Tarot development- Mhchelino, Mantegna, Sola Busca, Minchiate?

Tzeenj

Anyone have any speculations on connections between quasi/proto- Tarots like the Michelino, Mantegna, Minchiate and/or the Sola Busca and the earliest Tarots like the Visconti-Sforza? Do they exist as completely independant structures or did one or more influence the others, and what influence, if any, could these have had on the structure of the Major Arcana as we know it today?

Dua Djehuty,
Tzeenj
 

Huck

The idea of Tarot cards or better said, of "an independent suit of trumps", naturally was the key element and this as such was generally known by the new "card producers" (actually likely the commissioners), so there is also naturally a communicative connection between them. Actually the commissioners, as far we know them, were mostly important persons and the VIP's of 15th century, and so they definitely knew each other ...

As far the decks were very different, it was the natural result of a competition between the card producers (or commissioners) ... simply, it was not attractive to imitate other decks, everybody wanted some individuality and everybody had the money to create it. Actually Trionfi decks were part of the general "heraldic games", of which these very rich persons were very fond of (Sagramoro, first known Tarot painter, actually was in Ferara the man for Este-heraldic).
Imitation became attractive naturally, when mass production for Trionfi cards
became common with woodcut technique, also when enough players existed, which wished to have practical instead "very nice" games. You ask for

Michelino - 16 gods, likely orientated towards chess
Mantegna - 50 cards, likely orientated to produce or show an intellectual idea ... if it was really a playing card deck, can't be proven.
Minchiate - Minchiate appears as "word" already 1466, but it is an open question, if this early Minchiate already had 40 trumps ... so we can't say too much about this game
Sola Busca - variated the 21 trumps+Fool version, it's not likely, that it was the "first" with this structure (believed to from 1491). At least it took the Fool idea. It has a pairing principle as the Boiardo Tarocchi poem (which we - Trionfi.com - believe to have been produced around January 1487).

Also one should mention as individual games (my opinion):

* Cary-Yale - in our opinion a 5x16-deck
* Bembo-cards - in our opinion a 5x14 deck
* Bembo cards + 6 additional cards
* Charles VI - possibly a deck with 16 special cards
* Guildhall and Goldschmidt cards
* Leber Tarocchi - very individual Tarocchi version
* an Orlando deck - begin 16th century, Kaplan presents a few remaining cards
* as already mentioned, the Boiardo poem

and between them, the normal Tarocchi, as we know them

* perhaps one should even consider the Hofämterspiel as a type of Trionfi game ... it was likely made for a very young king, Ladislaus posthumus, likely possibly for the same reasons, as other Trionfi card decks were for "girls at the wedding" or very young men.
 

Tzeenj

Huck said:
As far the decks were very different, it was the natural result of a competition between the card producers (or commissioners) ... simply, it was not attractive to imitate other decks, everybody wanted some individuality and everybody had the money to create it.

Which I understand perfectly.

Huck said:
Imitation became attractive naturally, when mass production for Trionfi cards became common with woodcut technique, also when enough players existed, which wished to have practical instead "very nice" games.

So you attribute standardization to the 22-card Major Arcana to mass production?

If so, how did that particular configuration become the default one?


Huck said:
Michelino - 16 gods, likely orientated towards chess

Can anyone out there point me in the direction of some resources on this one. Huck, I know you sent me to Trionfi.com on this, and that was nice, but do we have any other resources out there?

Huck said:
Mantegna - 50 cards, likely orientated to produce or show an intellectual idea ... if it was really a playing card deck, can't be proven.

Or a deck at all. It does smack somewhat of Neoplatonic influence and a possible tinge of Emanationist cosmology.

Huck said:
Minchiate - Minchiate appears as "word" already 1466, but it is an open question, if this early Minchiate already had 40 trumps ... so we can't say too much about this game
Sola Busca - variated the 21 trumps+Fool version, it's not likely, that it was the "first" with this structure (believed to from 1491). At least it took the Fool idea.

And do we have any decent resources on these two as well? Background, context, development, etc?

It has a pairing principle as the Boiardo Tarocchi poem (which we - Trionfi.com - believe to have been produced around January 1487).

Huck said:
It has a pairing principle as the Boiardo Tarocchi poem

Can you elaborate a bit on this? I checked out the poem, just wan to know some more about the connection you mention here.


Huck said:
* Leber Tarocchi - very individual Tarocchi version

Ok- this one I know nothing about. More info, please? :)


Huck said:
* perhaps one should even consider the Hofämterspiel as a type of Trionfi game ...

This is another gap in my knowledge. More details?

And while I'm here...

The Psychomachiae come up along with the Trionfi as sources of imagery. My limited delving here makes me think this more a stylistic influence than anything deeper. Does anyone out there consider this the case?

Io Phanes,
Tzeenj
 

Huck

So you attribute standardization to the 22-card Major Arcana to mass production?

### yes ###

If so, how did that particular configuration become the default one?

## ... :) it happened, why I should be able to explain it? When 10 men have a race and one man wins the race, do I know then the reason, why he did win?
Perhaps cause it was somehow the Milanese version and Milan was mighty. But we've no info who gave it to print, when it was printed etc. ... how should we tell, why it became successful? ###



Can anyone out there point me in the direction of some resources on this one. Huck, I know you sent me to Trionfi.com on this, and that was nice, but do we have any other resources out there?

