Tarot and Kabbala

kapoore

I guess that ends the debate, doesn't it?

Hi Huck,
I don't know all the antigue decks by heart. And so it would have been helpful if you had simply written out the trumps in the 5-14 deck at Ferrara, or a hypothetical deck of Ferrara. I mean a simple list would have been helpful. Then, rather than go over the old diaries, I woud have liked your explanation of why you think the deck had changed to 22. I do, though, understand card historians are notorious for not engaging in background history cultural, or philosophical evidence. I personally think there are other types of evidence. You never discuss the themes on the cards as Robert O'Neill does. You never discuss the culture of the Renaissance. But apparently you have gathered together your team of card experts with high credentials--Ross Caldwell, Robert O'Neill (although I thought somehow he didn't believe in the 14 card theory), and Ronald Decker. I guess that's it for Tarot history for the moment. I suppose we'll have to wait for a contradictory bit of evidence, but since you are opposed to exploring the themes on the cards themselves; then I doubt this conversation would progress much further than it is now.

I want to thank everyone who has participated in this discussion. I have learned a lot . Thanks to Hestia, Bernice, and all the others that contributed. And thanks to you Huck as well.
 

Ross G Caldwell

Don't give up on Huck so quickly Kapoore. He's always willing to provide more detail to specific questions.

Huck believes that the 14 Bembo-painted trumps of the "Visconti-Sforza" or Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo deck are the 14 standard motifs for that time. That is:

Fool
Bagato
Popess
Empress
Emperor
Pope
Love
Chariot
Justice
Hermit
Fortune
Hanged Man
Death
Judgment

The connection to Ferrara lies with an account in the Este records, which states that the artist Sagramoro painted 14 images for Bianca Maria Visconti, for her use on January 1, 1441. Bianca Maria was from Milan, but she was in Ferrara at this time as a young lady finishing her education (and playing an unknowing part in a scheme her father devised).

Huck bolsters his argument with another Este account, from 1457, which records a payment for two packs of "carte grande da trionfi, which have 70 cards" (the arabic number seems to have been the number used).

There is plenty of background and cultural information that is shared here, and the facts of the history - documents and dates - can't be interpreted without it. What do you think is missing from the discussion?

I personally don't agree with Huck's theory, basically because of circumstantial evidence - the card game of Triumphs had already spread over a large area between 1442 and the 1450s, and the surviving cards from the 1450s and 1460s, taken together, show all the standard trump subjects - i.e. 22 cards. It seems impossible to me that everybody over that wide area changed together from a 14 trump pack to a 22 trump pack. So the simpler explanation for the number of surviving trumps from various packs is that some trumps were lost - just as many pips and courts were lost.

I lean to the idea that the number 21 (excluding the non-numbered Fool) comes from an analogy with dice games - either the number of pips (sum of one to six, the number of points on a die) or the number of throws of two dice. Both types of 21 were used in moralizations on games written before and after Tarot was invented. Another mathematical explanation has been proposed - Michael Dummett suggests that the game designer thought that the ratio 2:3 (suited cards:trumps) was elegant, and this helps explain the presumed number of trumps in the Cary Yale pack as well, which would be 24 (standard subjects plus three Theological virtues (not including a Fool)). The Cary Yale had 64 suit cards, or 16 cards per suit - thus 16:24 = 2:3. Dummett speculates that the Visconti-Sforza is a simplified pack where the designer sought to maintain the same ratio - 14:21 = 2:3.

Ross
 

Huck

kapoore said:
Hi Huck,
I don't know all the antigue decks by heart. And so it would have been helpful if you had simply written out the trumps in the 5-14 deck at Ferrara, or a hypothetical deck of Ferrara. I mean a simple list would have been helpful. Then, rather than go over the old diaries, I woud have liked your explanation of why you think the deck had changed to 22.

... :) ... well, if you have the Kaplan Encyclopedias (as you said, you did), you would have really problems to avoid to know the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo-deck, in the case you read your books. This is a deck of Milan, not from Ferrara .... the composition of the proposed 5x14-deck in Ferrara isn't known.
A list of the 14 trumps in the Milanese 5x14-deck (as part of the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo Tarocchi) is receiveable at ...

http://trionfi.com/0/f/07

... a link, that I give for the third time now. If you're not able to follow a link ...
My opinion, why the 5x14 deck changed to a deck with a 4x14+22-structure, isn't really of interest. It's interesting, that it changed, I would say, and it's of interest to present a list of the relevant informations.

