Ross G Caldwell
Yatima said:
The essential fact is your first statement. Yes cards existed, in a lot of places. But trionfi cards only exist, in the historical record, in certain places, which happen to be around Milan and Ferrara, and other people of high status. They also had regular cards. Regular cards from an early period survive too, popular ones, but no popular trionfi. You have to consider the real evidence: it indicates who used trionfi first.
Same as above. The first and last statements are simply loose statements of fact that nobody disputes.
The statutes actually name some games - they show more than "just that people played." Think about the implications of the data - study it. It is real, it is there, it means something.
You can't say that a court didn't initiate mass-production of something, when you note the press in Ferrara in 1436. Presses make many copies.
As for cardmakers, we have to wait until 1477 when Pietro Bonozzi in Bologna is recorded as making both regular cards and triumphs. It is logical to think that if anybody was making them in quantity before then, it would have been similarly noted.
The closest we get to the inventor leads us to the courts, not outside. Nobody says they invented trionfi cards, so I personally don't state as fact that so-and-so invented them.
Of course the nobility bought the cards from artists - most of them weren't artists themselves. But artists worked on commission, from somebody's plan. It appears that this plan came from some wealthy patron or another.
First, "adding about 22 cards" is a leap of faith for somebody whose living depends on selling a certain amount of product. Who could say whether this new game would sell. You have to ask why would some cardmaker take such a risk, and carve the plates necessary? Just for fun?
In the second point, you jump from Marcello's comment in 1449 back to 1424, as if he had personal knowledge of trionfi decks back then. He doesn't - he says they're "new" because he knows that the other pack he got, the first one, is made by artisans. So he assumes it's older. The proof is that he had never seen *either* pack before, so he had no way to judge which was really older.
Nobody doubts that other kinds of packs, with various subjects could have existed before. Card experiments are natural. But you have to show why "trionfi cards" quite *suddenly* appear in 1442, and then take off from around 1449. The best solution? It is a small, exclusive market - a fad for the wealthy.
What's your solution? That this unique deck remained hidden for decades from the nobility? How can you say this, when Filippo Maria Visconti is known to have shown such an interest in cards? He would have noticed such a game, if one had been around.
This is wrong. The aristocrats were very creative - even some of their pages! Women and men painted - for heaven's sake, King René d'Anjou is *famous* for his paintings, and the books he wrote and illustrated himself. If he isn't a creative aristocrat, I don't know what you mean by creativity. Leonello's passion was poetry. Noble women are often depicted painting - usually religious subjects. And this is not to mention music. Are you sure you know what you're talking about?
The fact is that the idea of the creative artist comes about during the renaissance - before that, artists were considered skilled technicians and worked for their living from commissions, and would not have thought of wasting their precious skills fooling around painting whatever popped into their heads.
As for traders getting "the fresh ideas" first, what are you talking about? Maybe the traders got their fresh ideas from something exciting going on inside a court - like the court of Ferrara, for instance.
Anybody but a noble, I hear you thinking, anybody, please.
It is natural - but there is no evidence that it was done this way in this case. This circumstantial case ignores the huge amount of direct evidence that says that the trionfi cards were invented and used by the wealthy.
Nobody knows how the Lombard cards differed from the Saracen ones; but given the unlikelyhood of "trionfi" cards existing in 1408 (because of the interest of our nobles in them when they *do* appear in the record, it shows that they were new to them then) the simplest idea is that Saracen cards were like the Topkapi museum cards - Jacques Coeur in 1453 is noted as having some Saracen cards too - and that the Lombard cards had the standard Latin pattern, where the swords are not curved and batons are not polo-sticks. It does not demand "trionfi" images to be a Lombard pack.
It could be natural too, but there is simply *no evidence* for your statement of possibility. Why not look for some? The first step will be to study the known evidence first, and work out the leads. Nothing is set in stone, but for all I can tell, the leads lead only deeper into the same geographical area and the same wealthy people.
Finally, that games have names like Pope and Emperor, Devil and Fool (the Bishop in Chess is called "Fou") serves only to show the ludic logic at work in the tarot too. It does not show a direct connection between any of the games.
Of course, you already said that. But the courts set the standards - they were the model. It is far more likely that a "trader" would look to a court for inspiration, than to a ragged old gypsy or to the rigid rules of a confraternity. The courts are really where the innovation took place, where the action and the money were. And in 1440, the private patrons - the rich courts - had more books than most universities. Certainly more *exciting* books. Moreover, these nobles took a great deal of interest in what went on in the universities. Leonello is a good case in point.
You really underestimate these nobles. You don't have to buy the feudal system, or like how the aristocrats behaved, to study them objectively.
Why don't you go out and search then? You don't have to try to convince me - do some real research and get your ideas published!
. As poet's count syllables ... the 21 plays a role for them. 