### Earlier there existed a short article at tarothermit.com in the web. It reported Franco Pratesi's researches.
Franco Pratesi wrote earlier about it, he was the first researcher in this matters after it was detected or reported long ago at begin of 20th century. . But he gave us his informations.
We're the major resource for the studies of this object. Nobody else took it serious enough. ###




And do we have any decent resources on these two as well? Background, context, development, etc?

###
http://trionfi.com/0/j/d/solabusca/index.html
http://trionfi.com/0/p/09
###

It has a pairing principle as the Boiardo Tarocchi poem (which we - Trionfi.com - believe to have been produced around January 1487).


Can you elaborate a bit on this? I checked out the poem, just wan to know some more about the connection you mention here.

###
partly you find some things here at aeclectic, scattered here and there

generally
http://trionfi.com/0/h/

The pairing principle is a connection between

1-2
3-4
5-6
etc
and 0-21
in the Boiardo poem - see
http://www.geocities.com/autorbis/boiardo.html

The same pairing principle appears in the Sola Busca. Left-Right Turn of the bodies, a graphical element. Likely used to present the cards (or pictures) in a book, so that they face each other.

Leber Tarocchi
http://trionfi.com/0/h/51/
 

mjhurst

The Playing-card Historians Viewpoint

Hi, Tzeenj,

Tzeenj said:
Anyone have any speculations on connections between quasi/proto- Tarots like the Michelino, Mantegna, Minchiate and/or the Sola Busca and the earliest Tarots like the Visconti-Sforza? Do they exist as completely independant structures or did one or more influence the others, and what influence, if any, could these have had on the structure of the Major Arcana as we know it today?
First, it important to note that the confusion surrounding this subject is largely due to the tunnel-vision perspective of Tarot enthusiasts. Tarotists think of everything in terms of Tarot. In the larger world, there are things other than Tarot.

1. Presumably by mentioning Michelino you mean to refer to the unique deck and game described by Jacopo Marcello, the 16-Heroes deck created by Marziano da Tortona for Filippo Maria Visconti. This was not a Tarot deck, nor does it have any direct connection with Tarot. The designer and artist may have some other connection with Tarot, and certainly the Patron and the milieu had a lot to do with Tarot. However, this deck was a unique production, a unique conception of trumps, and the structure of the deck, the subject matter of the trumps, and the game played, appear to have contributed nothing to Tarot. It is not quasi-Tarot nor proto-Tarot, but simply a different type of deck and game, one that left no descendants. The world of playing cards consists almost entirely of things other than Tarot, and this is one of them.

2. Presumably by mentioning Mantegna you mean to refer to a collection of prints which was also not Tarot. These prints were not even playing cards, nor even a game. This collection of prints was produced in at least three editions over a period of decades. They were produced in loose sheets and in bound books. They were used for many decades as a model book for artists working in assorted media. Early playing-card historians made an unfounded assumption about the E-Series pattern book being related to playing cards, but the engravings were never reproduced on cards until the late 20th century, specifically to satisfy the desires of misguided Tarot enthusiasts. Many of today's Tarot enthusiasts prefer old blunders to historically correct information. However, the falsely so-called "Mantegna Tarocchi" was correctly explained back in the 1930s by A.M. Hind. Like many other bits of misinformation, the "Mantegna Tarocchi" is used today primarily to obscure and distort Tarot history by confusing it with other subjects.

3. The Minchiate Tarot decks were a later development based on the standard 78-card decks. There were more than a few developments from that design, but Minchiate was the only one that became extremely popular.

4. The Sola Busca is another later development based on the standard 78-card decks. It ignored the subject matter of the original trumps almost completely, and replaced them with figures from the Roman Republic, as seen from a Christian perspective. (That is, there was an emphasis on three Babylonian/Roman emperors who figure prominently in Christian history and eschatology.) This deck also had illustrated suit cards, like some German decks.

We have only fragmentary information about early Tarot. Each surviving card or reference is a tiny piece of the history, and they may not be the best possible items, i.e., the earliest or more informative we could hope for. We must reconstruct that history inferentially, based on our knowledge of all the existing evidence. The playing-card historians' position was summarized by Ronald Decker, Michael Dummett, and Thierry Depaulis in their 1996 book, A Wicked Pack of Cards.

The Tarot pack has many different forms; rather than framing a definition that covers all of them, it is better to describe the archetypal version, which is also the best known. It is archetypal in that every other form that has existed from 1500 to the present day is derived directly or indirectly from it. It may or may not have been the original form. Almost certainly the earliest Tarot cards surviving to us are those of an incomplete hand-painted set made, perhaps in 1441, for the court of Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan. The pack of which this is the remnant was certainly constituted differently from our archetypal form; whether it represents an earlier stage in the evolution, or a mere isolated experiment, the evidence is too scanty for us to say. But the Tarot pack had certainly been standardised, as regards the number and identity of the cards, by 1450: the archetypal form was that which resulted from that standarisation.
The standard, or archetypal form, had twenty-two allegorical cards in addition to four regular suits having ten pip cards and four figure cards each. The twenty-two allegorical cards “depict a series of standard subjects – the Emperor, the Pope, the Wheel of Fortune, the Hanged Man, the Devil, the Moon, the Sun, the Angel (or Judgement), the World, and so on. In several later forms of the pack, some of these subjects were changed.... But, when the pack was first standardised, the subjects of the trump cards were standardised, too: they were at first everywhere the same.”

