Moakley, Gertrude-Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-sforza Family

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THE TAROT CARDS PAINTED BY BONIFACIO BEMBO FOR THE VISCONTI-SFORZA FAMILY AN ICONOGRAPHIC ANO HISTORICAL STUOY BY

GERTRUDE MOAKLEY

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

1966

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Published with help tram the

Emily Ell.sworth Ford Skeel Fund

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 65-1855 1 © 1966 by The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Designed by Bernard Etter and Barbara Bert, composed in the Printing Office of The New York Public Library, printed by offset and bound by Edwards Brothers, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan

TO MARTIN DRAYSON AND THE AIR-CONDITIONED DONNELL LIBRARY CENTER SINE QUIBUS NON

.tiLL I

lU122 ..Mt._

CONTENTS I

l

t f

Preface

lO

Undocumented Prelude

13 PART I

l

The Cards and their M'aker PRESENT LOCATION OF THE CARDS NOTES FOR CHAPTER l

2 The Cicognara Mix-up

27 32

NOTES FOR CHAPTER 2

• • •

19 21 24

3 The Fami1y for whom the Cards were Made NOTES FOR CHAPTER 3

35 41

4 Triumphs and the Game of Triumphs 4

43 51

5

55 58

NOTES FOR CHAPTER

5 The Death of Carnival NOTES FOR CHAPTER

"

PARTII The Procession NOTE

I

Il Bagatino (Quarterpenny, The Juggler) NOTES

61 62 62 63

Le Coppe (Cups) NOTE

II L'Imperatrice (The Empress)

CONTENTS

NOTES

III L'Imperadore (The Emperor) NOTES

IV La Papessa (The Popess) NOTES

V Il Papa (The Pope) NOTES

VI La Temperanza (Temperance) NOTES

VII Il Carro (The Car ) NOTES

VIII L'Amore (Love, The Lovers) NOTES

IX La Fortezza (Fortitude) NOTES

I Bastoni (Staves) NOTES

X La Ruota (The Wheel of Fortune) NOTES

I Danari (Coins) NOTE

XI Il Gobbo (The Hunchback, Time) NOTES

XII Il Traditore (The Traitor, The Hanged Man) NOTES

XIII La Morte (Death) NOTES

64 64 70 70 71 72 72 74 73 74 74 75 76 76 77 77 78 78 79 80 86 87 88 88 94 94

95 96 96 97

XIV .Il Diavolo (The Devil) NOTES

XV La Casa del Diavolo

(The Devil's House, The Tower)

98

98

NOTES

99

99

Le Spade (Swords)

100

NOTES

100

XVI La Stella (The Star) NOTES

XVII La Luna (The Moon) NOTES

XVIII II Sole (The Sun) NOTES

XIX L'Agnolo (The Angel,

The Judgment) NOTES

XX La Justicia (Justice) NOTES

XXI II Mondo (The World)

106

107

108

108

109 109



110

110

111

111

112

NOTES

112

II Matto (The Fool)

113

NOTES

114

Bibliography

117

EDITOR'S NOTE: The scattered tarot cards were photographed for repro­ duction under varying conditions; light reflecting from the gold leaf at different angles caused differences in contrast which we have made every effort to minimize.

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CONTENTS

PREFACE

Tms STUDY began almost as a matter of chance. I am a library cataloger, and I wanted to find out how well a library catalog serves the researcher, and whether anything about it needed improvement. I determined to become a researcher for a few weeks, and find out what I wanted to know from actual experience. Any subject would have done as well as another, but books on the tarot had been given me to catalog, and when I looked into them I was not satisfied with their treatment of the subject. Surely a few weeks of research would uncover a serious book or article on the tarot by some qualified art histOrian, and I would have had the experience I desired. However, the weeks passed and the most thorough digging turned up nothing at all of any worth. By this time my curiosity had become almost unbearable, and my original purpose was lost in the determina­ tion to find the answers to all my questions about the tarot. The Visconti-Sforza tarot, or rather tarocchi (since they are Italian) soon came to my attention. Photographs of these cards became my con­ stant companions, and I looked for their meaning with ardent fervor. At first I barked up all the wrong trees: were they connected with magic? alchemy? witchcraft? Were they some kind of secret code? It gradually became clear to me that they were more related to the literary works of their time than to any of these other things; yet I could not find any such work which told the same story as the tarot cards. At last I found two tapestries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, depicting the Triumph of Fame and the Triumph of Time, as Petrar:ch had described them in his poem I Trionfi. Here I had the lead at last. But there was more that I wanted to know about the Visconti-Sforza tarocchi. What did the first of the tarocchi trumps represent? It did not seem to have anything to do with Petrarch's poem/-Why were the Pope and a Popess among the victims of Cupid's triumph?>What were those devices embroidered upon the robes of the Emperor and Empress, and what did they mean? In short, I wanted to know as much as I could possibly discover of the meaning the cards had for the family which originally owned them. I think I have now found as many answers as I can hope to find, and offer them here for the satisfaction of any other people who may be as curious as I was. A great deal of this information would never have come to me with­

10

out the help of a number of people, whom I want to thank here. First of all, the great and generous Professor Erwin Panofsky, for his help and support when I was writing the essay out of which the present book grew - "The Tarot Trumps and Petrarch's Trionfi," in the Bulle­ tin of The New York Public Library of February 1956 - and for an important lead to the constitution of one of the earliest of the ludi triumphorum. I am also indebted to Professor Maurice G. Kendall for the significance of the number of cards in the four ordinary suits of the tarocchi, to Professor Archer Taylor for calling my attention to the tarot riddle in Straparola's Facetious Nights, to Professor Guido Kisch for new information about the Hanged Man, and to Professor Allan H. Gilbert for reading the present book and suggesting a number of needed changes. My colleagues in The New York Public Library have also greatly helped. I cannot name them all, but I must express particular thanks to Elizabeth Roth, Leo M. Mladen, Elizabeth M. Hajos, Patricia Spind­ ler, and Maud D. Cole, for much help, and to William Sloan who photo­ gtaphed some of the cards. In other libraries and museums several Jibrnrians and curators have given me help without which my search would have been much longer. Of these I want especially to thank E. Maurice Bloch, formerly Keeper of Drawings and Prints at the Cooper Union Museum, Alice Newlin and Janet Byrne of the Prints Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Dr John Plum~ mer, the Curator of Manuscripts at the Pierpont Morgan Library. I wish to thank the following publishers for allowing me to quote from their publications: Penguin Books, for permission to quote from Dorothy Sayers' translation of Dante's Inferno, International Universi­ ties Press, for permission to quote from The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, and Alfred A. Knopf for permission to quote from The Gen­ tleman and the Jew, by Maurice SamueL Finally I wish to thank the owners of the Visconti-Sforza cards, the Pierpont Morgan Library, Dott. Comm. Ippolito Pipia, President of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bergamo, the Accademia Carrara of Bergamo, and Conti Colleoni, for permission to reproduce photographs of the cards, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for permission to repro­ duce photographs of the three old printed tarocchi which have been used to give some idea of the lost cards of the Visconti-Sforza set.

