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Thinking out loud about tarot history
by Ross G. Caldwell
Concerning Bembo
Bembo is certainly the artist of 68 Visconti-Sforza cards,
as well as the trumps of the Cary-Yale. He is probably
not the artist of the Brambilla. If Bembo painted the Cary-Yale
trumps in 1441, it would be his earliest comission, at
a very young age. I prefer Algeri’s hypothesis that
the trumps of this deck were added in 1468, for the marriage
of Bona of Savoy and Galeazzo Maria Sforza. Galeazzo is
known to have comissioned a painting of Bona playing trionfi
this year, which is an argument additional to the internal
evidence of the deck which Algeri offers.
Further, we might argue that the three Theological Virtues
in this deck signify clearly that it was made for a woman.
When we compare the contemporary painting of Piero della
Francesca’s Triumph of Battista Sforza, we note that
on her chariot are the theological virtues, while the matching
Triumph of her husband Federico has the Cardinal Virtues.
This seems reason to suspect that the Theological Virtues
were thought better triumphal subjects for a woman than
for a man of the world.
Moreover, we know that Galeazzo Maria cherished his grandfather
Filippo Maria’s memory and his Visconti ancestry
in general, so that it would not be surprising for him
to have transformed a deck made for his grandfather into
a trionfi deck. In this this I agree with Algeri (although
her thesis has not met general acceptance yet).
Since we know that Bembo was a sensitive religious painter,
and that Francesco Sforza, Bianca Maria, and Galeazzo Maria
were attentive to the Church during their reigns (i.e.
Francesco’s repentance, Bianca Maria’s endowments
of various charitable institutions, and Galeazzo Maria
heard Mass every morning, as well as all having made many
comissions of works for Churches), we might expect this
sensitivity to show up in his tarot cards. I believe that,
in addition to the convention of showing the Theological
Virtues for a woman’s triumph, Bembo demonstrates
this sensitivity in his portrayal of the Visconti-Sforza
Papessa. Although she clearly represents the Church, and
a woman in the triregno would not necessarily be thought
of as an improper allegory of Chruch, Bembo clothes her
simply and meekly, rather than sumptuously attired like
the Pope himself. He also shows conservatism in his depiction
of nudity in all of his decks.
Concerning the game of trionfi.
The tarot pack was certainly invented in Italy in or slightly
before 1441. I favor Bologna, but Milan is also possible,
since the trionfi pack makes its presumed appearance in
Bologna exactly during the 5 years that Filippo Maria ruled
it and circulated his money there (1438-1443). Thus, the
deck may have found its way from Milan to Bologna just
as easily as the opposite direction during those years.
The extremely close personal and political connections
between Ferrara, Bologna and Milan in just those years,
before Bologna allied itself with Florence and Venice after
1443, also explains how it might have happened that such
a game became immediately popular among the wealthy and
the nobility of those cities in just those years.
The question must arise of which order the trumps had,
and which game was played with them. Whether their origin
was Milanese or Bolognese, I argue that the game played
with them was more or less the same as the game still played
in Bologna, and to varying degrees still in Piemont and
Savoy, which in the matter of the trumps means that the
Angel was higher than the World, and that the four cards
called “Papi” in the old Bolognese game were
not ranked among themselves. Other features of the Savoyard
games are explainable by French tarot influence.
Until the 19th century, Italian cardmakers never produced
enough decks for a large export trade. This is in direct
contrast to France and Germany, whose cards were exported
all over Europe, and also to wherever in the rest of the
world Europeans went. As early as 1441, Venice had to make
laws against imported German cards, and beginning in the
second half of the 15th century, French producers in Lyons,
Rouen, Avignon, Toulouse and other places quickly began
to outpace all of the rest of Europe (Thierry Depaulis
is clear on this point - he calls Lyons in 1500 “Europe’s
playing-card workshop, superceding by far all other cities.”)
