kwaw
Racing Silk of the Barberi
Valentina visited Asti in 1389 during her bridal journey from Milan to France and witnessed there the Palio. The Palio was an annual festival held in honour of the town’s independence from its long-standing rival, Alba, in 1275, on the Feast of Saint Secondo. The victory celebrations included a horse race around the city’s walls. In 1982 Maria Teresa Perosino and Sergio Panza produced 'The Tarot of Valentina Visconti at the Palio of Asti (I Tarocchi di Valentina Visconti per il Palio d’Asti) in commemoration of this [Filipas].
Asti to this day retains the Palio delle Barberi tradition, Barberi for Barberesco, horses imported from North Africa, sometimes shortened to 'barb'. In Sienna the Palio dei Barberi is run by 10 horses drawn by lot from seventeen districts, in Florence craftsmen and merchants from different neighborhoods, the potenze, would set up courts on platforms with mock emperors and kings to view the races.
The Palio dei Barberi [horse race] from the 13th century in Italy was the common culmination of the festival precessions held on the feast days of a Cities local patron saint days, which often incorporated allegorical carts. Later such festivals inclusive of a Palio were also held as one offs at marriages of the nobility, in honour of visiting dignitaries or some other secular special occassion. The most popular breed of Palio horses were from North Africa, the barberi. Also popular were the Turcho or Turkish horse, the Visconti and Sforza were particularly fond of the Urbino or Irish hobby horse [Tobey].
Palio itself means competition, and may refer to jousting, wrestling or racing etc, but also means cloth [from the latin pallium] and refers to the banners awarded as prizes, the racing silk decorated with nappe or ribbons [and others, see dictionary definitions below].
There were races for men, women and youths and the cary-yale court figures and symetrical treatment of gender, both a horsemen and horsewoman, valet and maid, and also the fact that as well as their emblem the courts of each suit wear their own distinguishing colours suggests perhaps reference to these horse races in which both men and women took part in their own categories [the categories of youth or children could include boys and girls] which are connected as the culmination of the festival processions of allegorical carts with which we may perhaps connect the trumps, and in which the Palio or 'racing silk' was itself carried upon a triumphal cart.
Documentary evidence exists for the running of the Palio in various cities from the 13th century, for the inclusion of a category for women from the 14th. Women in city of Udine obtained permission to ride horses in a palio of their own in 1375 [Tobey]. In reference in particular to Milan and Ferrara we have a 1393 Statute of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, first Duke of Milan, which includes the rules and prizes of palio races, for both men and women [Tobey]. There is a 1279 statute issued by the D'Este for the running of the Palio in Ferrara [Tobey, Visentini]. In the Ferrara racing silk of 1391, a year in which the Pope confirmed to Alberto d' Este the “Rosa d’oro”, there were three horse races, two for men and one for women, a custom that continued from that time.
Parisina D'Este of Ferrara, wife of Niccolo, "was a lover of horses and had a notable stable; she sent them to race for palio at Verona, Modena, Bologna, Milan and Mantua; and especially in 1422 and 1423 her favourite jockey, Giovanni da Rimini, wearing her colours of red and white, carried off victory after victory" [Hoshizaki]. Also, "apparently there was an annual Palio in Milan around the feast of St. Michael (29 September). In the notes to Chapter LIX of the Vita of Filippo Maria (in the Zanichelli edition), a chapter with talks about his favorite animals, there are notes from September 20 and 21 in 1425 of Filippo Maria ordering clothing for the race horses (barbareschi, horses from north Africa), and their training, for the upcoming race. The editors say they don't know if it was only a one day event or also on other days, because on October 12, 1424, Parisina d'Este, "herself also passionate about horses and races", ordered that 30 gold ducats be given to Giovanni da Rimini, her horse-trainer (race horses, barbareschi), because he was preparing to race them in the palio of Milan. On the 15 of November Giovanni da Rimini was reported to have won the race, and to be still in Milan) [Caldwell]. Like Valentina, who it is said spent her time playing with saracen and Lombardy cards, Parisina is known also to have had some interest in cards, an order by her for Imperatory cards from Florence is recorded from 1423.