11

PREFACE

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES In general, any book listed in the bibliography is cited in the notes by the last name of the author and the first impor­ tant word of !he title, enclosed in parentheses. For instance, "Patch (Goddess)" will be found in the bibliography as "Patch, Howard Rollin. The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1927." Other abbrevi~tions: Arch stor lomb End ital

Encispett

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Archivio stOrieD lombardo Enciclopedia italiaoo Enciclopedia della spettacolo

UNDOCUMENTED PRELUDE

I

To understand the tarocchi let us imagine the scenes and symbols of the cards come to life in the milieu in which they originated. First we see a splendidly draped stand on which the Duke of Milan is waiting to review the procession of «triumphs" on the last day of Carnival. His name is Francesco Sforza, and beside him sits the Duchess, Lady Bianca Maria, the only living descendant of the Visconti Dukes. It is a cold winter day, and the Duke and his retinue wear gloves and fur-lined robes. So do the actors who will soon pass by in the triumphal cars, or on foot or horseback to accompany the cars. Crowds line all the streets through which the procession is to pass. They call out to the paraders, who have a reputation for quick repartee. Twenty yards away a burst of laughter shows that someone in the approaching procession has just returned a good one. Now the first and least of the triumphs arrives at the stand. On the triumphal car sits the Carnival King, Bagatino, eating his last meal before Carnival comes to its close and he, its King, is executed. The car stops to let Bagatino address the Duke. «Hey, Duke!" he cries, pointing his royal scepter at the ragged dirty fellow who stands beside the car. «Can't you get me out of the clutches of this tramp? How would you like it if he tried to get your Dukedom away from you?" The genial Duke smiles and waves his hand, and the ragged tramp brandishes his stout cudgel at the King. «Don't listen to him, Duke!" the tramp shouts. "He's a no-good, and it's time to oust him. People are tired of being kept up all night at his dances and sprees. They'll be glad to live the quiet life which I, King Lent, have to give them." The Duke and his company laugh and applaud, looking at each other with rueful smiles. It is true, they feel. Carnival has been wonder­

13

ful, but there has been a little too much of it. They will be glad to settle down to the quieter game of playing at sainthood for a while. Bagatino sees that the game is up, and tries to return to his meal. He takes the cover off his dish, but he is so nervous that it slips out of his hand. Of course, the nervousness is feigned. The actor who plays the part of the Carnival King will not actually be killed today, as in the time of the old Saturnalia. There will be a pretence of killing, during which the human actor will slip away unhurt. So Bagatino's nervous­ ness is really only an excuse for the clever juggling with dishes and knives for which he is famous. In a later century, when the Carnival actors have become the troupes of the commedia delIarte, he will be known as the Little Juggler. His car now moves on, and the triumphal car of Cupid appears, pre­ ceded by a little company of footmen and horsemen wearing the Cup as their heraldic device, and followed by a similar company wearing the Staff. Cupid stands on a pedestal in the center of the car, aiming his darts at the two lovers below him. The devices on their garments show that the lovers are the newly wedded Duke and Duchess. Cupid's chief cap­ tives ride on the front of the car: The Empress and Emperor, Popess and Pope. Two of the cardinal virtues are Cupid's attendants: Tem­ perance with her cups and Fortitude with his staff. The crowd roars with delight at the obvious sexual symbolism the two virtues have been so absurdly given. (The virtue of Fortitude is more usually represented as a woman, with a column or a lion.) King Lent has been running off to tease the crowd and the riders on the other cars, but now Cupid's car has stopped before the reviewing stand, and he hurries back to get into the fun. Fortitude has just pointed his staff at Cupid and introduced him in the ribald song beginning: Here behold our own Cupidus,

None other than the god of Cnidus. . . .

It minces no words in describing Cupid's virility. Lent lets him finish, but all during the song he takes sly pokes at the characters on the car, not sparing even the mock Duke and Duchess. The song over, he addresses the real Duke: "A fine crowd this isl There are your noble cousins trussed up in front - we all know about them, especially your lady's cousin Manfreda [pointing at the Popess]. Be careful other ladies in the family don't get the idea of wearing the pants.»

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The Duke can afford to smile at this, and even the Duchess smiles. Once the story was all tragedy, but it is so long ago now that one really feels no personal interest in the poor Umiliata nun who had been burned at the stake a century and a haH ago. She had seriously been c~osen to be Popess by the little sect of Guglielmites, but now she is only a family joke. The car moves on, and after its followers, the company of the Staff, comes the triumphal car of Fortune. She appears in her usual form, turning her wheel with its four victims. She beginS to boast of her power as soon as her car stops at the reviewing-stand, and then the four victims explain themselves. "I shall reign," says the one on the way up. "I do reign," says the one on top. "I did reign," says the one on the way down, and "I don't reign," the down-and-outer at the bottom, who suggests the coming fate of the Carnival King. Following Fortune is a company of footmen and horsemen bearing the Coin as the device of Prudence, and then comes the triumphal car of Death, who is a grisly skeleton armed with a great bow and arrow. King Lent comes running up to the car, and cringes back as Death takes aim at him with the arrow. He sneaks around to the other side of the car, and gets a chance to tweak at Death's leg before the bow can be aimed at him again. Then he runs away squealing. Death's captive is a perjured knight suffering the special punishment for treachery. He is hung by one ankle to a gallows at the front of the car. Behind him are Death's two attendants, Father Time and the Devil, who stands beside a flaming Hell-mouth. As the car stops before the Duke the hanged knight, who is really a skilled acrobat, quickly pulls himseH up and stands on top of the gallows. "Your Highness," he says, "I admit my behavior may have earned this treatment, but don't forget that the Pope did his best to put your wor­ shipful father in the same fix." The Duke laughs and applauds, and the acrobat does a few more stunts before the car moves on. Next comes the company of Justice, wearing the device of the Sword, and behind this the triumphal car of Eternity. The beasts which draw it are made up to resemble the Four Living Creatures of the Apoca­ lypse, the angel, lion, ox, and eagle. At the front of the car stand actors impersonating the Sun, Moon, and Stars. Each sets off fireworks suita­ ble to his or her own grandeur, and in the growing darkness these are very effective. In the center of the car God is enthroned, attended by

15

trumpeting angels, the virtue of Justice with her scales and sword, and other angels holding up a view of the New Jerusalem. Before him is an open tomb from which three figures are emerging, the resurrected Duke and Duchess and the Carnival King. The car stops at the reviewing stand, and the angels sing God's praises. In the pauses King Lent calls out to the Duke: "He's a fake I This fellow's no more God than you or mel And that angel over there - he's a devil in disguise." He ruffles the angels' feathers with his cudgel, and tries to pull off God's false whiskers. A youngster in the crowd reaches out and pulls a feather from the Fool's head-dress, and runs away with it. The Fool howls and chases the impudent thief, and that is the last we see of him. The car moves off, with a grand final display of fireworks, and Carni­ val is over. Now home and to rest, and tomorrow there will b~ a grand bonfire in the Piazza. Playing cards will go into it, some of them show­ ing pictures of all the figures who have taken part in the last procession of Carnival.