The extreme number of variations in Italian forms of tarocchi
is due to the fact each region developed its own game,
because no one center could produce enough cards to dominate
all of Italy, and in general to the lack of political unity
in the country until the 19th century. This hampered trade
connections between even neighboring regions, even where
a small production might be able to supply a neighboring
city with cards. Thus each region essentially developed
its own game, wherever it took hold (Andy mentions that
the same was true in China until very recently, where there
are dozens of different kinds of playing cards. I suspect
the reason there is less political disunity than regionalism,
the size of the country and the sheer number of people,
which only gigantic factories could supply).
This was obviously not the case at the very beginning,
when the game was first invented. Whether produced by artisans
each deck individually, or by printing, the amounts numbers
were small and the game was carried by merchants to various
places or comissioned from artists by wealthy patrons,
once they had obtained a copy somehow, either by buying
one from a merchant, or receiving it as a gift (or perhaps
stealing it, as in Bologna in 1459 aĐ which shows it was
still a rather valuable item).
With this in mind, it is clear that the trade was one
way. Italian centers produced enough playing cards and
tarots for local consumption of local games, but not enough
to supply France or Germany with cards. Therefore, while
the game of tarot was certainly invented in north Italy,
the game that became the most popular in Europe was a French
production. It must have been a few Italian decks at the
most that inspired the French version of the game, which
they then began to produce in large quantities, according
to a pattern they invented - which is known as the Tarot
de Marseille.
I contend that the decks which came to France looked like
Dummett’s A type (Bologna), which was changed by
French card producers into the design of the typical French
pattern, known generally as Tarot de Marseille (Dummett’s “C” ordering
of the trumps). When Lyon and Avignon began producing tarot
cards in large quantities, around 1500, it was this pattern
that came into Milan when the French ruled the city from
1499 to 1512, and sporadically for times after that. It
is also possible that earlier such cards came with Charles
VIII’s army of 50,000 men as early as 1494, but as
he avoided Milan and focussed most attention on Rome and
Naples. As Rome and Neapolitan cards don’t betray
French influence, this hypothesis seems unlikely, as it
also is given the short stay of Charles VIII in Italy.
Could the converse be true, that Charles VIII’s
army was exposed to the tarot for the first time in the
places they stayed at, such as Florence, Rome and Naples?
If so, it can only be said that no Italian center could
produce enough cards for an army of 50,000, so it must
have been only a few decks; and, it must have been a quick
exchange, since they stayed only a year. Finally, it would
probably not have been a Milanese pack, since they did
not go to Milan, and while Florence is a good candidate
for exposure to the tarot deck, Rome and Naples seem less
likely suppliers.
So the later French rule seems a more likely time for
the exchange, both for the place aĐ Milan aĐ and the time
spent there. Since I argue that it was the French who brought
their decks to Milan, and influenced the Milanese style
aĐ I picture them flooding the market in Milan, since the
Milanese producers could not have flooded France -, the
deck must have been produced in a place like Lyon earlier
than that, which means that the tarot deck (which I contend
looked at first like the Bolognese or Eastern style) was
brought earlier and had time to be modified.
Since cards went with all sorts of travellers, from nobles
and courtiers to soldiers and merchants, this could have
happened any time after tarot’s invention, by several
different avenues. The earliest explicit indication of
a deck in France is Jacopo Antonio Marcello’s gift
of a deck of triumphs aĐ which were most certainly the
common kind aĐ to Isabelle of Lorraine in 1449. Other possibilities
are 1444, when Leonello d’Este’s son Francesco
went to live at the court of Burgundy, and in 1466, when
Galeazzo Maria Sforza was learning warfare in the court
of the King of France, Louis XI. Sforza’s favor for
cards is well known, as is the Este’s in general.
Of course, these are merely notable examples, and many
other routes are more probable, such as any migrating cardmaker,
since many Italians moved to Lyon in the 15th century,
no doubt because of the potential for increased production
and export chances offered by that city, not possible in
pre-unification Italy (before 1860, that is).
Thus, I picture it that the localized production of the
Milanese deck aĐ if it ever reached a state of “popular” consumption
at all aĐ was swamped by the new French game, which was
called “taraux” or “tarocs” (long ‘o’ is
pronounced). Because I contend that this particular form
of the game was invented in France, I would argue that
the Italian name is probably an Italianization of the French
name, rather than vice-versa. This swamping did not happen
in the other tarot centers of Italy because the French
did not rule there, and those centers continued their older
versions with natural internal modifications over the years,
with a few external pressures exercising some influence.
