Bologna Tarot Questions

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.

balls.jpg


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.

med-01.jpg


"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:

d0511540.jpg


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:

296px-Cary-Yale_Tarot_deck_-_The_Emperor.jpg


Old chess figures ... with accompanying figures:
charlemagne-roi.jpg


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
 

Huck

On another matter, I am trying to find images of the oldest surviving Bolognese and Florentine cards that are not from luxury or "fancy" decks. Here's what I found so far:

Florence:
Rosenwald sheets (NGA link from Iolon's post in this thread)
Minchiate c. 1675 at the British Museum: http://www.britishmuseum.org/researc...85819&partId=1 and http://www.britishmuseum.org/researc...83170&partId=1
17th C cards ((Depaulis' Jeu et magie #28)
This mysterious woodblock print by Solleone (17th C): http://www.wopc.co.uk/italy/minchiat...entine,-17th-c (If anyone knows its provenance please tell me.)
Ronciglione minchiate sheets 1585! (Does anyone have a better image than the IPCS journal? Huck's pdf in an older thread is dead)

Bologna:
Late 15th C Rothschild sheet
16th C single card of the devil by Agnolo Hebreo
16th C cards (Depaulis #23-25)
17th C cards (#26)
17th C book with pasted cards: http://www.britishmuseum.org/researc...bologna&page=1

If anyone knows of any "cheap" cards from 17th C or earlier from these two cities, please let me know.

Minchiate:

The pdf-file to Ronciglione should be here ...
http://www.bibliotecaviterbo.it/biblioteca-e-societa/1982_3-4/D_Orazi.pdf
As far I know, no better pictures available than in the IPCS article.

I've gathered some material to Minchiate here ...
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=234001&highlight=minchiate
... between them this interesting deck ...

AN01611192_001_l.jpg


Generally there is a sort of Minchiate revolution in the recent years caused mainly by Franco Pratesi (with the most material for the late period till a death of Minchiate c. 1860). Lots about production numbers. Unluckily a lot of the articles are only in Italian language.

http://trionfi.com/n/130903/ (Minchiate articles 2011-13)
http://naibi.net (since November 2013)

Important news (Germini Minchiate):

The Rosenwald Tarocchi is suspected to be an early Minchiate
http://trionfi.com/rosenwald-tarocchi-sheet

The oldest Germini note in 1506 (Italian)
http://www.naibi.net/A/IPCS44N1.pdf

Germini 1517 and 1519
http://trionfi.com/germini-1517-1519

"2 documents, from which the first makes clear, that "Tarocchi" still played a role in Toscana in 1606; from 1636 on it seems clear, that there was no Tarocchi production in Toscana; imports of Tarocchi appeared again 1752, though this seems to have been a not very relevant appearance; Tuscany itself didn't produce Tarocchi in this period"
http://trionfi.com/evx-germini-tarocchi-minchiate

Exports of Minchiate 1729-62
"62517 Minchiate decks (period 1729 - 1762), from which 72.2 % went to Roma, 11.2 % to Siena, 12.6 % to the rest of Italy and 4.0 % = 2485 to all others outside of Italy. Between them 40 decks for Colognia at 5th of January 1731 (the earliest known Minchiate deck in Germany, if they ever reached its destination; Cologne is the home of the Trionfi redaction and we're exited), 24 decks for Vienna at 22th of September 1729 a little earlier (as far I'm informed, this is decades before the earliest known Tarock note in Austria), 4 decks for Londra = London in England at 3rd of October, 1753 (this should be also the "first") and some more interesting details."
http://trionfi.com/evx-minchiate-export-tuscany

Many articles about ...
Around 1790 Minchiate production had about c. 10% of the local playing card market. In c. 1860 this was down to c. 0.1%.

Bologna:

Bologna had the Mitelli Tarocchi, not to forget. Mitelli made another curious card game with 40 cards, also interesting: Giuoco del passo tempo
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10510639w/f15.item
more games of Mitelli http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=715

btw. Depaulis Jeu et Magie is online http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6532698n/f63.image

Andrea Vitali "I Tarocchino di Bologna" has a Tarocchi alla Torre, 17th century, B. N. Paris (other pictures than Depaulis), other later Tarocchi variants (XVIII c.).

I personally think, that the Rothschild sheet is from c. 1511/12

Franco Pratesi wrote an article to a Bolognese document from 1477 (contract about an intended playing card production).
http://www.naibi.net/A/323-BONOZZI-Z.pdf
Decks "with Trionfi" are calculated with 5/4 in contrast to "normal decks" (without Trionfi), which gives reason to assume, that decks with trumps had 5/4 of the number of the cards of the usual decks. This indicates: If the usual decks had 56 cards, a deck with trumps would have had 5/4*56 = 70 cards.
This observation fits with the so-called 5x14-theory, which assumes, that early Trionfi games hadn't a game structure of 4x14+22 (as Tarot nowadays has), but a 5x14 structure.

A Ferrarese document of 1457 had noted, that 2 Trionfi decks were produced and each of them had 70 cards (not 78).
Further the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo-Tarocchi is suspected to have had originally only 14 trumps, not 20 and not 22 (14 trumps were painted by the original artist, 6 trumps are considered to be from a second artist).
 

Ross G Caldwell

The Rosenwald Tarocchi is suspected to be an early Minchiate
http://trionfi.com/rosenwald-tarocchi-sheet

It isn't, though. We discussed this when Franco wrote the article. I showed that the trump sheet, with the Queens, and the other two sheets, were not by the same artist. They are not of the same pattern, in any case. The trumps are also numbered as a normal trump set, not a Minchiate. This is clearer now with Iolon's higher resolution scans, and anybody can look.

Franco accepted this, but chose to "deal with these three sheets as if they belonged to same pack." (paragraph 6) He liked the idea too much to give it up, whatever the facts in this case.

He published my remarks just before (paragraph 5) -

"A second point is whether all the three sheets belong to the same pack. It seems they don’t, as one can deduce from a detailed inspection by Ross Caldwell, with results reported below.(2) "The divisions between the cards on the trump sheet are single black lines, while the divisions on the others are double narrow lines. The style of the woodcut appears to be different as well - the lines of the court card sheet seem finer. Moreover, the suit symbols that are common between the trump sheet and the court card sheet are different - the Cups are very much more ornate in the court sheet (three protrusions and inner designs on the court cards, compared to the two protrusions and blank inside on the Queen in the trump sheet), the Swords on the court sheet have a pointed 'wave' in the middle of the hilt, compared to the straight bar on the Queen of the Trump sheet; finally, the Coin of the Queen in the trump sheet has a 'flower' band in the middle register of the circles, while the court cards lack it. In other words, the Queens and their suit symbols are very plain and different from the court cards in the other sheet."
Nevertheless, I am trusting in a given standardization already existing for these packs, and will deal with these three sheets as if they belonged to the same pack."
 

Ross G Caldwell

Here is a comparison image of the trump sheet Queens, and another sheet's Kings, which show the glaring differences between the styles of the two packs. Note also the shape of the shield in the Sword suit, besides the other differences in suit symbols, and the overall finer quality of the engraving in the Kings' sheet versus the trump sheet.

queenkingcompsm.jpg


This is made from zoomable images at Iolon's link below,
http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/g...t/ngaweb/global-site-search-page&pageNumber=1
 

Huck

It isn't, though. We discussed this when Franco wrote the article. I showed that the trump sheet, with the Queens, and the other two sheets, were not by the same artist. They are not of the same pattern, in any case. The trumps are also numbered as a normal trump set, not a Minchiate. This is clearer now with Iolon's higher resolution scans, and anybody can look.

I accept, that this is the case (not the same artist ... or better, not the same style).

But I gave arguments, that this doesn't change too much. Do you remember the place of this older discussion?
 

Ludophone

The devil is in the details

Is the Rosenwald trump sheet Florentine? The coin held by its queen is similar but not exact as the ones in the other sheets. Are there other decks with that simplistic devil?

