northsea said:
However, evidence like the Jacopo Antonio Marcello statement in 1449 that triumph cards were "a new Italian invention" (I hadn't heard that one before until this thread) points to the 15th century Italy origin.
This was important for me too.
It comes from the letter J-A Marcello sent to Isabelle of Lorraine in 1449, along with two decks - a "normal" tarot deck, and the deck Marziano da Tortona designed, and Michelino da Besozzo painted, for Filippo Maria Visconti.
"And as often as you will restore the mind wearied by the highest labours by means of this game, and to revive the spirit by this new Italian invention"
(& quotiens hoc ludo mentem summis laboribus arrisque lassam reficietis, et hoc novo Italico invento animum recreabitis)
http://trionfi.com/0/b/03/
I think this statement is an important witness, because of the people involved.
Isabelle
Scipio Carafa
Marcello
Cossa
Isabelle (Duchess) of Lorraine, and Queen of Sicily, had spent the years 1435-1440 in Naples, with excursions into Tuscany. In 1449, at the age of 39, she had retired to her estates in Angers (her husband was René d'Anjou).
Marcello was the Venetian army "proveditore" - the liason between the Senate and the army, whose principal job was to pay the soldiers. Marcello also supported Anjou's claim on Naples (the Kingdom of Sicily) over Alfonso of Aragon's. In early 1449, Marcello had been given a gift of a pack of triumph cards, something he seems never to have seen before, and when Scipio Carafa saw them, he exclaimed how much Queen Isabelle would love them.
Scipio Carafa was the Venetian ambassador to the French court (Charles VII). Carafa had just come back to Italy after visiting René's court in Provence (Tarascon and Aix).
Marcello decides to send the triumph cards, but also discovers a more famous pack that F-M Visconti had conceived of and owned; he decides to send that one to Isabelle too, along with the book describing it. He sends it with Giovanni Cossa, the primary ambassador between René d'Anjou and the Italian powers.
Some deductions -
Everybody in the story is excited about the cards (the lesser triumph pack started the story; Marziano's comes later).
Marcello and Carafa are Venetians; Marcello knows the north and east of Italy intimately, and Carafa knows northern Italy and France from Provence to Paris (and who knows what else). Both men seem never to have seen triumph cards before Marcello received a pack as a gift near Milan.
Isabelle knew Italy well, and loved and sought out beautiful things; if triumph cards had existed in Naples or Florence at this time, it seems she would already have known them.
Carafa must have observed her either playing cards or at some other kind of game, and when he saw Marcello's cards, he believed she would love them. Thus it seems, neither Carafa nor Isabelle would have seen them before (i.e. if Carafa knew of such cards before, he wouldn't have been surprised to see Marcello's, which Marcello implies are less than worthy of royalty; and if Isabelle had already had a pack, Carafa wouldn't have insisted to Marcello on how much Isabelle would love to have a pack of them).
Therefore, I think that triumph cards didn't exist yet in the late 1430s, or someone of these three card-playing people, in all their travels, would already have a pack of them and none of this story would have happened - AND Marcello wouldn't have called them a "new Italian invention".
Additional observations and deductions -
There is a famous Venetian law in 1441 that forbids imported cards, because it is damaging the local artisans. The law seems especially directed at German cardmakers.
We know that German cardmakers were numerous in Florence and Bologna, at least since the 1420s, and probably earlier.
We know that "Emperors" cards were made at Florence in the 1420s. We don't know what kind of cards these were, but when an Italian heard "Emperor" in the 14th-15th centuries, it would have brought to mind "German" first and "Caesar" (as in ancient Rome) second. Thus, I think that Emperors cards were some kind of German pack of cards. It seems plausible that Emperors cards were the same as the German "Kaiserspiel" - Emperor's Game - which is another name for "Karnöffel". Karnöffel had an allegorical component - normal cards called Emperor, Pope, Devil, the Sow, and the "Karnöffel".
Emperor Sigmund came to Italy in 1431 and stayed 2 years. He was crowned King of Lombardy in Milan, and Emperor in Rome in 1433. This was the first time an Emperor had been crowned in Rome in over 100 years, and Sigmund celebrated with a Roman style triumph in Rome and in Mantua on his return trip. Thus - in 1433, the Italian people were treated to a German Emperor in an ancient Roman style Triumph.
In the late 1430s, finally, Petrarch's allegorical poem "Trionfi" begins to get wider circulation, with the first recorded illustrated version done in 1441.
So the theme of Triumph, in both the allegorical sense and the Roman victory sense, seems to be getting more popular in the 1430s.
When we consider the protectivist spirit that made the Venetians crack down on German cards, the fact that someone interested in cards did not know them as of 1440 while still in Italy (Isabelle), and the rise of Italian self-determination in the end of the Western Schism and that massive international event, the council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-1443), which ended in Rome - i.e. the "triumphal" spirit of the times, especially the second half of the 1430s - I would hazard to guess, if it were possible to know, that Triumph Cards were invented around 1439, by someone who knew the Emperors Game (Emperor = Triumph), but wanted to make a native game that would be the final, greatest game of all - Italy's triumph, taking back the Church, bringing the world together (Council uniting Greeks and Latins (on paper at least) and all the other Churches (Copts, Ethiopians, Syrians, Indians)), crowning the Emperor - the triumph of right order over the misfortunes of the previous century. This is what I think triumph cards signifies and celebrates, and those were the events that occasioned its birth.
I think many of these deductions are sound, some less sound, and the hypothesis is... um... bold; but even if the risk of taking a stab at the precise conditions and dating is a little over the top, the general proposition of a dating in the 1430s, even up to 1441, is something I will defend.
So... my confidence in Italy, 15th century? 99.9 per cent.