"On October 24. 1441, Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti were wed in the Abbey of San Sigismondo in Cremona, preferring that city's Cathedral for security reasons. In the typical Italian Renaissance manner, feasts lasted for several days and included a sumptuous banquet, tournaments, a palio, allegorical carts and a huge cake reproduction of the Torrazzo, the city's main tower." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianca_Maria_Visconti]
A Palio was run in Ferrara in 1471 to celebrate Borso D'Este becoming Duke of Ferrara and a Palio race is painted in a fresco of April in the Room of the Months in the Palazzo Schianoia with members of the Ferrarese nobility watching [including Borso D'este] [Tobey, Shemek]. There is earlier documentary evidence for the running of Palio at other Italian cities such as Asti and Sienna [See Tobey, Visentini]. In the song of 'Orlando Furioso' Ludovico Ariosto wrote in the sixteenth century, “il palio rosso che avviluppava il villan però non correva sì forte quanto il prode guerriero Rinaldo ch’era più veloce del campione del Palio”.
One of the French terms for the four suits is Les Couleurs, colours. The wearing of colours at tournaments is one of the reasons historians of Heraldry give for the development of Heraldry. Saracenic heraldry developed following contact with crusaders, and a complete heraldic device in Saracenic heraldry too is call a rank, meaning 'colour'.
The pomegranate pattern on textiles originated in Persia and was imported from Turkey, and later made in Italy itself and was very popular from 1420 to 1550, very expensive and a symbol thus of wealth, and also the most popular motif for the 'racing silk' [Tobey].
In reference to the symmetrical presentation of gender in the Cary Yale, Tobey notes Handelman too considers the palio in terms of male and female duality…"of male and female, of spiritual and earthly, and sets the various players in the palio into a number of dichotomous pairings: the feminine and spiritual Virgin Mary and the masculine comune, and the feminine horse and the masculine contrada. The victory of the horse rejoins the Madonna's earthly aspect with that of her spiritual (the palio cloth). Even the holy Madonna, according to Handelman, is given an earthly aspect: the Sienese slang for the palio banner, he points out, is cencio, which means 'rag' or 'faded woman'." [see Tobey, Handelman].
It is not certain that the Cary-Yale deck is to be related to any specific event, such as either Filippo Visconti's own marriage or that of his daughter. In fact, it is not known for certain that Filippo himself commissioned them at all. If for example the suggestion that the pack commemorates the marriage of his daughter is true, then given his shaky relations with Francesco Sforzo it is more likely like they were commissioned by someone else, his wife or the Borromeo family for instance.
Kwaw
Some dictionary definitions of 'palio':
Pálio - a cloke, a robe, a veslure, a mantle, a couer, an vpper garment as the Knights of the Garter or Parliament Lords weare, or Princes at their Coronation. Also a Prelates Cope or Surplesse. Also a Paule, or Hearcecloth. Also a Horse-cloth. Also a shroud or shelter. Also the prize or goale of any running, race, wrestling, leaping, or tilting, giuen as a signe of victorie. Also a race or running course for horses or men. Vsed also for a Princes Canopie, or
cloth of state. [John Florio Queen Anna's New World of Words 1611 Italian - English dictionary]
the pryse or game of any open crye for iustyng, rennyng,wrastelyng,or suche other. William Thomas Principal Rules of the Italian Grammar 1550
Also in Spanish [Richard Perceval A Dictionary in Spanish and English 1599]:
Pálio, a goale at running, a canopie to beare ouer a prince. corrér el Pálio, to run a race.
References:
Handelman, Don. Models and Mirrors, Towards an Anthropology of Public
Events. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Shemek, Deanna. Ladies Errant: Wayward Women and Social Order in
Early Modern Italy. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1998.
Visentini, Nino Franco. Il Palio di Ferrara. Rovigo: Istituto Padano
di Arti Grafiche, 1968.
Tobey, Elizabeth. "The Palio Horse in Renaissance and Early Modern Italy" in "The Culture of the Horse - Status, Discipline, and Identity in the Early Modern World", Edited by Karen Raber.
Tobey, Elizabeth. "The palio in Italian Renaissance art, thought, and culture" by Elizabeth Tobey published
by ProQuest / UMI (2006) ISBN: 0542185261. Currently priced at $69, is also available as an ebook in pdf format for $55 from Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0542185261/ref=nosim/veryclever
1-20
Or free [though with most of the images removed for copyright reasons] from here:
https://drum.umd.edu/dspace/bitstream/1903/2458/1/umi-umd-2325.pdf
Hoshizaki, Mari: http://trionfi.com/0/d/15/index.php
Caldwell, Ross: In response to a post in another forum (thanks Ross).
Filipas, Mark: http://www.spiritone.com/~filipas/Masquerade/Reviews/valent.html
Huck said:.... Valentina got as a dowry the city of Asti (also Piedmont) from Giangaleazzo, so somehow in neighbourhood to Saluzzo .... so perhaps there is a relation by this?