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1 THE CARDS AND THEIR MAKER

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THE TARoccm, or tarot cards, reproduced in this book have never before been pictured all together, in their original order, and correctly identi­ fied. This set of tarocchi dates back to the middle of the fifteenth century, and is the work of Bonifacio Bembo. Bembo was the favorite painter of Bianca Visconti Sforza, and it is probable that the cards were painted for her. At that time the tarocco pack ("tarocchi" is the plural form of the word) was not yet established in its present form. The interest of the Visconti-Sforza set of tarocchi is its correspondence, card for card, to the modem tarot or tarocco pack. Of the seventy-eight cards which composed the full deck, only four have been lost: the Devil, the Tower, the Knight of Coins, and the Three of Swords. Otherwise it is the regu­ lation set of four ordinary suits, designated as Swords, Cups, Coins, and Staves, the mysterious fifth suit of twenty-one trumps, and the "wild" card known as the Fool, which is the most interesting card of all. Each of the cards is, in effect, a miniature painting in which Bembo depicted the appropriate symbols of the tarocchi. With the utmost skill and subtlety he has interwoven the Visconti motto "A bon droyt" (said to have been suggested by Petrarch) on many of the cards of the ordinary suits. On some of the trumps there are Sforza devices. This combina­ tion of Visconti and Sforza elements shows that the earliest possible date for the cards is 1432, when the betrothal of Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti united the two families. However, we cannot date them as early as that since their painter, Bembo, would have then been only twelve years old. l If it is true that Count Sforza adopted the three-ring device, shown On the Emperor and Empress cards, in 1450, the set was probably painted in that very year. The costumes shown on the cards are those of the first half of the fifteenth century, so it is likely that they were not painted much later than that. 2

19

The cards are painted and illuminated on heavy cardboard. Each card measures 175 x 87 millimeters, and is very thick, so thick that it is hard to imagine the set having been used for actual play. The trump cards and court cards are painted in brilliant colors on a diapered back­ ground of gold over red, with silver used here and there for armor or in the decoration of robes. The common cards are in gold with touches of color on a white background. All of the cards have plain red backs. s Six. of the cards are by a different hand from Bembo's, and at one time the whole set was thought to be the work of Antonio Cicognara! These six. (Temperance, Fortitude, the Star, Moon, Sun, and World) continue to be ascribed to that artist. The modelling of the p!ump putti in the Sun and the World is very different from Bembo's style, and to one critic they recall the Lombard style of the time of Butinone and Zenale, who worked together in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. 5 It is possible that these later cards were painted to replace cards lost from the original set, or perhaps they are remnants of a later set used to fill in gaps in the Bembo set. We know that the set originally belonged to the Sforza family from the heraldic devices shown on many of the cards. Nothing is known about the subsequent ownership of the cards until the seventeenth century, when it is said that they belonged to a Canon Ambivero of Bergamo. They were inherited from Count Ambivero by the noble Donati family, and then passed to a Count Alessandro Colleoni of Bergamo. As there has been an Alessandro Colleoni in this family at least every other generation, it is impossible to ascertain the exact date when the cards came into the possession of the Colleoni family.6 In the late nineteenth century another Count Alessandro Colleoni gave twenty-six cards of the set to his friend, Francesco Baglioni, in exchange for some objects of art which included a portrait of his ancestress, Countess Cecilia Colleoni, painted in 1705 by Fra Galgario. Baglioni bequeathed his cards to the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, and they became part of that museum's collection when Baglioni died in 1900. At some time before the set was broken up, each card must have acquired the ugly tack-hole it now has, for it is hard to imagine two or three separate owners having all been guilty of this vandalism. In 1911 the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York acquired thirty­ five of the cards from the dealer Hamburger, who doubtless had acquired them from Count Colleoni. The remaining thirteen of the 20

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extant cards are still in the possession of the Colleoni family.7 The following table shows the location of each card. "M" indicates the Morgan Library, "A" the Accademia Carrara, and "C" the Colleoni family. Blank spaces are left for the four missing cards. PRESENT LOCATION OF THE CARDS

SWORDS

CUPS

COINS

Ace

M

M

A

M

I Juggler

M

2

C

A

C

C

II Empress

M

Man

M

M

C

A

III Emperor

A

XIII Death

M

XIV Devil

3

STAVES

TRUMPS

TRUMPS

XII Hanged

~

4

A

C

C

M

IV Popess

M

5

A

M

A

A

V Pope

M

6

A

A

C

A

7

C

C

M

A

8

A

C

M

C

9

C

M

A

M

10

M

A

M

C

Page

A

M

A

A

Knight

A

M

Queen

M

M

M

A

King

M

A

M

M

A

VI Temperance

VII Car VIII Lovers

XI Time

XVI Star

A

XVII Moon

A

M

M M

IX Fortitude M X Fortune

XV Tower

M M

XVIII Sun

M

XIX Judg­ ment

M

XX Justice

A

XXI World

A

Fool

' M

Those familiar with the order of the trumps in a modern tarocco pack will notice that there are slight differences in the above list. The reasons for this will be explained later. 8 At the Morgan Library each card is kept in an envelope with a trans­ parent front, so that scholars may occasionally examine the cards with­ 21

