Huck
I don't know much about Bolognese minchiate but Lucchese minchiate has men on horses instead of monsters. BTW Huck, going through some of your old posts, you refer to them as being 69-card decks which is out of date. I'll quote here from the IPCS unsolved problems page http://i-p-c-s.org/problist.html :
"[March 2012: An incomplete Orfeo pack in Mr. Stuart Kaplan's collection, that was offered at auction in 2006 (auction catalogue, no. 128), yielded some of the missing trumps, namely: IIII-VI, VIII, XIII, XV, XXII, XXIIII-XXVIII, XXX, XXXIIII. Therefore, it is possible that all Orfeo packs were in fact regular Minchiate packs.]"
It was probably just bad luck that all the previous Lucca decks were found with so few trumps.
hi Ludophone,
the full record at the IPCS page gives ...
"10. An extraordinary type of Tarot pack, using Minchiate designs for many but not all of the cards, with 56 suit cards, the Matto and only twelve trumps (missing all those below the IX, including of course the Bagatto) appears to have been peculiar to Lucca. For what game was this used?
[March 2012: An incomplete Orfeo pack in Mr. Stuart Kaplan's collection, that was offered at auction in 2006 (auction catalogue, no. 128), yielded some of the missing trumps, namely: IIII-VI, VIII, XIII, XV, XXII, XXIIII-XXVIII, XXX, XXXIIII. Therefore, it is possible that all Orfeo packs were in fact regular Minchiate packs.]"
The problem "10" spoke about a 69-cards-Tarocchi-game ... the note of March 2012 includes cards, which belong to Minchiate and so not to Tarocchi and also not to the specific Lucca Tarocchi. So somehow both text belong to different fields, "10" to the Lucca Tarocchi and the other to a game with name Minchiate or Gallerini or Ganellini ...
The producer "Orfeo" (or the man behind this advertisement) might have produced just different decks.
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Lucca is a strange location. It was a city preferred and visited by the emperors, for instance Charles IV, who is under some vague suspicion to have had very early contact to playing cards.
Second comes Prince Fibbia from Lucca, who introduced a not clear playing card game to Bologna ... perhaps. The case is disputed.
Third there is a private research of mine, which had the curious result, that it looks, as if something from the Lucca Tarocchi (17th century or so) with its 69 cards existed in the background of the curious Sola-Busca Tarocchi (1491). A rather complicated topic. Nobody is really interested ...
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Note: By germini I am referring to the 97-card deck. I believe "minchiate" was a game played with the 78/77 card deck ("trionfi") in the 15-16th centuries before the name was appropriated by the larger deck. Pratesi noted that "tarocchi/tarocco" was the least used term in Florence.
Pratesi gives as last note of Tarocchi production in the Tuscany region a case in 1606.
"The 1606 date for using Tarocchi in Florence is both early and late. Early, because the spread of that game – or, at least, of that name for the game – was rather recent; late, because in the lists of local playing cards I could not find Tarocchi produced in Florence later on. Alongside of ordinary Piccole and Grandi cards, I could only find Minchiate listed."
http://trionfi.com/evx-germini-tarocchi-minchiate
In the same article he notes:
"If we have previously met Germini and Tarocchi, in 1693 we find Minchiate as the object of a new law. Almost a full century has passed since the previous law. It is hardly possible to find either Germini or Tarocchi still mentioned in Florence. Minchiate is by now the common name of the traditional Florentine game. It only remains to understand how much popular this game was at the time, and which was the typical milieu for its practice."
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I also can't agree with the assertion that Charles VI had only 16 trumps all of which survived. While I am no expert on Renaissance handwriting, others have found them numbered which is why they are now given a type A order and Florentine provenance. The Angel is 20, followed by the World 19, etc. This is my opinion: the Charles VI was produced after the strambotti in which case it dates from the early 16th century and lacks the Popess so the deck had only 20 trumps + Fool (77 card in total). The order of the trumps is near identical with the strambotti and exactly the same as germini sans the extra trumps. CVI was either produced in the narrow time frame before germini or coexisted with germini, since trionfi/tarocchi was still mentioned alongside germini until the early 17th century. Here is my non-precise timeline:
Rosenwald trumps (mid 15th)> strambotti (late 15th)> decks with CVI order including CVI itself (very late 15th/early 16th)> germini (very late 15th/early 16th)
Ross already noted the Castello Ursino cards (Kaplan I p. 108/109), from which two trumps (Father Time and World) are rather similar to the Charles VI motifs. Two other trumps are different, the Chariot and a nude woman on a stag, assumed to present Temperance:
Another picture was found on a cassone, which had a striking similarity to this woman:
The painter of the Ursino cards is unknown as the painter of the Charles VI, but the Cassone is given to "Lo Scheggia" alias Giovanni di Ser Giovanni Guidi ...
http://trionfi.com/evx-lo-scheggia
... who appeared on one of Pratesi's lists of playing card traders in 1447 as a playing card producer.
http://trionfi.com/naibi-on-sale
A famous Medici picture is from Lo Scheggia, the birth tray of Lorenzo di Medici in 1449:
My theory about the Charles VI deck assumes, that it was made for the 14th birthday of Lorenzo di Medici (1463), and that the painter was (possibly) the same painter "Lo Scheggia" (well, maybe, that Scheggia painted only the Ursino cards).
Around 1500, as you suggest for the Charles VI, Lo Scheggia was dead (died 1486), and also the suspected owner of the Ursino cards, Alessandro Sforza (died 1473).
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Added: Lo Scheggia was brother to Masaccio, a famous painter, who died young.
One of the pictures attributed to Masaccio is Adam and Eve driven out of paradise:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaccio
This motif choice became typical for the Minchiate tower later: