Huck
MikeH said:I just discovered this thread yesterday and skimmed through it quickly. Fortunately I already had some familiarity with Huck and Ross’s arguments. I really admire Kapoore’s persistence in insisting that his questions haven’t been answered. I agree.
... ... Kapoore has a lot of questions. I agree, that I also would like, if world could have the button with the function "spoonfeeding", if I desire information.
You have to use the brackets "[" and "]" and include an "i" for Italic and an "/i" for stopping Italic. For bold font you use b and /b, for images img and /img ... however, this works only in the history group.I want to put my two bits in, if anyone is still reading this thread. Excuse me for covering a lot of ground. I also apologize for not knowing how to mark links or put titles in italics.
First, Huck indeed hasn’t explained how the Michelino evolved into the Cary-Yale and beyond. The story is probably lost to history, but I have written, for my own amusement if nothing else, one way it could have happened. It’s at http://mtocy.blogspot.com/.
Indeed you've written a lot. I'll start a reading, thanks for your deep interest ... there are not much readers, who go so far.
Second, as to how there came to be 22 trumps. Ross wrote a post a while back (http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=28920) about how the Charles VI deck had little numbers written on some of them--done after the deck was made, but probably in the same century.
As you say it ... not necessarily written at the time of production. And if it was 15th century or 16th century, that would change much.
They show that there were 20 trumps ... etc.
I think, I should study your writings at your website first.
Next date: the summer of 1457. Galeazzo Sforza is visiting Ferrara, perhaps his first time away from home. He doesn’t stay at the d’Este palace, but instead at the Pico della Mirandola residence, where the Count has two sons around Galeazzo’s age. Their cousin, Matteo Boiardo, is around the same age (on the later version of his birth year: see http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Boairdo or http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&IUD=71. I would imagine Matteo’s father telling him that it never hurts to make friends with a future Duke of Milan.
I think, that they were at Belriguardo, the summer residence of the d'Este and near to Ferrara. It's true, that a Franceso Pico de Mirandola was there, probably ...
euweb.cz said:FRANCESCO III, Co-signore della Mirandola e Concordia 1399, Conte di Concordia 1432, Signore di Scaldasole 1423, +1461; m.Pietra, dau.of Marco Pio, Lord of Carpi by Taddea de Roberti
..., so this would be a man of 58 years, a guiding "grand-father" in his personality.
As far I know, we've no confirmation of Boiardo's presence for this moment, who is in this time probably in Scandiano. Galeazzo's stay is about 6 weeks, so surely he met some other younger persons there.
Generally the "Ferrara-with-much- children" situation, which was definitely true for the situation of ca. 1440, when the Trionfi cards probably started, wasn't true for the court of Borso d'Este. "Bianca Maria d'Este" (* 1440), to whome Bianca Maria Visconti was godmother, was there as a 17-years-old girl, and she much later (1469) married Galeotto Pico de Mirandola ... and the Ferrarese court painter Tura painted pictures in a Mirandola studiolo ... so we've some evidence for a closer Mirandola/Ferrara connection at the Borso time. Also Niccolo da Correggio (8 years), son of Beatrice d'Este (who had married Tristano Sforza and went to Milan 1454/55), was there.
I've no access to Lubkin in the moment. You've to cite him, if you wish to correct me.
To while away the rainy days, as Galeazzo writes his father, they play Trionfi (letter of 2 August, in Gregory Lubkin, A Renaissance Court: Milan under Galeazzo Maria Sforza, p. 309). Perhaps the 5x14 decks ordered at that time were for them.
Of course, what else ...
Perhaps the d'Este deck in the Beinecke Library (viewable on-line) is one of them.
Isn't there somewhere Aragonese heraldic on this (Este) deck? There was no reason to have Aragonese heraldic on Este decks in Borso's time.
Galeazzo would have known the game in Milan, where they might have had a slightly different deck. At any rate, Galeazzo and the young Pico della Mirandolas (not including Giovanni, who wasn’t born yet) play cards with a proto-tarot. There is no mention of chess. Triumphs was a women’s and children’s game, chess a man’s game. Around this same time, Ferrara is accepting Jewish immigrants from Spain with open arms. Hebrew and the Jewish heritage are all the rage, despite those bigots in Rome. Boiardo and Giovanni, at least, go at it. (But I would appreciate knowing Huck’s reference for Boiardo’s facility in Hebrew.)