The earliest Visconti decks are commonly dated to the 1440s, so it appears that by that date at the latest Tarot had taken on its standard form. As early as 1442, the court in Ferarra purchased carte da trionfi from a merchant for one eighth the price of a luxurious hand-painted deck, and had their own artist make four Tarot decks, quattro paia di carticelle da trionfi. Clearly the game is established in Ferrara at this early date. The merchant, and possibly the decks he sold, came from Bologna; this may indicate both dispersion and trade of printed decks in the early 1440s. (Ross has pointed out that Milan, Ferrara, and Bologna, early centers of Tarot, had particularly "tight dynastic and trade relations" in the years from 1438 to 1443.) By 1450 we find evidence that Tarot was certainly geographically dispersed and a widely accepted game. It was one of the officially permitted games in Florence, it was a significant game in the Ferrarese court, in Milan commercial decks appear to have been available in different qualities, and the luxurious hand-painted Visconti-Sforza decks became sufficiently renowned that in 1452 the Lord of Rimini asked Bianca Maria to help him acquire a deck in the Visconti style.

Ross has collected and presented a lot of the available information about the development and spread of Tarot in its first few decades. Based on that body of evidence, the conclusion on the part of Decker et al. appears very sound, given what we know about early Tarot. However, it is still inferential. Among the problematic factors, there are no printed Tarot decks surviving from this period, there are no complete Tarot decks surviving from this period, the provenance of the early decks is inferential and disputed, the documentary references are less informative than we would like, and specifically, they do not specify the structure of the deck or the subject matter of the trumps. Those things must be inferred.

With regard to the "Major Arcana" as we know them today, the earliest occult-oriented interpretations of Tarot were based on the Tarot de Marseille decks, which are examples of the "archetypal" decks discussed by Decker et al. They have almost exactly the same 22 subjects as the earliest surviving decks, and most of the variations are instantly recognizable. The illustrations of some of the subjects (like the Star and the World) have changed; the Old Man was changed from an allegory of Time to a Hermit (his hourglass merely being changed into a lantern); the iconography of Love was conflated with that of the Hercules' Choice trope, with the name changed to correspond (L'Amoureux, the Lovers), and so on. But it is essentially just another "archetypal" deck.

Best regards,
Michael
 

Huck

First, it important to note that the confusion surrounding this subject is largely due to the tunnel-vision perspective of Tarot enthusiasts. Tarotists think of everything in terms of Tarot. In the larger world, there are things other than Tarot.

1. Presumably by mentioning Michelino you mean to refer to the unique deck and game described by Jacopo Marcello, the 16-Heroes deck created by Marziano da Tortona for Filippo Maria Visconti. This was not a Tarot deck, nor does it have any direct connection with Tarot. The designer and artist may have some other connection with Tarot, and certainly the Patron and the milieu had a lot to do with Tarot. However, this deck was a unique production, a unique conception of trumps, and the structure of the deck, the subject matter of the trumps, and the game played, appear to have contributed nothing to Tarot. It is not quasi-Tarot nor proto-Tarot, but simply a different type of deck and game, one that left no descendants. The world of playing cards consists almost entirely of things other than Tarot, and this is one of them.

Oh, well, there are various tunnel-perspectives in matters of Tarot.

First ... it would be logical to call something "Tarot", which the speakers of their time called "Tarot".
As we know, this similar "Taraux" or "Tarocchi" appeared to our eyes in the year 1505 in France and Ferrara, Italy, for the first time. If we wish to define "Tarot" in this way, then we could skip luckily all 15th century predevelopments of the cards from the table and say, "that's it".

Now in Tarot history research has developed the opinion, that the objects called "Trionfi" or similar in 15th century (as far they are playing cards) refered to that object, which later was called Tarot. So it became custom to imagine, that, whenever in documents the name "Trionfi" (or similar) appeared, that this reference should belong to that, what the reader imagined was "Tarot" (and most readers imagined for Tarot a game structure of 21+1+56 cards and a specific set of motifs).

However, there is evidence, that this idea went definitely wrong ... at a few
occasions it could be proven, that the objects called Trionfi (or similar) in documents definitely hadn't the refered game structure and also not the specific set of motifs (Michelino deck, document of 1457).

So the elegant translation solution "Tarot (of ca. 1505) = Trionfi (of 15th century", which seemed to offer an understanding of these sentences in 15th century documents, was not operating correctly and has to be replaced by the simple research question "Trionfi ? - what kind of deck might have been meant at this occasion in this document ?".

Now there is to exspect, that something was similar between all these mentioned Trionfi decks in 15th century - but what?
From the examples, that we know, we know, that the motifs weren't stable (Boiardo, Sola Busca) nor that the structure was stable (Michelino deck; note of 1457; Cary-Yale).