I'm still curious about this woodblock reprint by Solleone (where is it from?):

minchiate-fiorentine-sec17.jpg


The devil on this block (1600s?) is similar to the Ronciglione devil (c. 1585). Is it possible that this can pre-date the Ronciglione sheet? The early Bolognese man-eating devil also has a face on its chest as well as the Viéville and Belgian tarots. However, this block may appear more primitive by simply being a cruder, cheaper deck.

Compare the devil from this c. 1675 deck which has a similar pose. http://www.britishmuseum.org/resear...?partid=1&assetid=1209332001&objectid=3285819

The devil's pose has changed in the first half of the 1700s: http://www.endebrock.de/coll/cards/i31-10.jpg
 

MikeH

I finally had a chance to get back at this thread, which has some interesting discussion.

Huck wrote, in post 4:
From the chosen motif it looks, as if these oldest extant Bolognese cards were produced 1511-12 in the short period, when Bologna enjoyed some freedom.

The Chariot card has something, which looks like a French Lille, perhaps thanks to the victorious French army.

It seems to me that your history is wrong, Huck, as far as when Bologna enjoyed some freedom. That does not affect the dating much, but it does affect other things about these cards.

Here is Wikipedia, in its article on the main 15th century "first citizen" of Bologna, Giovanni II (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_II_Bentivoglio):. First, here is the beginning, which discusses Bologna under his rule.
Born in Bologna, Giovanni II was the son of Annibale I Bentivoglio, then chief magistrate of the commune, and Donnina Visconti. He was a child when his father was murdered by his rival Battista Canneschi in June 1445.

Annibale I was succeeded in Bologna by Sante I, of uncertain paternity and origin, but alleged to be a son of Ercole Bentivoglio, a cousin of Annibale I. Originally an apprentice of the wool guild of Florence, Sante ruled as signore of Bologna from 1443. When Sante died in 1463, Giovanni II Bentivoglio successfully made himself lord of the commune, although it was nominally a fief of the church under a papal legate.[1] On May 2, 1464, he married Sante's widow Ginevra Sforza. In 1446 he obtained by Pope Paul II the privilege to be considered perpetual head of the city's Senate.
There is more to be said, about Bologna's relative freedom from Papal interference during this period. But let us jump to the end of the article:

Bentivoglio had managed to resist the expansionist designs of Cesare Borgia, but on October 7, 1506, Pope Julius II issued a bull deposing and excommunicating Bentivoglio and placing the city under interdict. When the papal troops, along with a contingent sent by Louis XII of France, marched against Bologna, Bentivoglio and his family fled. Julius II entered the city triumphantly on November 10.

Giovanni moved first to Busseto, host of the Pallavicino family. An attempt led by his sons Annibale II and Ermes to reconquer Bologna in 1507 failed. The Bolognese subsequently rioted against his possessions in the city, destroying the palace.

Excommunicated, Giovanni ended his days as prisoner of Louis XII in Milan. He died in 1508 in the Castello Sforzesco of that city.
Of course there is no such thing as "the citizens of Bologna" as a group. When Annibale II held Bologna briefly in 1507, some citizens, because they could, toppled Michelangelo's giant bronze of Julius II, the warrior pope", and gave it to Alfonso of Ferrara, who turned it into a cannon (affectionately called "Giulio"). Then when the Papacy re-established control, other citizens, because they could, burned the palace,. The issue is Papal control at that point: for the next few centuries, it ruled with an iron hand. Melting down the statue didn't help. The Bolognese card-makers were subservient to the Church, for example in the 18th century when they had to change the colors of the faces of the "papi" to black, the "four Moors", on the whim of the Papal legate.

I do not disagree with your assessment of the dating of the Rothschild Sheet, Huck.. However it is not a product of Bologna's days of freedom from the Papacy, far from it. In consequence, we don't know what corresponded to the "four papi" in Bologna before 1507.

In his 1993 Il Mondo e l'Angelo Dummett argued, successfully in my opinion, that the "four papi" are simply the Popess, the Empress, the Emperor, and the Pope with a few slight changes so as to make them all secular.