I do, though, understand card historians are notorious for not engaging in background history cultural, or philosophical evidence.

As far "background history" is concerned, I've to smile here ... actually I don't know of anybody, who did more on the topic "background history" for early Trionfi cards as Trionfi.com in the past.

I personally think there are other types of evidence. You never discuss the themes on the cards as Robert O'Neill does.

Well, I and other authors at Trionfi.com don't claim to be Robert O'Neill or are interested to imitate him, as far I know it.
Btw: The topic "themes of the cards" is an overcrowded topic, perhaps you didn't realise that. A lot of authors tried this and offered various opinions. This is okay, but at least I am not interested to take part.

You never discuss the culture of the Renaissance.

... :) ... I feel rather sure, that you don't know all, what's published at Trionfi.com. But again: We're not especially interested to fill already overcrowded places.

But apparently you have gathered together your team of card experts with high credentials--Ross Caldwell, Robert O'Neill (although I thought somehow he didn't believe in the 14 card theory), and Ronald Decker.

Your informations are wrong: neither Bob O'Neill nor Ron Decker participate at Trionfi.com. Ross Caldwell participates with his own opinion.

I guess that's it for Tarot history for the moment. I suppose we'll have to wait for a contradictory bit of evidence, but since you are opposed to exploring the themes on the cards themselves; then I doubt this conversation would progress much further than it is now.

I want to thank everyone who has participated in this discussion. I have learned a lot . Thanks to Hestia, Bernice, and all the others that contributed. And thanks to you Huck as well.

Well, you started the thread with ...

I am proposing a new thread on an aspect of Tarot history that has driven me nuts since my introduction to the Tarot over 15 years ago. I am referring to the relationship between the Tarot and the Hebrew Kabbala.
...
I am not well versed in Kabbala. In fact, I have read only the Sefer Yesirah, but I have read some secondary sources: Gershom Scholem, Eliot Wolfson, and Steven M. Wasserstrom. I sense, though, that the contributors to the Forum are much better read in the primary sources and can contribute to the debate from that perspective. What I have to share are fragments from my readings over the years that have eventually formed a line of interconnections.
...

Actually you didn't tell about your "line of interconnections" ... you offered something about St. Jerome as the Hermit.
 

Huck

Ross G Caldwell said:
I personally don't agree with Huck's theory, basically because of circumstantial evidence - the card game of Triumphs had already spread over a large area between 1442 and the 1450s, and the surviving cards from the 1450s and 1460s, taken together, show all the standard trump subjects - i.e. 22 cards. It seems impossible to me that everybody over that wide area changed together from a 14 trump pack to a 22 trump pack. So the simpler explanation for the number of surviving trumps from various packs is that some trumps were lost - just as many pips and courts were lost.

Well, we don't have between 1441 and begin of 1450 evidence of a far spreading of Tarot cards ... all notes could depend on very few activities at the courts of Ferrara and Milan alone, surviving cards are only from Milan.

We've more documents and more surviving cards from the 50's and 60's ... we've no sure evidence, that the lower market was reached by the Trionfi decks ... it looks as a very specific hobby of the high nobility.

Not all 22 motifs have evidence till 1470 .. the devil is still missing. Any sure evidence for the existence of the 4x14+22 deck structure is still missing.

Instead of a note about the structure of the decks (4x14 + 22) we've till 1470 a "70 cards" note from Ferrara in 1457, a description of the Michelino deck with totally 60 cards (with a confirming note from 1449, that this was regarded as a "Trionfi deck"), the appearance of the number 14 in a Ferrarese document in a not totally obvious context from 1.1.1441 and the fact, that the trumps of the Pierpont Morgan Bergamo deck were curiously painted by two different painters - one painted 14 special cards and the other six).
Also we've the confirming informations, that the Bembo cards might be regarded as a "complete deck", that the Cary-Yale Tarocchi might have been a 5x16-deck and that the 16 extant trumps in the Charles VI offer a complete Tarocchi-trump series.
 