Concerning the emergence of the 3 basic orderings.
(This is an abstract exercise, with a few historical considerations
- a good online source for the three orderings and their
variations is at Andy’s
Playing Cards site.
B [‘Ferrara/Venice’] seems more simply explained
as modification of C [‘Marseilles’] rather
than A [‘Bologna’].
B might also be thought of as an early kind of reinterpretation
of the trumps aĐ it is evidence of a certain kind of moralisation
of at least two parts of the trump series.
First, assuming someone perceived a slight to the Papacy
by having him adjacent to, and beaten by Amore, it makes
sense to place a moral virtue between them; in this case
not Fortitude, which I guess might make the Pope look ridiculous,
as some kind of hero withstanding the barbs of Cupid’s
arrows, but rather Temperance, the placid virtue of utter
calm, neither hot nor cold, and certainly never becoming
intoxicated by Love. Thus the choice of virtue, and its
placement, can be seen as way to remove the disgrace of
a Pope beaten by Love.
Second, it seemed good to the B designer to remind people
that after the Resurrection comes Judgement, so the Justice
card was promoted between the Judgement and the saved and
glorified World. Otherwise, it might be perceived that
everybody, the whole world, is saved, after the Resurrection
aĐ that is of course “apocatastasis”, a heresy
- a few bad people have to go to Hell first, so a card
needed to be put there to remind them of that.
(I am not saying that the C order meant to imply such
a doctrine, just that B could be interpreted as someone’s
having read C that way, and endeavored to correct it).
Only C offers these “problems” to be solved.
In A, the Papi have no ranking among themselves, so the
Pope is not adjacent to Love in any apparent or provocative
way. Secondly, in A, the Angel (Judgement) is already the
highest card, without suggesting anything afterward, and
the Virtues are grouped together near the Chariot (that
is, they pertain to the triumphator), as they appear in
contemporary depictions and descriptions of triumphal processions.
Thus it seems more likely to me that B is a modification
of C rather than A, and that B is a moralisation of the
trump series.
B is the best attested series in literature, from the
late 15th (Steele Sermon) century to the late 16th century
(Garzoni 1585). It is also attested in the Budapest sheets
and the Donson cards, and in the Rouen cards. By all accounts,
it died out by the end of the 16th century, although it
certainly made a splash for around a century. The origin
of the Steele Sermon is unknown, and the tarocchi appropriati
poem from Ferrara published by Bertoni is dated around
1540, so that the attribution of B to Ferrara is in my
opinion extremely tenuous. That the pattern was predominant
in Ferrara and Venice in the 16th century, there can be
no doubt; but that this means that B was the pattern in
Ferrara in the 1440s, is certainly open to question.
It is open to question because the deck of triumph cards
which actually does come from Ferrara in the middle to
late 15th century, and the two that are held to, bear A
type numbering. The numbering is probably not original,
and there is no telling when they were put on, but I think
it would be bizarre to suggest that all the cards went
to Bologna to get numbered, and then came back to Ferrara
(d’Este) or went their own ways (Charles VI and Catania).
It is more reasonable to think that the earliest Ferrara
game of trionfi was the same as the Bolognese, and that
a different form of the game became dominant in Ferrara
in the early 16th century.
I would guess that this game was the B form of tarocchi,
and that it was printed in Venice and exported to Ferrara
and other places in the north-east of Italy. That all of
the Budapest sheets are where they are, immediately to
the north of Venice and her vicinity, might be evidence
that they were printed there, as the earliest catalogues
suggest.
______________________
Whether the above scenario can accommodate any form of
the 5x14 theory, I don’t know.
It is also inconsistent with the early Milanese game -
or rather trump order - having been the same as the Tarot
de Marseille.
[These reflections also appeared on Aeclectic’s
TarotForum in the Historical section at www.tarotforum.net,
under the same title]
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