It seems to me a reasonable possibility that this would have been done on order of the Papacy, which didn't like the idea of either the Pope or the Popess being in playing cards. But so that the Bolognese could play their usual game (i.e. not the one with the "four papi" rule about taking tricks with them), they made the new cards look enough like the old cards to make them all easily identifiable by sight (there were no numbers on the Bolognese cards until the 18th century). This would a case of bending to accommodate one or two generations of players, after which the old game, through strong discouragement, would be forgotten.

I would appreciate it if people who look closely at the physical images on cards, especially people new to the discussion, would examine Dummett's argument in relation to the cards involved. I quote it, translate it, illustrate it with the relevant cards, and defend it, at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1019&start=10#p15160. It is a rather long post, discussing all the early Bolognese and Florentine decks (many of which Dummett called "Ferrarese", erroneously as it is now thought). If you want just the "four papi", use your computer's "find" function to go to the second place where those words appear in the post. The first place is in a discussion of the trump order in these decks. (In Dummett's view, and mine, the question of the decks' evolution in imagery--which came first, etc.-- cannot be discussed apart from attending to the order, and all the decks. That probably involves going beyond Florence and Bologna, to all the early type A decks, including those for which we have only references to subjects and order, such as in poems. (I would exclude the Sicilian, as being too late to affect anything. But looking just at the images is a start.).
 

Iolon

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.

The statement that there are only two decks with 22 trumps in the 15th century is a little bit crude. The statement should be "we have only one 15th century deck of which 22 trumps survived (Sola Busca) but we have a strong indication from the Boiardo poem that there existed decks with 22 trumps". Another indication is the Steel Sermon, possible also from the late fifteenth century.
The Charles VI deck has 16 surviving trumps. The Este deck has 8 surviving trumps of which two are different from the Charles VI deck. So we have 18 trumps surviving out of 22. Both decks might have been, although manufactured in different towns, ordered by the same person, Ercole I of Este. I strongly believe that both decks were the first examples of the 22 trump structure. The oldest one is probably the Charles VI deck, manufactured possibly between 1460 (when Ercole I returned to Ferrara from Naples) and 1465 (latest date proposed earlier in this discussion) in Florence.
 

Huck

Of course there is no such thing as "the citizens of Bologna" as a group. When Annibale II held Bologna briefly in 1507, some citizens, because they could, toppled Michelangelo's giant bronze of Julius II, the warrior pope", and gave it to Alfonso of Ferrara, who turned it into a cannon (affectionately called "Giulio").

There's an error about the date:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1511_in_art
"Michelangelo's 1508 bronze statue of Pope Julius II in San Petronio Basilica, Bologna is destroyed." (from the year 1511)

http://www.condottieridiventura.it/index.php/lettera-b/501-annibale-bentivoglio
No note about Annibale II in Bologna in 1507.

For 1511
Mag. Emilia:
Si pone davanti a Bologna. Supera sul Reno la difesa di Raffaello dei Pazzi, gli è aperta la Porta di San Felice e penetra nella città con Gian Giacomo da Trivulzio. Assedia la rocca.

Giu. Emilia
Cattura Giulio Vitelli, che si trova alla difesa della cittadella, dopo cinque giorni di assedio; diviene signore di Bologna sotto il protettorato dei francesi. Nella città scaccia i Malvezzi dal loro palazzo di San Sigismondo e vi sistema il suo alloggio. Si affretta a distruggere i segni più evidenti del potere pontificio: lascia che il popolo abbatta la torre recentemente innalzata dal papa e la sua statua, unica opera bronzea di Michelangelo Buonarroti. Il metallo viene fuso per creare il cannone "Giuliano" di Alfonso d'Este. Scioglie, infine, il magistrato dei Quaranta e ristabilisce l'antico consiglio dei XVI. Si reca a Ferrara per incontrarvisi con il cognato.

Lug. Emilia:
Gli avversari di Annibale Bentivoglio provocano una rivolta in città: Galeazzo Marescotti, uno dei pochi superstiti dell' eccidio dei suoi famigliari, si accorda con i pontifici, tramite il cardinale Sigismondo Gonzaga, per restaurare in Bologna il potere papale. Con l'aiuto dei francesi il tentativo è sventato; l'episodio si conclude con una nuova strage degli avversari dei Bentivoglio.