kapoore

Sorry, I lost my temper. And thanks Ross for providing the 14 card deck. When I cooled down I did go to The Encylopedia of Tarot, but I actually got the cards from Ronald Decker's Art and Arcana. On page 32 he lists the Trumps not painted by Bembo: Strength, Temperance, Star, Moon, Sun, World. Then if you add in the Tower and the Devil, which apparently never appeared on the Sforza Trump suit; you would have the required 8. I also went to Tarot Symbolism by Robert O'Neill and he argues that the hand-painted decks survived because they were "family treasures" the printed decks he believes are more accurate in terms of the whole pattern. He also mentions that the wealthy families were not popular with the masses (who might have played cards given that the German card makers threatened the Venice industry--sorry can't find where I got that), and why would they ever imitate them.
There is in fact a spectacular description of Francesco Duke of Milan on page 129 Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope:
"He appeared the only man of our time whom Fortune loved. He had great physical and intellectual gifts. Unconquered in war he came from a humble family to a throne. He married a lady of great beauty, rank, and virtue, by whom he had a family of very handsome children. He was rarely ill. There was nothing he greatly desired which he did not obtain, and did not allow the stars which at his birth he had found so propitious to be found false. Some misfortunes did befall him. His mistress, whom he loved passionately, was murdered by his madly jealous wife....another friend and comrade, Ciarpellone, he convicted of treason and hung...etc."

Why did this conversation drift out of wack? I did intend to explore the relationship between the Tarot and the kabbalah; and I have actually never understood the connection before. It was a geniune question. I ended up on Saint Jerome because I discovered that the humanist fraternity chose Saint Jerome as a patron saint. I, then, scoured the internet for 15th and 16th Century paintings of Saint Jerome and to my surprise I became convinced that this might be the Hermit card. Simultaneously I was reading in Ronald Decker's book as well as several other essays online. Saint Jerome was associated with the Hebrew alphabet. I would agree with Ross that the number of 21 is the game number--we still play 21. It is also, as it turns out, very Pythagorean, which is the humanist part. But I became persuaded (even though I was only persuading myself) that the number 22 was significant and precise--a reference to the humanist fraternity. Albergati and Cusa were both painted as Saint Jerome, and in one essay I read that Durer's Saint Jerome is really Leonardo. But truly at this point I am not sure what more I have to contribute to the conversation.

Ross is correct. Thanks, Huck, for making me search far and wide for the 14 card suit. I do understand now, although I disagree. But maybe that "hang man" in the Sforza deck was Ciarpellone? That's a thought.
 

Yygdrasilian

Sifr Yetzirah

Sepher Yetzirah said:
III.4. ...Two stones build two houses. Three stones build six houses. Four stones build twenty-four houses. Five stones build one hundred twenty houses. Six stones build seven hundred twenty houses. Seven stones build five thousand forty houses. Thenceforth, go out and calculate what the mouth is unable to say and what the ear is unable to hear.
2 : 2 -------------------> 2 x 1 = 2
3 : 6 -------------------> 3 x 2 = 6
4 : 24 -----------------> 4 x 6 = 24
5 : 120 ---------------> 5 x 24 = 120
6 : 720 ---------------> 6 x 120 = 720
7 : 5040 -------------> 7 x 720 = 5040

Sepher Yetzirah said:
III.1 ...And before One what do you count?
How many houses does 1 stone build?

Sepher Yetzirah said:
IV.4 Twenty-two letters: He carved them, hewed them, refined them, weighed them, and combined them.....and they all return again and again, and they emanate through two hundred and thirty-one gates....
231 = 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15+16+17+18+19+20+21
Aleph = 0


Sepher Yetzirah translated from the Hebrew and French by Scott J. Thompson & Dominique Marson
http://www.wbenjamin.org/saadia.html
 

Huck

kapoore said:
Sorry, I lost my temper. ...

Why did this conversation drift out of wack? I did intend to explore the relationship between the Tarot and the kabbalah; and I have actually never understood the connection before. ...


It was a geniune question. I ended up on Saint Jerome because I discovered that the humanist fraternity chose Saint Jerome as a patron saint. I, then, scoured the internet for 15th and 16th Century paintings of Saint Jerome and to my surprise I became convinced that this might be the Hermit card. Simultaneously I was reading in Ronald Decker's book as well as several other essays online. Saint Jerome was associated with the Hebrew alphabet. I would agree with Ross that the number of 21 is the game number--we still play 21. It is also, as it turns out, very Pythagorean, which is the humanist part. But I became persuaded (even though I was only persuading myself) that the number 22 was significant and precise--a reference to the humanist fraternity. Albergati and Cusa were both painted as Saint Jerome, and in one essay I read that Durer's Saint Jerome is really Leonardo. But truly at this point I am not sure what more I have to contribute to the conversation.