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out handling them. They are kept in a fourteenth-century French casket-box made of dark brown calfskin, decorated in relief with scenes from a romance of chivalry. 9 Until very recently little was known about the painter of the cards, Bonifacio Bembo. Only a few of his works were listed, and the number of them still in existence had escaped notice. During the last ten years, however, several art historians have taken an interest in him and have uncovered a good deal of his miniature painting and other work. There are tablets showing Biblical scenes, a lovely Coronation of the Virgin and an Assumption, a diurnal of seventy-three leaves illuminated by him, a manuscript "History of Lancelot of the Lake" which he illus­ trated, and several other items. The tarocchi described here are sup­ posed to be among his earliest work. 10 From letters by or about Bembo we learn something aboutbis career. He himself claimed that he had been a supporter of Francesco Sforza in the critical year 1447, after the death of the third Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti. This was when the question first arose as to whether Milan and its subject cities would declare themselves inde­ pendent or accept Sforza or another noble as their Duke. Sforza became Duke of Milan in 1450, and afterwards Bembo received many commis­ sions from members of the Sforza family, up to the year 1477, when he fades from history.11 In 1456 he had a share in decorating the great hall of the Castello in Pavia, where the Dukes of Milan had always spent a good deal of their time. The Certosa monastery which they built nearby was one of the most beautifully decorated of all Renaissance buildings. In 1467 Bembo painted an altarpiece for the Cathedral in his home town, Cremona. . The following year Galeazzo Sforza (Francesco Sforza's son) com­ missioned him to return to Pavia for more work in the halls of his Castello. The walls were to be decorated with scenes shOwing friends. of the Count and their dogs in various hunting episodes. In the written instructions of Count Sforza we read such directives as: Item, that Alexio is to be shown being thrown from his horse by a stag, with his legs in the air.

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In another scene the same Alexio was to be shown attacking the offending stag with his sword. In addition to the hunting scenes, in­ structions were given to paint Duke Giangaleazzo with all his servants 22

-da naturale," and likewise the Duchess Catelina. Other ancestral

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Dukes and Duchesses were also to be shown: Filippo Maria, Francesco, and Bianca with their counsellors. The directions go into great detail as to costume and the colors to be used. It is evident that the family (or at least Galeazzo Sforza) was not dependent on its artists for decorative ideas. We have no record of the payment made to Bembo for this work, but it must have been fairly satisfactory, for on August 6 1471 Bembo wrote to the Duke asking for more work at the Castello. Just four days later (a prompt correspondent, Galeazzo!) the Duke replied that there was no work at Pavia for Bembo at present. Previously, on October 16 1469, Galeazzo had sent an order to Niccolo Trecchi to pay Bembo "libre 22, s. 10, d. 4" for the ancona he had painted for the altar of "sancto Gris­ ante" in the Church of St Augustine in Cremona, as the dowager Duchess' memorial to Francesco Sforza. This accounts for Bembo's opportunity to work in his native town. In the summer of 1472 Galeazzo hired Bembo and Leonardo Ponzoni to work together on a votive chapel of St Mary outside Vigevano. Two years later Bartolomeo Gadio suggested to Duke Galeazzo that he have Bembo do an "Archo con la Neula" (bow in the cloud) for the chapel of the Castello in Milan. Bembo must have done something really praiseworthy that year, for the next spring, on April 23 1474, Galeazzo conferred the rights of Milanese citizenship upon Bembo and his descendants "usque ad infinitum." It is unfortunate that the specific reasons for this honor are not known to us. Two months later there were more plans for the decoration of the chapel of the Castello at Pavia, where Bembo was to collaborate with two other artists. In 1476 he was paid by Zaccaria Beccaria for his part of the work on the fres­ coes in S. Giacomo at Pavia, and in 1477 we hear of him for the last time. He was then living in the Collegio Castiglioni at Pavia, and must have been approaching sixty. The liveliness and gaiety of Bembo's work are typical of much of the work done by many different artists for the Visconti and Sforza families. The members of these families often had bad reputations for cruelty and corruption, but one cannot help feeling at least a glimmer of empa­ thy for them when one sees the wittiness and exuberance of the Ufiziolo illuminated for Filippo Maria Visconti, the Grammatica of Elio Donato made for young Maximilian Sforza, or the little miniature in a choir­ book which shows Francesco Sforza animatedly talking military shop

23

with great warriors of the past, among them Julius Caesar and Hanni­ bal. There is a Milanese heartiness and good humor here which con­ trast attractively with the unearthly quality of Botticelli's contempo­ rary paintings of his tubercular model, for example. One of the liveliest of the miniatures in the Djiziolo shows Moses' serpent (probably thought of as the same serpent as that in the heraldic device of the Visconti) devouring another serpent, whose expression of mixed hell­ ishness and meek submission is very engaging. 12 As mentioned before, the cards Bembo painted for the Sforza family can hardly have been used very often, if at all, for card games. The family had many other cards, much less splendid, for that purpose. About fifty years ago some of these turned up in wells and cisterns of the Castello in Milan, when it was undergOing renovations. Some twenty packs of stencilled or printed cards, dating from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, were found there, along with broken bits of antique crockery. These were the cards which had suffered real use, perhaps including the twelve packs of cards which Francesco Sforza's son Lodovico, in the year 1495, asked his father-in-law the Duke of Ferrara to purchase for him. They were being made cheaply in Ferrara, and a pack could be had there for four or five soldi. From such evidence we know that Bembo's cards must have been treasured very highly, until they fell into the hands of the thumb-tack vandals, whoever they may have been. 13

1 For Bembo as maker of the cards see Salmi (Italian, p 46) and the very revealing Arte lombarda dai Visconti agli Sforza, the authoritative and profusely illustrated catalog of a recent exhibition in the Palazzo Reale at Milan, which included much of Bembo's work, including a few of our tarocchi. For Bembo as Bianca's favorite painter see Mongeri (HArte", p 551). For Petrarch and the motto see Arch star lomb XII (1885) 542.

For the date when Francesco Sforza adopted the three-ring device we have this nega­ tive evidence: The device is absent from the portraits of Francesco and Bianca in the Church of St Sigismund in Cremona, which commemorate their marriage in that church (Assum, Francesco, pI facing p 224). It is also absent from the ms of an address by Filelfo to Francesco and Bianca (Paris, Bibl Nat, ms lat 8128, cited and reproduced in Storia di Milano VII 41). I do not know whether or not this was a wedding address. As positive evidence that hc was using the device in 1450, if not before, we have a statement in Assum (Francesco, p 367f) citing and quoting "Portigliotti, Condottieri" (no further bibliographical information given), to the effect that in 1450 Sforza dropped the devices of the mattock and the lion with (Iuince branch, and adopted the Visconti arms of the quartered eagle and serpent, and at the same time the devices of the "tizzoni con Ie 2