The name "Trionfi" signals "trumps" - indeed we can identify a trumps-series in the Taraux-concepts, which are assumable for the year 1505. So we could perhaps expect a series of trumps in all these objects, which are called "Trionfi" (or similar ) in documents of 15th century.

Indeed this definition would work (for instance also for the Michelino deck) and it would make the Taraux (of 1505 and later) just to a special case of the more generally named Trionfi deck, a subcategory with the signifying feature of a 21+1+56-game-structure.

In this case: "Dear Tarot, get your ass out of 15th century, you weren't born then" ... .-)

But, what shall we say, in 15th century are things, which are similar to Tarot, just as parents look similar to their children or vice versa.

So what? Reality isn't changed by calling it Paul or Peter. There are certain objects, which demand to be studied at their individual occasion and their individual context, written documents and cards, anything is useful. The informations about the Michelino deck are one of the oldest texts of playing card history, important in themselves and they don't ask Michael Hurst, if they should be called Tarot or Trionfi deck - a classifying system is only of interest for the human mind and only of interest, if it works and helps to keep the observed development process sorted.

Actually - as I interprete it - the interesting question is, how Tarot developed and what of the known informations can help to understand the process. As the Michelino deck appeared at the same court before the appearance of the first decks, which have iconographic similarities to the later Tarot (the Michelino deck has only structural similarities), it's obviously of great interest and delivers precious informations.
Generally the wish to explore Tarot's birth and departure from the normal playing card deck (and it's a general opinion, that normal playing cards came first and Tarot developed from it) should lead to a playing card deck-form, which has one leg in the normal playing card structure and another leg in something, which is similar to Tarot. Actually such a deck gives the signal, that research is with such an object near to the desired "birth-place of Tarot", and that this deck is found at the same place and court as the "examples near in iconography" (Cary-Yale, Brera-Bambilla) is "ideal as it could be". Better evidence is hardly possible in the given situation.

***
Just for this sentence from Michael about the Michelino deck informations:
"However, this deck was a unique production, a unique conception of trumps, and the structure of the deck, the subject matter of the trumps, and the game played, appear to have contributed nothing to Tarot."

* It's the first clear report of "trumps" ... and trumps are essential for the Tarot.
* Also it's the first report of a hierarchical row of trumps, also essential for Tarot
* As far it gives informations about the game (which are not too much), it describes elements, which also appear in Tarot.

****
Martiano da Tortona:
"Consider therefore this game, most illustrious Duke, following a fourfold order,

= 4 suits

by which you may give attention to serious and important things, if you play at it. Sometimes it is pleasing to be thus diverted, and you will be delighted therein. And it is more pleasing, since through the keeness of your own acumen you dedicated several to be noted and celebrated Heroes, renowned models of virtue, whom mighty greatness made gods, as well as to ensure their remembrance by posterity.

= iconography of the trump pictures

Thus by observation of them, be ready to be aroused to virtue.
Indeed the first order, of virtues, is certain: Jupiter, Apollo, Mercury and Hercules. The second of riches, Juno, Neptune, Mars and Aeolus. The third of virginity or continence: from Pallas, Diana, Vesta and Daphne. The fourth however is of pleasure: Venus, Bacchus, Ceres and Cupid. And subordinated to these are four kinds of birds, being suited by similarity.

= description of suits

Thus to the rank of virtues, the Eagle; of riches, the Phoenix; of continence, the Turtledove; of pleasure, the Dove. And each one obeys its own king. However, the order of these Birds is, although none of their type has right over another, yet this arrangement they have alternately – Eagles and Turtledoves lead from many to few: that is to say it goes better for us when many cultivate virtue and continence; but for Phoenices and Doves, the few rule over the many, which is to say that, the more the followers of riches and pleasure are visible, the more they lead to the deterioration of our station.

= description, that two suits run in their hierarchy (probably) from 1-10 and the other two from 10-1 (typical for Tarot)

Every one of the gods, however, is above all the orders of birds and the ranks of kings.

= declaration of the trumps (16 trumps)

But the gods are held to this law among themselves: that who will be first designated below, he should lead all the others following in sequence.

= declaration of the hierarchical trumps row (typical for Tarot)
 

Ross G Caldwell

The most important thing to remember is that the origins of Tarot are Italian. We could tell this even if we knew next to nothing about the chronology, since classic Tarots in every nation, before the late 18th century, all use the Italian type of Latin suits (chiefly notable by interlaced Swords and Batons). We also know from some of the terms in the Germans games (like “Sküs” for the Fool) that the Germans must have got the game from the French. From some terms in the earliest rules known in French (1637), we know that the French got it from the Italians (Math, Pagat, Brezigole).

Using the chronology, the horizon before 1450 (and essentially up to the end of the century) gives only Italian evidence. So all roads, internal evidence, external evidence, and deduction, lead back to (northern) Italy.

