell, that the date of the heraldry change happened in May 1465: "Re Luigi XI di Francia, con un decreto emanato a Montluçon nel maggio del 1465, concesse a Piero il Gottoso e ai suoi eredi e successori legittimi di armeggiare di Francia (d'azzurro, caricata di tre fiordalisi d'oro posti 2, 1) la palla verso il capo: nello stemma miniato sul diploma di concessione le palle erano poste 3, 2, 1 e quella armeggiata di Francia era quella centrale della riga superiore ... "
The location "Montluçon" was taken by Louis at 14th of May 1465, I read, and the heraldry operation took place, when Louis needed some alliances to Italian states cause of a local war in France.
A chess book in 1398 (Echecs amoureux) used 16 Greek/Roman gods and 32 termini out of the "Roman de la rose". The 32 figures clearly were related to 16 figures of the male player and 16 of the female player. Likely the 16 gods were related to the 16 general chess figures.
The Michelino with other 16 gods developed later. The mentioned chess book was discussed at the court of Valentina Visconti, half sister to Filippo Maria Visconti.
If the 14 trumps of the first painter of the PMB indeed satisfied the 5x14-structure, a 5x16-structure for the earlier Cary-Yale seems logical.
There are a lot of good arguments for an influence of chess on the development of playing cards. Cessolis (c. 1300) had attributed professions to the 8 pawns. The 60-cards deck of John of Rheinfelden (1377) had attributed professions to the number cards, and John clearly gave a reference to chess. The 14th century had a big favor for the game of chess and its plausible, that chess took an influence also on the later Trionfi cards.
The Cary-Yale emperor ... with accompanying figures:
Old chess figures ... with accompanying figures:
There is no evidence at all that any Trionfi deck in the second half of the 15th Century had only 16 Trumps. We do not know any Trionfi or Tarot game that had 16 suit cards. The Kölnish Master of the PW deck with 5 suits of 16 cards is a bad example, these cards have no relation at all to the Trionfi decks (there is no trump suit) and Köln is very far away from Italy.
There are only two decks with 22 trumps in 15th century (Boiardo + Sola-Busca), we have (possibly) 3 with 16 trumps (Michelino, Cary-Yale, Charles VI). We know one with 16 cards for each suit (Cary-Yale), we have no info about the state of Charles VI and another deck structure with the Michelino.
The deck from Cologne hadn't 16 figures for each suit (5x14-deck). Cologne is indeed very far from Italy, but Bianca Maria Sforza was here and Master PW knew her. Master PW engraved scenes of the war 1499 with Maximilian against Switzerland.
And Bianca Maria was obsessed by cards, that's often mentioned. We have also many card playing documents of the Milanese court around the time of Bianca Maria's wedding (1493, thanks to a biography of Beatrice d'Este). In that period playing prohibitions were very rare.
... ... it's not demanded, that anybody should believe the chess-connection to the Trionfi cards, but it's an interesting question and one shouldn't overlook it completely as a possibility.
The Cessolis-picture gallery is indeed a sort of "earlier system" ... in its development with comparable motif differences as they also appear in the Trionfi-card/Tarot development.
https://www.google.de/search?q=cess...vrTLAhWEkQ8KHXCPC9sQ_AUIBygB&biw=1920&bih=979