secchie," the "fasce ondate," and the three-ring device. The device appears in a ms of the works of Virgil, from which an illuminated initial showing Francesco and Bianca is reproduced in St01'ia di Milano VII 296. The ms is identified only as "Valencia, Biblioteca Universitaria, vol. 780." In Assum (Francesco, p 107) is reproduced a page from an illuminated ms of De venenis by G. M. Ferrari (Paris, Bibl Nat ms lat 6980, f 1). Here the device is quartered with the serpent on a jousting shield and an ordinary shield, and is also used separately. On p 92 is shown ms lat 8126, Bibl Nat, Paris. Here the Sforza arms and the arms of Filelfo appear together, and Sforza's include the rings. The device appears on a diploma for the founding of the Ospedale Maggiore of Milan, dated April 1 1456 (see Milan (City) Ospedale Maggiore, Raccolte, pI facing p 72). It appears again in an unidentified ms copy of the Vita di S. Paolo Eremita, mentioned in Arch stor lomb XII (1885) 355, which contains the monogram of Sforza's daughter Ippolita Maria (born in 1446) and includes all the Sforza devices, which the article lists by name. I have not felt myself competent enough, even if I had the time, to go further into this question. For the date of the costumes see Malaguzzi-Valeri (Corte I 572), which says that our tarocchi are of exceptional importance for the history of costume in the first half of the fifteenth century. The. description of the cards is taken almost verbatim from the catalog of the Pierp.ont Morgan Library, except for the color of the backs, which is from personal observation. Mr Plummer, the curator of manuscripts, very kindly took each card out of its envelope so that I could satisfy myself on this point. 3

Berenson (Italian, p 144) attributes "Force, Temperance, Sun, Moon, Knave of Coins, and Castle of Pluto" (i. e. the World) to Cicognara, and does not mention the rest of the set at all. The "Knave of Coins" must be the Page, as the Knight is missing. Salmi (Italian, p 46) evidently attributes this card to Bembo, as he shows a reproduction of it as an exam­ ple of Bembo's work.

4

The mention of Butinone and Zenale is in Malaguzzi-Valeri (Corte IV 67). He men­ tions in this connection only the Sun, Moon, and World, two of which are the only cards with putti. It seems to me worth nothing that the diapered background of the later cards is slightly different (the lozenges are larger, and in them straight-rayed stars alternate with wavy-rayed suns). In combining my authorities I have allowed this to influence me.

5

6 The information about the earliest supposed owners of the cards (Ambivero, the Donati family, and the nrst Count Colleoni to own them) is from Gustavo Frizzoni, Le gallerie dell'Accademia Carrara in Bergamo (Bergamo, 1907), p 32). The occurrence of an Alessandro in the Colleoni family at frequent intervals is from Enciclopedia storico­ nobiliare italiana,;ll (Milano 1929) 502.

7 The story of the exchange of cards for a portrait of Countess Cecilia Colleoni is in a little folder issued by the Pierpont Morgan Library: Tarocchi (New York 1936) P 1-5. The name of the Countess is given in the catalog of an exhibition of Fra Galgario's work in Rome, 1955, at which time the portrait was still in the Colleoni collection. The Secretary of the Accademia Carrara writes me that the Accademia has never owned more than the twenty-six cards bequeathed to it by Baglioni. "Entrammo in pos­ sesso delle succi tate carte da gioco," he writes, "precisamente con atto notarile il 18 Otto­ bre 1900 -no 235 atti pubbl. del Dott. Enrico Tiraboschi, Notaio."

25

Dr John H. Plummer, Curator of Mediaeval and Renaissance Manuscripts for the Pier­ pont Morgan Library, informs me that the accession book of that Library has a record that it acquired its thirty-five cards in 1911 from the dealer Hamburger. The table showing the present location of the cards is based on recent photographs of the cards obtained from both institutions and from the Colleoni family. 8 The earlier order of the trumps is taken from two sermons and a set of versified tarocchi, all of the fifteenth century, which I will cite and quote later on, in the section on the game of triumphs. 9 The description of the casket-box is from the Morgan Library's catalog, and of the envelopes from personal observation. 10 The recent discoveries of Bembo's work are from Arte lombarda dai Visconti agli Sforza, p 80-81.

11 The letters which date Bembo's work are in Baroni (Pittura, p 107ff). Salmi (Italian, p 46) gives further details of his work.

Most of the Ufiziolo has been published in black-and-white facsimile in Toesca ( Ufiziolo ). Other Visconti and Sforza mss will be found reproduced in Salmi (Italian), Toesca (Pittura), Arte lombarda . .. (op cit), Malaguzzi-Valeri (Corte). Francesco with the warriors is in Salmi (Italian, p 199). 12

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I 13 For cards found in wells and cisterns see Novati ("Storia," p 65). For cheap cards from Ferrara see Malaguzzi-Valeri (Corte 1 575).

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2

THE CICOGNARA MIX-UP

As WE HAVE SAID, it is now certain that most of the cards in the Visconti­ Sforza set were the work of Bonifacio Bembo. However, at the time the trumps of the set were acquired by the Accademia Carrara and the Morgan Library the best available authority for their history and mean­ ing was thought to be Memorie spettante la storia della Calcografia, written by Count Leopoldo Cicognara and published in 1831. Count Cicognara was a connoisseur of the arts, a follower of Napoleon, and for some time, Prime Minister of the Cisalpine Republic. l The section of his book pertinent to our study reads as follows: The Chronicles of Cremona written by Domenico Bordigallo, reported in the notes of the jurisconsult Giacomo Torresino ... report as follows: "1484. In this year our own Antonio de Cico­ gnara, excellent painter of pictures and fine illuminator, illuminated and painted a magnificent set of cards called Tarocchi, seen by me, which he presented to the Most Illustrious and Most Reverend Monsignore Ascanio Maria Sforza, Cardinal of Holy Church, Bishop of Pavia and Novara, formerly Dean of our Cathedral and at present Commendatory of the Canonry of St Gregory in the same, and son of the Most Illustrious and Excellent Francesco Sforza and Madonna Bianca Visconti, who was born here in Cremona. The same illuminated other games for the two sisters of the Cardinal who were Augustinian nuns in the convents founded by the said Madonna Bianca in this city." 2

For lack of any better information, this story was generally accepted as true, although as early as 1880 Francesco Novati, the well known philologist and teacher, had cast doubt on it. Novati wrote that he had not been able to find the passage quoted above in the Latin original of Bordigallo's chronicle. He also showed that the sources used by Count Cicognara had been falsified by Antonio Dragoni, a notorious literary forger. Fifty years later, in 1931, U. Gualazzini proved that the sup­

27

posed notes of Giacomo Torresino reported in Count Cicognara's book had no foundation in fact. Earlier, Robert Steele had cast serious doubt on another story about playing cards in this book. Although erroneous, it is interesting to relate this story here, since it has all the marks of Dragoni's vivid imagination: In the Fibbia house (in Bologna) there is a large painting which shows the full-length portrait of an ancestor of that family, with the inscription: "Francesco Antelminelli Castracani Fibbia, Principe di Pisa, Montegiori, e Pietra Santa, e Signore di Fusecchio, son of Giovanni, a native of Castruccio, Duke of Lucca, Pistoja, Pisa, hav­ ing fled to Bologna and presented himself to Bentivogli, was made Generalissimo of the Bolognese armies, and was the first of this family, which was called in Bologna 'dalle Fibbie: He had to wife Francesca, daughter of Giovanni Bentivogli. Inventor of the game of Tarocchino in Bologna, he had from the XIV Reformatories of the city the privilege of placing the Fibbia arms on the Queen of Staves and those of his wife on the Queen of Coins. Born in the year 1360, died in the year 1419." Francesco stands next to a small table, and holds in his right hand a pack of cards from which some are falling. On the floor may be seen the two aforesaid Queens with their respective heraldic devices. 3

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Steele could find no evidence that such a painting had ever existed, or that cards with these two devices had been made. It was true, he said, that in 1700 Giuseppe Maria Mitelli had engraved a set of cards with the heraldic device of the Bentivoglio, a saw, on the Queen of Coins. But this was the nearest thing to truth in the whole story. With Count Cicognara and his sources so seriously in question, art historians began to look elsewhere for the painter of the cards. For a while it was believed that they were the work of the Zavattari brothers, who had painted the legend of Queen Teodolinda in what appeared to be somewhat the same style. As early as 1928, R. Longhi expressed the belief that the cards were the work of Bonifacio Bembo, but it is only in the last decade that Bembo has been generally accepted as their painter. 4 Even more confusing than the question of the artist's identity has been the correct identification of the cards by their original fifteenth­ century titles, which have been known to those who cared to look into the matter for the last sixty years." The titles given to the cards in many works on art history are so fantastic that one might think gremlins had

been at work, if one did not know that Italian art historians (and Italian scholars generally) seem to think that an interest in playing cards is beneath their dignity. Italian dictionaries often omit playing­ card terms, in much the same way as our English dictionaries omit the worst four-letter words. Or one might assume perhaps, that the terms are so taken for granted that it is expected that no one will ever need to look them up. Even the Enciclopedia italiana, which has valuable articles on games and cards, including a long explanation of the ritual to be observed in playing the different tarocco games, does not tell one how the games are played. Two other factors are involved in the mix-up concerning the correct identification of the cards. First, the cards were catalogued after they had been separated, and here too Count Cicognara's book was too closely followed. 6 Second, the cataloguing was done at a time when iconography was in complete eclipse, and art fanciers would cry "Shame!" at you if you wanted to know what a picture meant. You were supposed to be interested only in style, and not care whether you were looking at a picture of God or the Devil. Titles were tacked onto pictures simply as a convenience, rather like numbers on prisoners. It was felt that it did not really matter what you called a picture so long as it had some identifying title. This attitude has tended to obscure the remarkable completeness of the Visconti-Sforza set, and its equally remarkable similarity to the modern tarocco pack. Here are the errors in identification made in the original cataloguing of the trumps: The Juggler was called Castle of Plutus and the Empress, Queen of Staves, despite the fact that the set has another card which really is the Queen of Staves, with the long spindle-tipped staff of her suit. Time was a little more reasonably called the Hermit, for that is what he has become in the modern pack, but what seems so obviously his hourglass was described as a lantern. Justice was identified as the Queen of Swords, even though this showed a duplication of the actual Queen of Swords which is still part of the set. The World was called Castle of Pluto. Thus, according to this account, the set included only fifteen trumps corresponding to those of the modern pack, and two Castles of Plutus or Pluto. It had two Queens of Staves and two of Swords. To add to the confusion, somebody seems to have thought that the tarocchi., like our bridge cards, should have only three court cards to a suit. In accordance with this idea, we were told that the set had two

29

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Knights of Cups, although one is on foot and therefore most certainly a Page. 7 Our old friend Count Cicognara was responsible for some of this confusion too, and his source was one of the most fantastic pieces of iconotropy ever dreamed up by the human imagination. The authority he relied on was Antoine Court de Gebelin, a renowned scholar who was an acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin and greatly esteemed by the King of France. 8 The gist of Court de Gebelin's story is that some time in the last quar­ ter of the eighteenth century he happened to see some ladies playing a card game with tarot cards. In his part of France these cards were unusual, and he had not seen them since he was a boy. He was inter­ ested in ancient Egypt, and it suddenly struck him that he was seeing a sacred Egyptian book, brought into Europe by the Gypsies, to whom it had been entrusted by ancient Egyptian priests thousands of years ago. Their idea, he said, had been that the safest way to preserve their ancient wisdom would be to disguise it as a game, and to trust that some day a wise man of the future would be able to decipher it. And now the time had come! Intuitively, Court de Gebelin knew what wisdom had been hidden in what seemed a simple pack of cards! He spread the cards out on the table, and explained their hidden meaning to the astonished ladies. The trumps, he explained, should be read backwards, beginning from the highest. The first seven trumps represent the Golden Age: XXI Isis (the Universe), XX The Creation (not the last Judgment, as one might ignorantly think), XIX Creation of the Sun, XVIII Creation of the Moon and terrestrial animals, XVII Creation of the stars and fish, XVI The House of God overturned, with m~n and woman precipitated from the earthly Paradise, XV The Devil, bringing to an end the Golden Age. The next seven cards are for the Silver Age: XIV Temperance, XIII Death, XII Prudence (the cards Court de Gebelin had before him depicted a dancing Prudence instead of the Hanged Man), XI Force coming to the aid of Prudence, X The Wheel, IX Hermit seeking Jus­ tice, VIII Justice. The last group is for the Brazen Age: VII War (in the modern tarocco pack the triumphal car of Love has given way to a military chariot bearing an armed warrior), VI Man fluctuating be­ tween vice and virtue, V Jupiter (the tarot cards of Southern France usually show Jupiter and Juno instead of Pope and Popess), IV King, III Queen, II Pride (Juno and her peacock), I Juggler. 30

Court de Gebelin wrote an article about his findings, which he in­ cluded in one of the many volumes of his Monde pri11'litif. At once the mills of the flashier fortune-tellers and occultists began to grind, the story was further embroidered, and still remains with us today. It is fondly believed in by occultist and magical circles, although no modem Egyptologist has ever come forward to suppott it. 9 This then is the source from which Cicognara took his titles for the cards. He did moderate the wildest of Court de Gebelin's flights of fancy, but enough remained to throw the cataloguing of the cards into confusion. Here is Cicognara's list: Mondo, Giudizio, Sole, Luna, Li sette pianeti, II castello di Pluto, Tifone, Temperanza, Morte, Prudenza, Forza, Ruota della Fortuna, Saggio 0 Filosofo, Giustizia, Osiride, Matri­ monio, Jerofante (Papa), Re, Regina, Sacerdotessa 0 Papessa, Giocola­ tore, Matto.10 On casual examination and properly translated, this list is almost recognizable as a list of the trumps in the Visconti-Sforza set. Our Car has turned into Osiris, the missing Tower has become the Castle of Pluto, the Emperor and Empress have been demoted to King and Queen, and the Hanged Man rejoices in the name of Prudence. Still, there is a shadowy resemblance. You might do almost the same as the original cataloguers, given these names to fit to the cards on the author­ ityof a respected scholar. And let us say right here a word in defense of cataloguers. A cata­ loguer would be neglecting his primary work if he investigated any one item as if he were going to write a doctoral dissertation about it. The cataloguers who have described tarot cards in the past were cata­ loguing whole libraries, or at least whole collections of playing cards, and cards have yet to find a scholar who will do for them what Murray has done for chess. This has meant that cataloguers of playing cards have had no real authorities to depend on; they have had to use the second best. It was not their business to listen to and evaluate the faint voices of dissent, hidden away in the archives of local historical socie­ ties. Such voices have only lately mounted into the roar which has disposed of Cicognara as an authority on tarocchi. And it is no tragedy that through Count Cicognara the impression has spread, even beyond occultist circles, that there is something very ancient and mysterious about tarot cards. Even though they are not a sacred Egyptian book, there is a meaning in them as ancient as the mind of man and as mysteriously ambivalent as the figures of Carnival.

31

Our study, however, is more concerned with the surface meaning of this particular set of cards, made for Bianca or Francesco Sforza in the middle of the fifteenth century. What did they think the cards signified, and what ideas must they have associated with these pictures?

1 It is evident that Count Cicognara was followed in cataloguing the cards owned by the Morgan Library, for the titles given to the cards follow his list and repeat his statement that they were painted by Antonio Cicognara for Ascanio Sforza in 1484. The same authority must have been used at the Accademia Carrara, for there too we have a Castello di Pluto which can have come only from Cicognara. The biographical information about Count Cicognara is taken from a sales catalogue pasted in The New York Public Library's copy of Count Cicognara's Catalogo ragionato dei libri d'arte e d'antichita posseduti dal Conte Cicognara (Pisa, presso N. Capurro 1821, 2 vols). I did not think this point impor­ tant enough to follow any further, and offer the information on this flimsy authority for its entertainment value.

2 The supposed passage from the Chronicles of Cremona is in Cicognara (Memorie, p 158ff). The translation is mine.

3 Full bibliographical references for Novati, Gualazzini, and Steele will be found in the bibliography. See also Arte lombarda dai Visconti agli Sforza, p 84f. The Fibbia story is in Cicognara (Memorie, p 137f).

I,

For the ascription of the cards to the Zavattari see Arte lombarda dai Visconti agli Sforza, p 84, which cites as sources Venturi (Storia XII [i. e. VII] 278) and Toesca (Pittura, p 526-527). Arte lombarda ... dates the cards in the time of Duke Filippo Maria because of the motto "A bon droyt" which appears on the suit cards, on the ground that Sforza did not use the motto. However, it may be seen in Paris, Bib Nat, ms lot 8128 reproduced in Malaguzzi-Valeri (Corte) III 125 fig 123, and also in Storia di Milano VII 41), which is headed: "Divis principibus Francisco Sphortie et Blancae Mariae Vicecomitibus," and has all the devices used in our cards, including the three diamond rings. The ms is an address by Filelfo. We also have the statement in Assum (Francesco, p 367f) that the dove with this motto in its beak was one of the devices adopted by Sforza in 1450. For the dates when Bembo's name began to be widely accepted as the maker of the cards cf Arte lombarda ... P 84f. It was only in the 1950S that Salmi (Italian and "Nota") began to name Bembo confidently as their maker. As late as 1953 Berenson (Italian) listed Cicognara as maker of the later cards of the set, but was completely silent as to the maker of the earlier cards, listing neither Bembo nor the ZavaUari. 4

1p.e fifteenth-century list of the trumps is in Steele ("Notice," p 191), and Hargrave (History, p 227 and 387), Bertoni (Poesie, p 220) and two sheets of uncut cards (with numbers but no names) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, no 31.54.159 and 26.101.5 in its collection of prints, under the heading "Ornament. Playing cards. Italian (?) XV or XVI cent." In this set the World is an unnumbered card like the Fool. 5

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I conclude that the cards were catalogued after they had been separated because other­ wise we could hardly have had two Castles of Pluto, two Queens of Staves, and two Queens of Swords, and because I was told at the Morgan Library that they still had a list of the sources which were used in cataloguing the cards there, although I did not see this list. Panofsky (Meaning, p 324ff) shows how recent the whole profession of art his­ tory is. 6

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7 The Juggler was described as "16. The Castle of Plutus; or, The Tower. A wealthy miser sits upon a treasure chest; one hand rests upon a heap of money (?) (sometimes represented as a city in Heaven, the New Jerusalem)." - entry in card catalog of the Morgan Library, under "Tarot, Game of." In the same cntry (as of 1959 - no doubt these cards will be recatalogued as soon as the facts about them become absolutely cer­ tain, but no library wants to incur the expense of recataloguing until that happens) Time is described as "9. The Hermit; or, Philosopher (with lantern in hand he seeks in vain for truth or justice)," and the Hanged Man as "12. Prudence - A man hanged (sometimes represented by Nlercury poised on one foot" (here we see the influence of Court de Gebelin). The entry goes on: "14. Temperance - A woman mixing water and wine, in two vessels (opening the age of silver)" (Court de Gebelin again). The entry does not attempt to describe the actual Car of the set, but says simply "7. The Car (gen­ erally represented as Osiris in his triumphal car, the symbol of war in the agc of bronze" (so much for the Queen of Love and Beauty! ). This all seems very queer, yet as we have seen in Panofsky's Meaning, the science of art history is so young that it was advanced of the Morgan Library to make any attempt at all at an iconography of the cards, and indeed Panofsky tells us that Mr Morgan was one of the collectors who fostered the young science.

8 For Court de Gebelin and Benjamin Franklin see Frank E. Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (Cambridge, Harvard Univ Press, 1959) P 250. I have stretched the truth just a little bit in saying the King esteemed him highly; all I how is that the King was one of the subscribers to his Monde primitif. cf Burdette C. Poland, French Protestantism and the French Revolution (Princeton 1957) 70, 229-230. Court de Gebelin tells the story of his "discovery" in his Monde primitif (VIII 367). At the end of the same volume are plates showing thc tarot trumps as he knew them.

The best and most amusing account of the growth of occult Tarotism is in Arthur E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, pt 1, section 4: "The Tarot in History." A plagiar­ ized edition of this book has long been current in the U. S. as "The Illustrated Key to the Tarot, by L. W. de Laurence," but a reprint of the original edition, illustrated for the first timc in four colors from Pamela Colman Smith's designs, has recently been pub­ lished by University Books.