Why is this important (since you all already know it)? Because the Germans seem to have been the most creative in card deck designs – both iconographic and structural. Everybody else in the 15th and 16th centuries pales in comparison. If John of Rheinfelden’s book from 1377 can be relied on, they were already creatively changing card decks in the 14th century. The French were somewhat innovative, at least with the suit signs, if not the structure of the deck (I can’t recall any 5 or 6 suited French decks, or French decks with Knights that aren’t Tarots). The Italians are positively boring by comparison; the only striking difference is some Spanish style Latin suits in the 15th century.

Except for Tarot. The Germans had 5 suited decks, even sixteen suited decks, they had all kinds of different suit signs, decks with figures on every card. They had Queens added, and were probably the first to figure Fools (some Unters) in their card decks. So the Germans invented a lot of things, but with all that creativity, they didn’t invent Tarot.

So what makes Tarot different? It has a set of permanent trumps, that follow their own order and are fully figured, and are not part of any suit. They are, if you like, a fifth suit. But while there are several German decks with 5 suits, all the suits are the same in number and structure. Since no rules for these decks survive, we can’t say if there was something special – like permanent trump status – about one of these suits. And even if there were (as may be suggested by the Emperor’s suit in the Liechtensteinsche Spiel), the structure of this special suit is identical to the others.

But although Tarot wasn’t invented in Germany, several of her creative changes were arguably adopted by the Italian card makers (and French too), and some of them perhaps inspired, or at least influenced, Tarot.

The Queen. Italian standard cards, like Spanish, have King, Knight and Valet as court cards. But in 1424, Bernardino of Siena describes King, QUEEN, “upper soldier” and “lower soldier” as the court figures in standard cards in the Italy of his day. He doesn’t ever mention the Tarot trumps in his voluminous writings, and it seems as he was present at so many burnings of cards (and other vanities) that if people had been throwing figures of the Pope and the Angel of the Last Judgment into the fire, he would have noticed it. So he seems to be a witness to a standard 56 card deck in his day, one that included a Queen. Today the Queen is only preserved in Tarot decks in Italy.

Bernardino’s terms “upper soldier” and “lower soldier” could indicate a German influence, since from the 15th century to today Germans call and depict the two lower court cards as an “Over” and “Under”, shown by the figure holding (or being placed in relation to) the suit symbol high or low respectively.

Following on this, the presence of Fools as the figures for Unders in so many German decks is also suggestive. While I am not aware of any German game where an Under serves as equivalent to the Tarot Fool as Excuse (which seems to be its original use), it is not inconceivable there was one. Or even if not, that the fools in German decks inspired the Fool in Tarot through the medium of Karnöffel (or Kaiserspiel/Imperatori), where the Unter was the highest “trump.”

German cardmakers were legion in late 14th to early 15th century Italy (judging what we know as merely the tip of the iceberg), and although no “German suited” cards survive there from that period, that is not much to say – there are no Italian cards surviving at all from before Tarots themselves, probably the Cary-Yale and Brambilla (early 1440s). And these latter are luxury products – the amount of standard, regular and cheap cards being used then in Italy must be comparable to everywhere else – but I can’t even remember off-hand what the earliest surviving regular Italian card is.

The rage for foreign (meaning presumably German for the most part) cards and games seems to be indirectly reflected in some prohibitions, such as Filippo Maria Visconti’s of 1420, forbidding messing with the traditional game, and that of Venice in 1441 which banned imported cards as swamping the local market.

So – I can see some of the particularities of the Tarot deck as being inspired by German innovations current in Italy for many decades before Tarot’s invention.

As for the Tarot trumps themselves, I agree and disagree with some of both Michael’s and Huck’s posts.

Since there is a good chance that Tarot was invented in the Visconti court, maybe even by FMV himself, the earlier experiment with the trump idea could be very relevant. These “trumps” were separately ordered and depicted, and they played the role of permanent trumps, all essential ideas found in Tarot. They were thematically related to Marziano’s “fourfold” vice-virtue scheme, while the Tarot trumps don’t have any (or at least a through-going) schematic or thematic relationship with the other four suits.

I take Marcello’s description of this deck as a “new kind of triumphs” to indicate that the deck possessed something in common with the regular tarot. Since it was not the iconography, it has to be the structure. That is, there were five distinct parts – four suits of birds and kings, and a suit of gods and heroes. I think this interpretation of his statement is preferable to thinking that he would have called any deck with strange figures a Triumph deck (that Marcello’s opinion that this deck was “new” is erroneous, is beside the point, although FMV could have had Michelino paint it up to anytime before 1447. But the text has to have been written before early 1425).

So I think that Marziano's deck can be described as a "quasi-Tarot" - quasi meaning "almost" or "sort of". Boiardo and Sola Busca *are* Tarots - the trumps are just different subjects. They are obvioulsy influenced by the standard Tarot, and just change the subjects like the Animal Tarots do.

When looking for evidence of the idea of a permanent trump suit, aesthetically and structurally distinguished from the other parts of the deck, we only find, in all of history, in all card-playing nations, and despite the tremendous creativity of cardmakers, these two instances of it – Marziano and Tarot. The coincidence in place – Milan – and time – within a decade or so – of these two unique inventions, makes me think that if Tarot’s distinguishing feature was not invented in Milan by someone who knew of Filippo’s deck, then it was invented by someone (in Milan, Florence, or Bologna) who had seen or knew of the deck and how it was played.