Ross is correct. Thanks, Huck, for making me search far and wide for the 14 card suit. I do understand now, although I disagree. But maybe that "hang man" in the Sforza deck was Ciarpellone? That's a thought.

... :) ... actually we appreciate some temper and engagement in the topic of Tarot history, no problem ...

The farspread connection between Kabbala and Tarot is a matter of 19th century Tarot development. It was then believed, that an older context existed, in which Tarot and Kabbala had been related before.

Court de Gebelin suggested, that Tarot originated in old Eyptia, Eliphas Levi suggested a context to Kabbala and offered a correlation between cards and letters and later the Golden Dawn offered a second order. Both versions were used at 20th century card decks and described in accompanying leaflets or discussed in Tarot books.

Generally the question wasn't very important, but it got interest again, when the Tarot became a popular and successful product in the 60ies of 20th century.
The more careful Tarot history research with an orientation towards hard facts, manifested by authors as Dummett and Kaplan failed to give evidence for an early Tarot-Kabbala connection ca. 1980 ... in rough terms told, it was recognized, that Western Kabbala started with Pico de Mirandola in 1486 and Tarot was ready in ca. 1450 according the new revelation ... the natural conclusion was, that Western Kabbala couldn't have influenced the 22-special cards Tarot.

However, this "ca. 1450 Tarot was ready" opinion found a leg-biting dog called "5x14-theory" in the recent years ... his barking sounds like "there is no evidence for a 22 in the early Trionfi records". Well, this opened a totally new field of research and debate ... and btw., the internet opened and much better research possibilities became publicly available.

So there was reached a new level ... on a secondary playing field, still more or less unobserved, as public opinion and atttention is a slow and occasionally somewhat boring movement, the question is now open: "If the Trionfi cards really reached much later than 1450 the state of 22 special cards, what's then with the old and seemingly resolved question about a connection between Tarot and Kabbala?"

... :) ... so actually there's the aspect, that the 5x14-theory offers much more possibilities for this loved connection than the orthodox "ca. 1450" theory.

There's for instance this context:

In December 1486 Giovanni Pico de Mirandola, called the first Christian kabbalist, published his famous text, which caused relatively quick personal trouble to him (about 3 monthes later) and formed the deciding event, which prepared his later fame.

In January 1487 (about one month later) in Ferrara the illegimate daughter of Duke Ercole d'Este, Lucrezia, married with much publicly attention and special resonance of the local poets, whih were eager to contribute praising poems. Beside other typical Trionfi activities two comedies were shown in Ferrara with a few thousands onlookers.

Matteo Maria Boiardo was a famous Italian poet of the second part of 15th century. One of his smaller works is a Tarocchi poem, which couldn't be dated by history of literature, so roughly said, according this researches it originated somewhere between 1461-1494. Boiardo lived at the same Ferrarese court as the above mentioned Lucrezia and in his Tarocchi poem, which included small tercets about famous antique women and men, he gave the highest trump in the game to the Roman Lucrezia, who caused with her selfmurdering act the Roman republic.

Following this "sign of the poet" we came as part of our general Trionfi research to the conclusion, that the most probable date for this poem would be January 1487, assuming, that Boiardo's Tarocchi poem was one of the many Ferrarese poems praising Lucrezia, the bride.

Boiardo was the elder cousin of Giovanni Pico de Mirandola and long before Giovanni he already had learnt the Hebrew language, it's seems a probable correct conjecture, that Boiardo's studies in this language prepared the more intensive occupation with it by his young relative Giovanni.

Earlier researches on the Boiardo poem had brought up the result, that Boiardo used a 10-pairs-model of virtues and vices, possibly somehow arranged in a life tree pattern similar to the common life-tree structure used in Kabbala.

http://www.geocities.com/autorbis/boiardo.html

So coordinated by time we have the following coincidences:

December 1486: Giovanni Pico de Mirandola publishes
January 1487: Lucrezia''s wedding and the Boiardo poem
February/March 1487: condemnation of Pico's work

Interestingly we don't find Boiardo's poem in the list of the published poems for the wedding. We even don't find Boiardo at the list of the guests at the wedding festivity in Bologna. Instead we find, that Boiardo was installed as governor in Modena, just in the festivity time.

