Artist and Patron

Bernice

Huck: ....Rulers tend to "advertise", that they work very much, of course. .......
Hmm....... then there is the possibility that maybe the deck was also like an advertisment?

I thought both men & women 'gambled'. What a good way to get a political point (or agenda) across :)


Bee :)
 

Sherryl

Rosanne said:
Thank you very much for this information. I see on Amazon it would cost me nearly $100 US....phew! for this catalogue.(second hand in Italian)

I got my book from abebooks.com, it looks like it was sent to the US from a bookstore in Germany and cost me $50. Still a bit much for a 122 page book that is mostly illustrated with cards you can see elsewhere. But the text and the other Bembo images were worth it to me.

Sherryl
 

Huck

Bernice said:
Hmm....... then there is the possibility that maybe the deck was also like an advertisment?

I thought both men & women 'gambled'. What a good way to get a political point (or agenda) across :)


Bee :)

A lot of the trivial artistic artistic work was heraldic painting. Sagramoro, Trionfi card painter in Ferrara, had been specialist for d'Este heraldic. As Trionfi cards also contained a lot of heraldic, he was predestined ALSO to paint Trionfi cards.
Generally we can compare the artistic work of 15th century to modern advertising. Heraldic (painting the family shield here and there) is very similar to the manner, how modern enterprises advertise with their logo.

When a family ordered to have a chapel filled with painting, then this definitely was a topic for art history now ... :) ... but in the concrete political situation this was "advertising" similar to the way, when an enterprize takes the sponsorship for a sport event nowadays. They wanted "Fame" ... nowadays the word would be "marketing".

And also "gambling" was used for marketing ... the reigning Signore had to lose money to win followers, a strategy, which especially was used, when he needed some men, willing to risk their life in an intended near war.

Lodovico Sforza was troubled, when he heard, that his young wife Beatrice d'Este did win a lot of money at the gambling table ... he saw the bad consequences of such behaviour. He wished to know precisely, against whom she did win and how much.
Life was okay, when she "lost", that wasn't a problem.
 

Rosanne

This attitude of marketing the family explains why there may have never been a Tower or Devil card in the Visconti decks.
Given that Fire or destruction of a family symbol of power would have the wrong connotations to have in a hand of cards. Let alone a Devil.

In Florence there are historical records of families involved in fabric production, expecting the wives and daughters wear the latest fabrics and style to sacred events like the feast day of Saint John the Baptist. It became such a commercial day that the Church made edicts as to stopping this practice. They stopped the shops opening and the stalls along the procession route.

This aspect of the cards is not discussed usually. In some ways it was like the Visconti/Sforza picking up this idea of triumph cards like Nike would for putting logos on shirts. It is powerful, subliminal messages that are known to work.

~Rosanne
 

Bernice

Dispite my long held idea that the pre-marsielle (standardised) trump cards were primarily a product of Time & Place, i.e. the social conditions. I am woefully ignorant of these conditions!

However these threads are a gold-mine of background information of such Times & Places! My thanks for the information that is coming to light.
Huck: And also "gambling" was used for marketing ... the reigning Signore had to lose money to win followers, a strategy, which especially was used, when he needed some men, willing to risk their life in an intended near war.

Lodovico Sforza was troubled, when he heard, that his young wife Beatrice d'Este did win a lot of money at the gambling table ... he saw the bad consequences of such behaviour. He wished to know precisely, against whom she did win and how much.
Life was okay, when she "lost", that wasn't a problem.
Wonderful! What a schemeing lot they were - although I suppose it was normal to promote ones' family, or business, or political agenda.

Rosanne: This attitude of marketing the family explains why there may have never been a Tower or Devil card in the Visconti decks.
Given that Fire or destruction of a family symbol of power would have the wrong connotations to have in a hand of cards. Let alone a Devil.
What a sound & prosaic reason. I wonder if there are any records (of any kind) that reveal how they gambled with 20 trump cards rather than 22. If so, then someone else, Artist or Patron, introduced them..... perhaps to illustrate a sort of 'story' that fitted their belief system. (Much as the later esoterics did).

Eye-opening!


Bee :)
 

Huck

Rosanne said:
This aspect of the cards is not discussed usually.

Well, they are often forbidden, especially in Florence. So then they appear not in the usual records. Franco Pratesi researched big tomes of early papers in archives around the Florentine region and found a lot spurious notations to these prohibitions, or cases, in which fines were paid.
Unluckily he documented his findings not well enough, as he thought in 1989, that nobody would ever be interested to have more details (private statement).

http://trionfi.com/0/p/05/

If Italy would have some more persons like Franco Pratesi, we would have quite a better view on the history of playing cards.
 

Rosanne

Bernice said:
Hmm....... then there is the possibility that maybe the deck was also like an advertisment?

I thought both men & women 'gambled'. What a good way to get a political point (or agenda) across :)


Bee :)

In the search for straw hat manufacture, I just realised what the Fool might have meant in both TdM and Visconti from a political point of view. It has been thought that the Fool was a character like the King of Fools, but what if this was a political statement? The peasant who did not move into the market economy was the fool.
In a barter economy, peasants characteristically have a different attitude to work than peasants— or towndwellers— in a money economy would. Most of them are content to live at a subsistence level and will not expend unnecessary labour raising their standard of living. Traditionally many non-peasants have viewed this as laziness. However, it does make sense from their perspective, since there would rarely be any point in producing more than could be consumed.
He remained poor, and did not contribute to a market economy.
So the Visconti would show this, in a game. Look, I am moving my people forward- I am progressive.
Here is an image from the 15th Century of a peasant and it struck me that his tool may have become the bag on the TdM.
The hat is so TdM (and straw)
http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/...ipt_7310_of_the_National_Library_of_Paris.png

Very interesting from a Patron point of view- and the 'advertising' agenda of the cards.

~Rosanne
 

Bernice

Rosanne:Here is an image from the 15th Century of a peasant and it struck me that his tool may have become the bag on the TdM.
The hat is so TdM (and straw)
http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/...ry_of_Paris.png
Oh my goodness! He even has the beard that is shown in other decks.

So if the Fool = peasant, then could the 'progression' of the Visconti trump order be "How to better yourself, and your country, in 20/21 steps" :laugh:


A little carving with a similar stance to the Fool is in this thread, but I don't know what he has over his shoulder - now thinking it may be a working tool.

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=143659


Bee :)
 

Huck

Bernice said:
A little carving with a similar stance to the Fool is in this thread, but I don't know what he has over his shoulder - now thinking it may be a working tool.

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=143659


Bee :)

This might be a representation of a miner from the first impression.

shapeimage_2.png
 

Rosanne

Nah maybe not 20/21 steps to start with anyway. I think the game was devised from chess as Huck has always tried to show. I guess, if I was devising something that would interest the elite I would use something that was already understand as a frame work. My brother uses a card game for his business effectiveness programmes. He nicked the idea off me with Tarot. The people to be entertained by a patron's family were not likely to play dice against the church wall.:D
Interesting thought though this political agenda via a game.
I am not sure if it would run really though...have to think about it some more.
~Rosanne