As Michael Dummett rightly points out, although Karöffel probably had the trumping concept before Tarot, it was from Tarot as “Triumph” that the idea of trumps in card games became widespread, since, mainly, in the regular trumping games that developed they were actually called “trumps” (coming from the word “triumph”), and the game “Triumph” has cognates in Italy, Spain, France, and England (at least).

The popularity of this new Triumph game with regular cards also helps explain why the name of the old Triumph game became Tarot (or whatever cognate you like).

This indirectly gets to Huck’s point that I disagree with. The standard subjects of Triumph are the same as those of Tarot, in Triumph decks surviving from the first two decades of its existence. Every subject with the exception of the Devil is present, when they are taken in their totality. The question of whether Cary-Yale is an expansion and adaptation of a standard Triumph deck or whether it is the – or a copy of – the original style, can’t be settled directly. It is probably the oldest surviving deck, or if Brambilla is that doesn’t help us, since those two Trumps are standard anyway. The only real oddity is Catania’s nude, but we don’t even know if that is a Trump, and Decker’s “Temperance” is appealing.

So I do think that Triumph=Tarot, and that inferring that when they spoke of “carte da trionfi” or “Triumphum” in the mid-fifteenth century, they were referring to something we would recognize as Tarot, is justified. This also means in regard to the number and thematic content of the standard trump sequence (Cary-Yale notwithstanding). So yes, I think it was the 21 standard Trumps and a Fool right from the beginning.

Ross
 

mjhurst

Hi, Huck,

Thank you for this post. It perfectly illustrates the kind of thinking I was referring to.

First ... it would be logical to call something "Tarot", which the speakers of their time called "Tarot".
That might or might not be "logical", depending on how you define that term. However, from an empirical point of view would be useless to do that. Historically, we need to find out how they used the term, (an empirical question), and whether that usage exemplified the way we wish to use the term, a practical matter. Not to get existential about it, but words mean what people use them to mean. And they routinely use the same word in different ways.

One of the most common ways in which words are given multiple meanings is to have a narrow, strict, or more specific meaning (sometimes indicated with "per se"), and a broader, looser, or more generic meaning.

Now in Tarot history research has developed the opinion, that the objects called "Trionfi" or similar in 15th century (as far they are playing cards) refered to that object, which later was called Tarot. So it became custom to imagine, that, whenever in documents the name "Trionfi" (or similar) appeared, that this reference should belong to that, what the reader imagined was "Tarot" (and most readers imagined for Tarot a game structure of 21+1+56 cards and a specific set of motifs).
Starting with Moakley, various decks, games, and other pictorial cycles were included in a larger family of "ludus triumphorum", which may or may not have been appropriate. However, she made that a mainstream position "in Tarot history research" some four decades ago, and that established a broader, generic use of the term in the modern context.

However, there is evidence, that this idea went definitely wrong ... at a few
occasions it could be proven, that the objects called Trionfi (or similar) in documents definitely hadn't the refered game structure and also not the specific set of motifs (Michelino deck, document of 1457).

So the elegant translation solution "Tarot (of ca. 1505) = Trionfi (of 15th century", which seemed to offer an understanding of these sentences in 15th century documents, was not operating correctly and has to be replaced by the simple research question "Trionfi ? - what kind of deck might have been meant at this occasion in this document ?".
It appears that people used the term in both a specific sense (what we would call Tarot) and on at least one occasion in a looser sense. This latter example is very rare, (apparently unique), and therefore necessarily idiosyncratic and not particularly helpful.

Now there is to exspect, that something was similar between all these mentioned Trionfi decks in 15th century - but what?
All but one of them appear to have been what we would call Tarot. With a single exception, which appears to mean simply a non-standard deck/game, the usage appears to be helpfully consistent.

From the examples, that we know, we know, that the motifs weren't stable (Boiardo, Sola Busca) nor that the structure was stable (Michelino deck; note of 1457; Cary-Yale).
Things like Boiardo, Sola Busca, Minchiate, and Cary-Yale all display the structure of Tarot decks. Minchiate and Cary-Yale have additional cards added to that structure, but the basis is clear given the subject matter. These are all dated from the 1440s and later, that is, from the era in which Tarot was known and played. These are all Tarot decks.

The Marziano-Michelino deck does not have the structure of a Tarot deck. It does not even have a separate "fifth suit", much less one similar to that in Tarot. It does not have the same kind of suit signs as either Tarot or regular decks. It does not have the same court cards as either Tarot or regular decks. It does not have the same type of trumps as other decks with trumps, and there are at least four other types of decks/games, including regular decks and five-suited decks, which have trumps. Marziano-Michelino was a totally unique design, one which left no descendants.

The name "Trionfi" signals "trumps"...
That is one theory. However, trumping is an aspect of gameplay, not just a type of card. Every deck has trumps if it is so used, so if we accept your simplistic equation then every deck is also a trionfi deck.

Empirically, we need context to know what early writers were talking about. Your identification of trionfi with trumps makes the terms historically useless in distinguishing between different decks. Practically, we need to use words to clarify rather than confuse. Your identification of trionfi with trumps makes clear discussion impossible without creating some new words to replace the one you've ruined.