Mari Hoshizaki (alias Cerulean) contributed this, as far I remember. There were Jews at Scandiano also, already rather early in the 40's.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ne...ig=0oJKKJQcpvUzQdYunGGP-ZNXkDg&hl=en#PPA28,M1
This report offers a date of 1445, but surprizingly not much of the following time. When our article was written, an Italian website about Scandiano reported Jews in Scandiano in the 1440's.
Possibly Mari took this from Gardner, Dukes and Poets in Ferrara: A Study in the Poetry, Religion and Politics ..., there is a passage, in which Boiardo defends against an attacker on the Jews (p. 279), which I only realize by a snippet view via amazon.com. Actually its surprizing to me, that Boiardo's Hebrew studies (which are not unlikely regarding Boiardo's intellectual life, even if they might have been only small) is difficult to confirm.
....
Trionfi proposes Jan. 1487 as the time of Boiardo's s poem, between 1 and 2 months after Pico's Theses came out. That is as good a date as any, although I do not understand why the Lucrezia of the poem had to be the Lucrezia who married then, as opposed to others, such as his cousin, Giovanni's sister, born 1463, or Ludovico Sforza's mistress, or Lorenzo de' Medici's mother or mistress. Perhaps Boiardo is jokingly implying that her getting married, whoever she is, is like the legendary Lucrezia’s suicide after rape. That might narrow the field.
Lucrezia's marriage had been a very monstruous activity. Two theatre evenings had been given in Ferrara alone, the number of the onlookers might have been 3000-5000, perhaps even more. The journey from Ferrara to Bologna was only short, but probably the wedding activities in Bologna surpassed those in Ferrara, a big triumphal march and others.
Generally the region had a longer period of wars, the period of 1482-84 had been especially troublesome for Ferrara. The oeconomic losses still were felt till ca. 1490. Generally the killing actions in December 1476 Milan (Galeazzo Maria Sforza) and in Florence 1478 (attack on the Medici brothers) had changed the Italian climate for a longer period - which means less festivities, less triumphal processions, more wars and fighting.
As a specific observation: the annual Giovanni festivities in midsummer, a long and traditional public happening with much visitors from other cities, were stopped between 1478-88.
The great festivity around Ercole's daughter Lucretia opened a new period between 1487 - 1493, in which Italy was mainly occupied with great marriages, the last of these made an Italian daughter (Bianca Maria Sforza) to the Empress of the Empire. Lucrezia's marriage was only the beginning of the series.
Funny enough, Lucrezia and her existence was partly completely overlooked by many researchers of the d'Este court. She was surpassed by the importance of her younger half-sisters.
But for 1487: Not only one, but many poets contributed to the festivity and admiration of Lucrezia at this moment ... it was a golden opportunity to return to festivity after a long pause with not much occupation for poets.
The structure of the Tarocchi poem has important and less important places. The Roman Lucrezia gets the top place (usually trump 21, world), although inside the many mentioned male and female heroes the figure of Lucrezia wouldn't get such a position - it's not really natural.
The card 0, normally Fool, notes two usual Tarot motifs, Fool and World, commonly in Tarot the cards 0 + 21. Then follow from 1-20 ten virtues + ten vices with the fine quality, that virtues are always presented by women and the vices always by men.
Then follows the 21st card and there is mentioned the only other usual Tarot card motif (Fortitudo or Strength, usually card Nr. 11) and - just Lucrezia.
If we assume a mathematical construction, we might suspect, that Boiardo took the begin and the end of the usual row (0 Fool + 21 World) for the first special card or first trump poem, and the usual middle cards (10, Fortune + 11, Strength) for the end of the sequence, so that Lucrezia presents "lucky Fortune" ...
Well, may this be, as it is, it's obvious by structural analysis, that Lucrezia is the most honoured person in the poem. This correlated with the time and known data from the d'Este court, it becomes obvious, that the poem was made for January 1487 and not at another opportunity.
We've got meanwhile confirmation for this thesis by the production of 3 paintings ordered by Leonora d'Este from Ercole Roberti around this time, all showing self-murdering women (all 3 regarded as signs of virtue) and the Roman Lucrzia is between them.
Further confirmation is given by a specific Ferrarese literature, in which "women are better than men" (as it also appears in the Boiardo poem), and the begin of this rather radical feministic literary perspective can be placed precisely on the time of 1487-90 (Bartholomeo Goggio, De laudibus mulierum) ... earlier representations of famous women, which existed as a follow-up to Boccaccio's "De mulieribus claris" failed to present this radical viewing point.