Valentina visited Asti in 1389 during her bridal journey from Milan to France and witnessed there the Palio. The Palio was an annual festival held in honour of the town’s independence from its long-standing rival, Alba, in 1275, on the Feast of Saint Secondo. The victory celebrations included a horse race around the city’s walls. In 1982 Maria Teresa Perosino and Sergio Panza produced 'The Tarot of Valentina Visconti at the Palio of Asti (I Tarocchi di Valentina Visconti per il Palio d’Asti) in commemoration of this [Filipas].
Asti to this day retains the Palio delle Barberi tradition, Barberi for Barberesco, horses imported from North Africa, sometimes shortened to 'barb'. In Sienna the Palio dei Barberi is run by 10 horses drawn by lot from seventeen districts, in Florence craftsmen and merchants from different neighborhoods, the potenze, would set up courts on platforms with mock emperors and kings to view the races.
The Palio dei Barberi [horse race] from the 13th century in Italy was the common culmination of the festival precessions held on the feast days of a Cities local patron saint days, which often incorporated allegorical carts. Later such festivals inclusive of a Palio were also held as one offs at marriages of the nobility, in honour of visiting dignitaries or some other secular special occassion. The most popular breed of Palio horses were from North Africa, the barberi. Also popular were the Turcho or Turkish horse, the Visconti and Sforza were particularly fond of the Urbino or Irish hobby horse [Tobey].
Palio itself means competition, and may refer to jousting, wrestling or racing etc, but also means cloth [from the latin pallium] and refers to the banners awarded as prizes, the racing silk decorated with nappe or ribbons [and others, see dictionary definitions below].
There were races for men, women and youths and the cary-yale court figures and symetrical treatment of gender, both a horsemen and horsewoman, valet and maid, and also the fact that as well as their emblem the courts of each suit wear their own distinguishing colours suggests perhaps reference to these horse races in which both men and women took part in their own categories [the categories of youth or children could include boys and girls] which are connected as the culmination of the festival processions of allegorical carts with which we may perhaps connect the trumps, and in which the Palio or 'racing silk' was itself carried upon a triumphal cart.
Documentary evidence exists for the running of the Palio in various cities from the 13th century, for the inclusion of a category for women from the 14th. Women in city of Udine obtained permission to ride horses in a palio of their own in 1375 [Tobey]. In reference in particular to Milan and Ferrara we have a 1393 Statute of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, first Duke of Milan, which includes the rules and prizes of palio races, for both men and women [Tobey]. There is a 1279 statute issued by the D'Este for the running of the Palio in Ferrara [Tobey, Visentini]. In the Ferrara racing silk of 1391, a year in which the Pope confirmed to Alberto d' Este the “Rosa d’oro”, there were three horse races, two for men and one for women, a custom that continued from that time.
Parisina D'Este of Ferrara, wife of Niccolo, "was a lover of horses and had a notable stable; she sent them to race for palio at Verona, Modena, Bologna, Milan and Mantua; and especially in 1422 and 1423 her favourite jockey, Giovanni da Rimini, wearing her colours of red and white, carried off victory after victory" [Hoshizaki]. Also, "apparently there was an annual Palio in Milan around the feast of St. Michael (29 September). In the notes to Chapter LIX of the Vita of Filippo Maria (in the Zanichelli edition), a chapter with talks about his favorite animals, there are notes from September 20 and 21 in 1425 of Filippo Maria ordering clothing for the race horses (barbareschi, horses from north Africa), and their training, for the upcoming race. The editors say they don't know if it was only a one day event or also on other days, because on October 12, 1424, Parisina d'Este, "herself also passionate about horses and races", ordered that 30 gold ducats be given to Giovanni da Rimini, her horse-trainer (race horses, barbareschi), because he was preparing to race them in the palio of Milan. On the 15 of November Giovanni da Rimini was reported to have won the race, and to be still in Milan) [Caldwell]. Like Valentina, who it is said spent her time playing with saracen and Lombardy cards, Parisina is known also to have had some interest in cards, an order by her for Imperatory cards from Florence is recorded from 1423.