For example, there is in fact a well-known game, still played, called Triomphe. Because of the confusion between usages, we have some trepidation interpreting a reference to Tarot (probably) in the 1482 Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française.

Why not use "trumps" to mean trumps, and "trionfi" to mean Tarot? How hard is that? That appears to be the way the terms were used historically, in almost every case.

Indeed this definition would work (for instance also for the Michelino deck) and it would make the Taraux (of 1505 and later) just to a special case of the more generally named Trionfi deck, a subcategory with the signifying feature of a 21+1+56-game-structure.

In this case: "Dear Tarot, get your ass out of 15th century, you weren't born then" ... .-)
You want to blur distinctions between Tarot and non-Tarot decks, and other things like the E-Series images, and whatever else might help confuse people. I want to clarify distinctions as much as possible so that the actual history of the cards can be appreciated. The particular terms used make little difference, except when you ruin a word and blur useful distinctions.

So what? Reality isn't changed by calling it Paul or Peter. There are certain objects, which demand to be studied at their individual occasion and their individual context, written documents and cards, anything is useful.
You write that as if you understood and accepted it, however, that is exactly the point which you are arguing against! You are focused on redefining the words, and then using your newly created words as weapons to be used against the facts. If you insist on sloppy usage, then clarity of expression becomes difficult, which is presumably your intended goal.

Cary-Yale, Visconti-Sforza, Bolognese Tarot decks, Florentine Tarot decks, Viti's deck made from Boiardo's poems, Ferrarese Tarot decks, Minchiate Tarot decks, the Sola Busca Tarot decks, the classicized Leber-Rouen Tarot deck, French Tarot decks, Sicilian Tarot decks, and so on... these all have structure and/or content that makes them clearly part of the same family of decks and games. They all have structure and content which distinguishes them from the Marziano-Michelino deck and game. You want to blur that distinction by playing games with labels.

The informations about the Michelino deck are one of the oldest texts of playing card history, important in themselves and they don't ask Michael Hurst, if they should be called Tarot or Trionfi deck - a classifying system is only of interest for the human mind and only of interest, if it works and helps to keep the observed development process sorted.
Lothar Teikemeier and Huck Meyer want to confuse people, in order to promote a theory of early Tarot history that is not supported by playing-card historians. They have their own view of the world, and it seems to require sloppy thinking to support it. The Marziano-Michelino deck must be called Tarot; the E-Series engravings must be called tarocchi cards; and so on. The fact that their view of early Tarot history goes hand-in-hand with such blunders is a strong argument against it.

Do you really want to have this chat in the third person?

I want to help people to be able to understand the early history of Tarot as it has been developed by playing-card historians. That permits me to use the word "trumps" to mean trumps, to accept the fact that the Marziano-Michelino deck was a bizarre novelty, and to admit that the E-Series engravings were neither cards nor a game, and certainly not tarocchi.

Actually - as I interprete it - the interesting question is, how Tarot developed and what of the known informations can help to understand the process. As the Michelino deck appeared at the same court before the appearance of the first decks, which have iconographic similarities to the later Tarot (the Michelino deck has only structural similarities), it's obviously of great interest and delivers precious informations.
Those are simply the facts. Naturally, no one disputes any of that. The great thing about the Marziano-Michelino deck is that we know so much about it. While we don't have the deck, we have the designer's "manual" for it. It is enormously revealing about the way such things might be executed. It is, however, not Tarot.

Generally the wish to explore Tarot's birth and departure from the normal playing card deck (and it's a general opinion, that normal playing cards came first and Tarot developed from it) should lead to a playing card deck-form, which has one leg in the normal playing card structure and another leg in something, which is similar to Tarot. Actually such a deck gives the signal, that research is with such an object near to the desired "birth-place of Tarot", and that this deck is found at the same place and court as the "examples near in iconography" (Cary-Yale, Brera-Bambilla) is "ideal as it could be". Better evidence is hardly possible in the given situation.
Trumps were a new invention in the 15th century, and there were different forms tried out. This is all good. However, it is precisely as mistaken to equate Karnoffel or five-suited decks with Tarot as it is to equate the Marziano-Michelino deck with Tarot. They are different approaches to the desire for trumps.

Just for this sentence from Michael about the Michelino deck informations:
"However, this deck was a unique production, a unique conception of trumps, and the structure of the deck, the subject matter of the trumps, and the game played, appear to have contributed nothing to Tarot."

* It's the first clear report of "trumps" ... and trumps are essential for the Tarot.
* Also it's the first report of a hierarchical row of trumps, also essential for Tarot
* As far it gives informations about the game (which are not too much), it describes elements, which also appear in Tarot.
1. It is one of the earliest experiments in trumps. But it is not Tarot, nor in any way like Tarot. Nor is it like any other subsequent deck/game. It was an evolutionary dead end. There were probably many others that we don't know about, as only successful lines tend to leave evidence.