Was it already in the news of January 1487, that Pico would get trouble for his activities in Rome? Was is a measure of precaution, that Boiardo didn't present his poem at the wedding?
The Boiardo Tarocchi poem appeared much later at the surface, after Boiardo's (and Pico's) death.

Well ... the Boiardo Tarocchi poem is in Tarot History research the first "real and unavoidable" confirmation, that a Trionfi deck had reached the state of a 4x14+22-structure.

.....

May this be, as it is, for St. Jerome and his popularity in the circle of 15th century humanists there is an easy explanation: St. Jerome major signifying work was the act of translation ... and many humanists lived from their translations in 15th century.
 

Ross G Caldwell

Yygdrasilian said:
231 = 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15+16+17+18+19+20+21
Aleph = 0

This is a misreading of the text.

4. Twenty-two letters: He carved them, hewed them, refined them, weighed them, and combined them, and He made of them the entire creation and everything to be created in the future. How did He test them? Alef with all and all with Alef, Bet with all and all with Bet, Gimel with all and all with Gimel, and they all return again and again, and they emanate through two hundred and thirty-one gates. All the words and all the creatures emanate from One Name.

It is referring to combinations of two letters, without duplicates in either place. E.g. there is no Alef-Alef, no Bet-Bet... and there is an Alef-Bet, but no Bet-Alef.

This gives 231 pairs of unique letters in unique places, or the "gates". The letters themselves aren't the gates, which is what your simple addition of 1-21 would suggest. The letters can't be duplicated, because there is only one of each (for the SY they are the elements). But they can be combined with each other in unique combinations. Thus there is no difference between Alef-Bet and Bet-Alef, so it is irrelevant to have both listed. This process leads to 231 unique combinations.

Also, the fact that 1-21 = 231 doesn't suggest there is a letter with the value of "0". At best, since Alef=1, it suggests that you forgot to add Tav=22 to the series.

I don't know the combinatorial formula for 22 things taken without duplication, in pairs, in a unique order - I just take it as the tradition gives it and has understood it.
 

Ross G Caldwell

Huck said:
Well, we don't have between 1441 and begin of 1450 evidence of a far spreading of Tarot cards ... all notes could depend on very few activities at the courts of Ferrara and Milan alone, surviving cards are only from Milan.

I take Sforza's request to look for the "finest quality" to be strong indirect evidence of lesser quality decks available "off the shelf" - he expected to receive them right away, not a special commission.

Florence permitted the game in 1450, so it is not only in Milan and Ferrara.

We've more documents and more surviving cards from the 50's and 60's ... we've no sure evidence, that the lower market was reached by the Trionfi decks ... it looks as a very specific hobby of the high nobility.

Marcello's first deck was "not worthy of a Queen" - suggests popular, or even woodcut.

Marchione, much earlier, sold his for one-eigth the price of a commissioned deck, retail.

Not all 22 motifs have evidence till 1470 .. the devil is still missing. Any sure evidence for the existence of the 4x14+22 deck structure is still missing.

The inferential evidence is strong.

The dating of the Steele Sermon is unknown. It could be from the 1450s (not the copy we have, but the original).

The earliest woodcut decks like Rosenwald and Met/Budapest Museum, are not securely datable, but could be from before 1470 - at the very least, well before 1486.

The Tower is present in the Charles VI, which certainly dates between 1450 and 1470.

It is *very* problematic to think that people just added this and that card, here and there, over decades, and that by the time popular decks were produced everybody had the same ones. It is much more likely a standard form achieved wide distribution early on.

Instead of a note about the structure of the decks (4x14 + 22) we've till 1470 a "70 cards" note from Ferrara in 1457,

A solid fact, but susceptible to at least three different interpretations.

Given that I think the standard 22 subjects were already present, I am forced to suggest that it was a sloppy entry, not a detailed count on the part of the accountant.

a description of the Michelino deck with totally 60 cards

We don't know how many pips each suit had. If two court cards were missing, it is not hard to imagine that pips were reduced too. On the other hand, it could be that "kings" stands for a common group of court cards, probably 3, making a 68 card deck.