"On October 24. 1441, Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti were wed in the Abbey of San Sigismondo in Cremona, preferring that city's Cathedral for security reasons. In the typical Italian Renaissance manner, feasts lasted for several days and included a sumptuous banquet, tournaments, a palio, allegorical carts and a huge cake reproduction of the Torrazzo, the city's main tower." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianca_Maria_Visconti]
A Palio was run in Ferrara in 1471 to celebrate Borso D'Este becoming Duke of Ferrara and a Palio race is painted in a fresco of April in the Room of the Months in the Palazzo Schianoia with members of the Ferrarese nobility watching [including Borso D'este] [Tobey, Shemek]. There is earlier documentary evidence for the running of Palio at other Italian cities such as Asti and Sienna [See Tobey, Visentini]. In the song of 'Orlando Furioso' Ludovico Ariosto wrote in the sixteenth century, “il palio rosso che avviluppava il villan però non correva sì forte quanto il prode guerriero Rinaldo ch’era più veloce del campione del Palio”.
One of the French terms for the four suits is Les Couleurs, colours. The wearing of colours at tournaments is one of the reasons historians of Heraldry give for the development of Heraldry. Saracenic heraldry developed following contact with crusaders, and a complete heraldic device in Saracenic heraldry too is call a rank, meaning 'colour'.
The pomegranate pattern on textiles originated in Persia and was imported from Turkey, and later made in Italy itself and was very popular from 1420 to 1550, very expensive and a symbol thus of wealth, and also the most popular motif for the 'racing silk' [Tobey].
In reference to the symmetrical presentation of gender in the Cary Yale, Tobey notes Handelman too considers the palio in terms of male and female duality…"of male and female, of spiritual and earthly, and sets the various players in the palio into a number of dichotomous pairings: the feminine and spiritual Virgin Mary and the masculine comune, and the feminine horse and the masculine contrada. The victory of the horse rejoins the Madonna's earthly aspect with that of her spiritual (the palio cloth). Even the holy Madonna, according to Handelman, is given an earthly aspect: the Sienese slang for the palio banner, he points out, is cencio, which means 'rag' or 'faded woman'." [see Tobey, Handelman].
It is not certain that the Cary-Yale deck is to be related to any specific event, such as either Filippo Visconti's own marriage or that of his daughter. In fact, it is not known for certain that Filippo himself commissioned them at all. If for example the suggestion that the pack commemorates the marriage of his daughter is true, then given his shaky relations with Francesco Sforzo it is more likely like they were commissioned by someone else, his wife or the Borromeo family for instance.
Kwaw
Some dictionary definitions of 'palio':
Pálio - a cloke, a robe, a veslure, a mantle, a couer, an vpper garment as the Knights of the Garter or Parliament Lords weare, or Princes at their Coronation. Also a Prelates Cope or Surplesse. Also a Paule, or Hearcecloth. Also a Horse-cloth. Also a shroud or shelter. Also the prize or goale of any running, race, wrestling, leaping, or tilting, giuen as a signe of victorie. Also a race or running course for horses or men. Vsed also for a Princes Canopie, or
cloth of state. [John Florio Queen Anna's New World of Words 1611 Italian - English dictionary]
the pryse or game of any open crye for iustyng, rennyng,wrastelyng,or suche other. William Thomas Principal Rules of the Italian Grammar 1550
Also in Spanish [Richard Perceval A Dictionary in Spanish and English 1599]:
Pálio, a goale at running, a canopie to beare ouer a prince. corrér el Pálio, to run a race.
References:
Handelman, Don. Models and Mirrors, Towards an Anthropology of Public
Events. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Shemek, Deanna. Ladies Errant: Wayward Women and Social Order in
Early Modern Italy. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1998.
Visentini, Nino Franco. Il Palio di Ferrara. Rovigo: Istituto Padano
di Arti Grafiche, 1968.
Tobey, Elizabeth. "The Palio Horse in Renaissance and Early Modern Italy" in "The Culture of the Horse - Status, Discipline, and Identity in the Early Modern World", Edited by Karen Raber.
Tobey, Elizabeth. "The palio in Italian Renaissance art, thought, and culture" by Elizabeth Tobey published
by ProQuest / UMI (2006) ISBN: 0542185261. Currently priced at $69, is also available as an ebook in pdf format for $55 from Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0542185261/ref=nosim/veryclever
1-20
Or free [though with most of the images removed for copyright reasons] from here:
https://drum.umd.edu/dspace/bitstream/1903/2458/1/umi-umd-2325.pdf
Hoshizaki, Mari: http://trionfi.com/0/d/15/index.php
Caldwell, Ross: In response to a post in another forum (thanks Ross).
Filipas, Mark: http://www.spiritone.com/~filipas/Masquerade/Reviews/valent.html