2. Trumps are by their nature "hierarchical", i.e., ranked. Trick-taking games require ranking. That is one of the reasons why oddities like the unranked Papi or the oddly ranked trumps in Karnoffel are almost certainly later variations. The simple and obvious form of trumps, the one almost universally used today, and probably the first form of trumps, is a regular suit, either one of the four standard ones or a fifth suit. And again, the Marziano-Michelino deck is not like Tarot.

3. It is false and misleading to claim that the game is like Tarot. It is different in every particular, even the supposed commonalty of trumps.

The important points about the Marziano-Michelino deck are that it was 1) documented in detail, 2) from the exact provenance of tarot, and 3) was referred to as trionfi. The earliest extant Tarot decks come from this same place, and were probably created for the same patron, The Patron of Tarot. The fact that odd games were being designed for Filippo is extremely relevant, as I noted in my previous post and as Ross has just reiterated.

The fact that it was loosely referred to as a "novel trionfi deck" is relevant not in terms of equating the deck with Tarot, but in terms of showing a more generic usage of the term trionfi. We know the decks and their usage were very different, so obviously Marcello was using the term broadly, in lieu of any better term -- describing the unknown in terms of the known.

Best regards,
Michael
 

Huck

You're summary is good, but ...

Ross G Caldwell said:
This indirectly gets to Huck’s point that I disagree with. The standard subjects of Triumph are the same as those of Tarot, in Triumph decks surviving from the first two decades of its existence. Every subject with the exception of the Devil is present, when they are taken in their totality. The question of whether Cary-Yale is an expansion and adaptation of a standard Triumph deck or whether it is the – or a copy of – the original style, can’t be settled directly. It is probably the oldest surviving deck, or if Brambilla is that doesn’t help us, since those two Trumps are standard anyway. The only real oddity is Catania’s nude, but we don’t even know if that is a Trump, and Decker’s “Temperance” is appealing.

... you forget to mention a few things

* the complete Michelino deck
* the complete Sola-Busca
* the complete Boiardo
* the Guildhall-Goldsmith fragments
* the falconer
* the Visconti-viper
* Caritas- Spes - Fides - Fama (Cary-Yale)
* the early Minchiate 1466 (whatever this was)

well, there is no document, which states that the Sola-Busca was a Trionfi deck ... or the Boiardo ... or the Guildhall-Goldsmith ... or the "early Minchiate"

okay - you speak only of standard triumphs, but a standard didn't exist or at least we cannot define it's beginning. We have (by accident) much Milanese decks and the Milanese decks became apparently standard, so we cannot decide, if a card belongs to the pre-standard-period or to the after-standard-began-period.

And completely it leaves aside the number-of-trumps-trouble, caused by the 5x14-theory. And this is strongly related to one of the oldest decks, Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo Tarocchi.
 

mjhurst

Hi, Ross,

I take Marcello’s description of this deck as a “new kind of triumphs” to indicate that the deck possessed something in common with the regular tarot. Since it was not the iconography, it has to be the structure. That is, there were five distinct parts – four suits of birds and kings, and a suit of gods and heroes. I think this interpretation of his statement is preferable to thinking that he would have called any deck with strange figures a Triumph deck (that Marcello’s opinion that this deck was “new” is erroneous, is beside the point, although FMV could have had Michelino paint it up to anytime before 1447. But the text has to have been written before early 1425).
People use terms "loosely speaking" all the time, and referring to a unique item as something else, something with which it is vaguely related, seems perfectly normal. Is that usage really implausible to you?

Given that we know, from the description of the Marziano-Michelion deck, that the structures are completely different, the subjects of the suit-signs are different, the fact that the trumps are also suited cards is different, and so on, we know that he was using the term loosely... don't we?

When looking for evidence of the idea of a permanent trump suit, aesthetically and structurally distinguished from the other parts of the deck, we only find, in all of history, in all card-playing nations, and despite the tremendous creativity of cardmakers, these two instances of it – Marziano and Tarot. The coincidence in place – Milan – and time – within a decade or so – of these two unique inventions, makes me think that if Tarot’s distinguishing feature was not invented in Milan by someone who knew of Filippo’s deck, then it was invented by someone who had seen or knew of the deck and how it was played.
The first part of that seems a bit misleading, focusing on "permanent" trumps. You have searched for a limiting factor which does not appear germane but which can be used to say, "only two".

We know of at least five different forms that trumps appear to have taken in the 15th century, and it seems less polemical to simply state that there was obviously a desire for trumps and various inventions were tried out. Inventing a hypothetical evolutionary development where none seems to exist is fun and all, but there seems no basis for it in terms of either the Marziano-Michelino deck nor Karnoffel. Perhaps four-suited decks, five-suited decks, and Tarot, might be considered a plausible sequence of development, as in each case an entire suit was used as trumps. It is easy to see how five can develop from four or how special cards could develop from a fifth suit. The other two types of trumps, however, stand apart as striking aberrations from this pattern of development.

However, I fully agree with your conclusion about the coincidence of time and place. On the one hand, there is no connection between the design of the Marziano-Michelino deck and Tarot, but on the other hand there appears to be a good probability that some of the same people were involved in designing both. Milan may be the best candidate for the invention of Tarot based on other factors, so this has always been a plausible scenario.

Best regards,
Michael