There's just no way to know.

(with a confirming note from 1449, that this was regarded as a "Trionfi deck"),

Again, that datum can be interpreted in a better way. Marcello made a generic comparison because the two decks had something in common - I think that can only be the "extra suit" of Gods and Heroes. Otherwise, they had nothing else in common and the comparison makes no sense.

Polismagna's statement is more appropriate for the "generic trionfi" argument, unless we can presume that classicized decks - like the Sola Busca - already existed in the late 1460s.

the appearance of the number 14 in a Ferrarese document in a not totally obvious context from 1.1.1441 and the fact, that the trumps of the Pierpont Morgan Bergamo deck were curiously painted by two different painters - one painted 14 special cards and the other six).
Also we've the confirming informations, that the Bembo cards might be regarded as a "complete deck", that the Cary-Yale Tarocchi might have been a 5x16-deck and that the 16 extant trumps in the Charles VI offer a complete Tarocchi-trump series.

I don't know about the confirming information that the Bembo cards are a complete deck - since two other cards are also missing. The other two decks demonstrate this even more - Cary Yale lacks 20% of its cards, Charles VI has only one suited card left. Why regard the trump series as complete?

Ross
 

Huck

Quote Huck:
Well, we don't have between 1441 and begin of 1450 evidence of a far spreading of Tarot cards ... all notes could depend on very few activities at the courts of Ferrara and Milan alone, surviving cards are only from Milan.

Quote Ross:
I take Sforza's request to look for the "finest quality" to be strong indirect evidence of lesser quality decks available "off the shelf" - he expected to receive them right away, not a special commission.
Florence permitted the game in 1450, so it is not only in Milan and Ferrara.

Huck: I said "begin of 1450" and then Sforza's letter of December 1450 still wasn't written.


Quote Huck:
We've more documents and more surviving cards from the 50's and 60's ... we've no sure evidence, that the lower market was reached by the Trionfi decks ... it looks as a very specific hobby of the high nobility.

Quote Ross:
Marcello's first deck was "not worthy of a Queen" - suggests popular, or even woodcut.
Marchione, much earlier, sold his for one-eigth the price of a commissioned deck, retail.

Huck: The Marchione deck still was expensive for a common purse. Well, you interprete it as deck of Bologna (as Marchione was from Bologna), and I interprete it as a second cheaper edition of the deck, that Sagramoro made in January 1442 was given to Marchione to sell it on the common market (on the base, that Sagramoro and Marchione had common trade connections).
The cheaper deck, which reportedly arrived in the hands of Marcello, might have come from this edition. We have no confirmation, that early Trionfi decks were good-selling objects in their beginning, indeed we have confirmations, that times were bad for playing cards productions with the rising influence of Pope Eugen, who was friendly with the Franciscans and the Franciscans were against playing cards (San Bernardino, St Capistranus) (confirmations are many stronger prohibitions in Florence, nearly no playing cards productions in Ferrara from 1444 - 1449).


Quote Huck:
Not all 22 motifs have evidence till 1470 .. the devil is still missing. Any sure evidence for the existence of the 4x14+22 deck structure is still missing.

Quote Ross:
The inferential evidence is strong.
The dating of the Steele Sermon is unknown. It could be from the 1450s (not the copy we have, but the original).
The earliest woodcut decks like Rosenwald and Met/Budapest Museum, are not securely datable, but could be from before 1470 - at the very least, well before 1486.
The Tower is present in the Charles VI, which certainly dates between 1450 and 1470.
It is *very* problematic to think that people just added this and that card, here and there, over decades, and that by the time popular decks were produced everybody had the same ones. It is much more likely a standard form achieved wide distribution early on.

Huck: The worth of the words "inferential evidence" depends on the given facts and made conclusions, alone it is rather empty.
Dating something on a "could be" before a given factual date is rather insecure ... indeed I recently I came over a specific situation in 1502, when some Savonarolian followers (who indeed persecuted playing cards and would have also persecuted Trionfi cards, as hey didn't have much respect for the habits of the nobility) had gathered in Mirandola at the court of Gianfrancesco Pico de Mirandola, who supported them (Mirandola is in the Ferrarese region and the piece of paper, on which the Sermones are written, is said to have been used in the region of Ferrara). On their side were also Franiscans of the region (the Sermones are said to have been in a codex with other Franciscan writings). The brothers of Gianfrancesco attacked him then on the base of his heresy and Gianfrancesco escaped to Germany, the Savonarolian followers were killed. Judging the different times of Italy in 15th century I know of no better opportunity to have this text written.

You wrote: "The earliest woodcut decks like Rosenwald and Met/Budapest Museum, are not securely datable, but could be from before 1470 - at the very least, well before 1486" ... what is your argumentation to this point?

It's true, that the Tower in the Charles VI is probably before 1470, at least I think so. It's also true, that we don't have a Tower in the Visconti-Sforza versions.
It's true, that we have had Trionfi events in Italy, and that these all attempted to be "individual events" ... as long as we had the condition, that Trionfi card production accompanied these Tionfi events, it has some logic, that the producers aimed at individual designs for their cards.
When these conditions changed and decks were manufactured with mass production techniques the situation changed and the trend was surely aiming at standardization, no doubt. Our discussion is about the point, at which time these mass productions started.

Quote Huck:
Instead of a note about the structure of the decks (4x14 + 22) we've till 1470 a "70 cards" note from Ferrara in 1457,

Quote Ross:
A solid fact, but susceptible to at least three different interpretations.
Given that I think the standard 22 subjects were already present, I am forced to suggest that it was a sloppy entry, not a detailed count on the part of the accountant.

Huck:
Well, it's surely a possibility, that the 70 cards note refered to a shortened deck. But 1457 is near to 1452 and the 14 Bembo cards should confirm, that this production, which belonged to the most expensive of its kind, didn't spare in matters of costs.

Quote Huck:
a description of the Michelino deck with totally 60 cards

Quote Ross:
We don't know how many pips each suit had. If two court cards were missing, it is not hard to imagine that pips were reduced too. On the other hand, it could be that "kings" stands for a common group of court cards,
probably 3, making a 68 card deck.
There's just no way to know.

Huck:
If 60 or 68, this wouldn't change much in the current debate. But there are reasons to assume, that the description simply described, what was fact in the deck.


Quote Huck:
(with a confirming note from 1449, that this was regarded as a "Trionfi deck"),

Quote Ross:
Again, that datum can be interpreted in a better way. Marcello made a generic comparison because the two decks had something in common - I think that can only be the "extra suit" of Gods and Heroes. Otherwise, they had nothing else in common and the comparison makes no sense.
Polismagna's statement is more appropriate for the "generic trionfi" argument, unless we can presume that classicized decks - like the Sola Busca - already existed in the late 1460s.

Huck:
We simply don't know, what the Trionfi cards looked like at this time. Were they similar to the Michelino deck, were they similar to the Cary-Yale (which, btw, contained between his 11 trumps 4 motif not common to the Tarot series)? Or were they totally different, unusual to our eyes as Boiardo poem or Sola Busca Tarocchi??
And yes, even Polismagna much later still could even identify them as Trionfi deck.


Quote Huck:
the appearance of the number 14 in a Ferrarese document in a not totally obvious context from 1.1.1441 and the fact, that the trumps of the Pierpont Morgan Bergamo deck were curiously painted by two different painters - one painted 14 special cards and the other six).
Also we've the confirming informations, that the Bembo cards might be regarded as a "complete deck", that the Cary-Yale Tarocchi might have been a 5x16-deck and that the 16 extant trumps in the Charles VI offer a complete Tarocchi-trump series.

Quote Ross:
I don't know about the confirming information that the Bembo cards are a complete deck - since two other cards are also missing. The other two decks demonstrate this even more - Cary Yale lacks 20% of its cards, Charles VI has only one suited card left. Why regard the trump series as complete?

Huck:
Maybe I made a bad word choice in English, but I see it as a confirmation, if it is possible to interprete a deck as a complete unique deck ... I only think of the trumps, not of the small arcana:

The 14 Bembo trumps are complete, as they are.
http://trionfi.com/0/f/07
The 11 Cary Yale trumps look as a complete composition, if you add 5 specific cards.
http://trionfi.com/0/c/2209/
The 16 Charles VI trumps look complete, as they are.
I refered to this in other threads, especially here ...
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=91378&highlight=toscanelli