9

10 Cicognara's list of the trumps is in his Memorie, p 131-134. It is evident that he accepts them more out of indifference than gullibility. A strange sidelight on the Cicognara mix-up is a set of thirteen cards all at one time owned by Mr Piero Tozzi of Ncw York, who still has some of them. He believes they are part of an extra sct made at thc same time, and by the same artist, as am set. Unfortu­ nately, one of these cards, in the style now recognized as Bembo's, bears the conspicuous initials "A. C." (for Antonio Cicognara?). These thirteen cards were described in Con­ noisseur (March 1954, p 54-60) and reproduced there in color. I am grateful to Mr Tozzi

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for allowing me to see these cards, one of which shows the Visconti serpent and, Mr Tozzi tells me, may have been meant as an extra joker, or substitute card. It would be interesting to know whether the "A. C." was added some time after 1831 to clinch the ascription to Cicognara, or whether the cards themselves were painted after that time. In any case they are very interesting and valuable, as mementos of this whole affair.

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3 THE FAMILY FOR WHOM THE CARDS WERE MADE

THE SCENES represented in the tarocchi reflect the tenor of the time in history when they attained a peak of popularity. A brief glance into this era seems an appropriate introduction to the Visconti-Sforza family for whom this particular set of cards was made. Preachers have never liked playing cards, and it can be said that the story the cards tell is very much opposed to the basic tenets of Chris­ tianity. However, it is not an unfamiliar story at all. It is the story of our own world, this world of which, we are told, the Devil is the Prince, the same world that existed in the late Middle Ages. With a little imagination one can see that each of the four ordinary suits in any pack of cards is a company of knights ready for one of the jousts or tourneys which were the favorite sports of medieval Europe. Each knight wears the heraldic device of his own company, but "differ­ enced" by number, according to his rank. At the head of each company is its King-of-arms, its Queen of Love and Beauty, and its chief Knight. In the tarocchi and minchiate (another variety of tarot cards), there is also a Page. With more imagination one can see that each of these four companies of knights is devoted to one of the cardinal virtues and wears its device: the sword representing Justice, the cup of Temperance, the staff or column of Fortitude, and the coin or mirror of Prudence. l In northern Europe these suits became known as spades, hearts, clubs, and dia­ monds, respectively. "Is it so devilish then," you may ask, "for knights to go forth to battle on behalf of Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence? Isn't this the ideal of chivalry on which Christendom depended for its very existence?" Maurice Samuel, in his book The Gentleman and the Jew, tells how the same question presented itself to him, and how it was answered.

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His parents had corne from Roumania to England, and he grew up learning Jewish ideals from his parents and his Rabbi. At the same time he was introduced to the chivalric ideals of "cricket" through the Eng­ lish boys' books and magazines he read. "Cricket" summed up all the English ideals of fair play, honesty, courage, and loyalty to king and country. He did not then know that this philosophy came indirectly from Castiglione's The Courtier, which adapted the classical Greek ideals to the Renaissance way of life. He thought it was the typical Christian ideal, and assumed that Christian church services must express it in a wonderfully intense way. How surprised he was when he attended a Christian church service for the first time. "I was utterly confounded," he writes, "by the sermon preached from the pulpit. ... The sermon, in which the name of Jesus appeared and reappeared with - to me - terrifying frequency, had nothing whatsoever to do, in spirit or in substance, with that gay, mag­ nanimous, adventurous and gamesome world which I had come to hear glorified. It did not proclaim, in new and unimaginably attractive phrases, the cosmic rightness of the life of Greyfriars, The Revenge, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and the cricket team. In a most un­ believable way it rehearsed what I had been learning in chederl It appeared that among the Christians, too, the meek and' the humble were blessed. It appeared that when someone hit you, you did not answer laughingly with a straight left, and you did not invite your friends to stand around in a circle while you carried on with the Mar­ quis of Queensbury rules. Not a bit of it! You turned the other cheekl ... It appeared that the peacemakers, not the soldiers, not the manly, laughing killers, were the blessed." 2 Even in the fifteenth century people must have known in their hearts that this was true. Or else why were the delights of the joust and the tourney kept for the festival times, when religion was forgotten or at least temporarily in the background? On the weekdays of the Lenten season, when Christian laymen worked at their religion and practiced special acts of humility and self-denial, some pious attention was given to the fact that hardly any virtue is fostered by going out and knocking a man down. During the rest of the year, however, the knightly com­ bats, and the processions of knights which preceded them, held the same place in the popular mind of that day as baseball and football in ours. We may come a little closer to feeling the attractiveness of the chivalrous sports if we compare them to the bullfight, where the gallant

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torero seeks the same kind of glory, through the exhibition of his skill and courage, as did the fifteenth-century knight. 3 It was from the chivalrous culture personified by the crusading knight as the defender of the Church that the arts of the later Renais­ sance flourished: the sentimentalism of courtly love with its poetry and song, the ostentatious pageant, the chivalrous romance of knight and fair lady. The writers of chivalrous literature knew well enough that their work was baSically un-Christian. Thus we find Chaucer repenting in his Persones Tale that he had written his "endytinges of worldly vanitees," among which he names his Troilus and "the tales of Canter­ bury, thilke that sounen in-to sinne." St Theresa of Avila, too, lamented the evil effects of her girlhood habit of romance reading, which she caught from her mother. "So completely was I mastered by this pas­ sion," she writes, "that I thought I could never be happy without a new book." This craze for romantic tales of chivalry undoubtedly came to Avila by way of Milan and Ferrara, at whose gay courts these books were as popular as the playing-cards which reflected them. Such stories particularly appealed to the womanly mind, and St Theresa's father was probably not the only male who disapproved of them. She reports that they annoyed her father so much that she and her female relatives had to be careful that he never saw them reading such literature. 4 This is not said in utter condemnation of the chivalrous tradition. In many ways the awakening of a love for poetry, art, and romance quick­ ened Christianity itself to a new life. As much as people loved their romances, their cards, and their tourneys, they realized inwardly that these pleasures were not quite in keeping with the devout life. After a gay and exhausting Carnival, the exuberant Italians really welcomed Lent as a chance to rest from the festive season and to prove to them­ selves that they were really Christians at heart. They brought their vanities (including their playing-cards) to be burned in the bonfires at the beginning of Lent with an honest spirit of aspiring to sanctity. Though, human nature being what it is, the fasting gradually became wearisome, and they were soon glad to pull a feather from the sym­ bolic figure of Lent at the end of each week - until Holy Saturday, when it was completely plucked. There is an ironic twist in this love of chivalry. Knightly exploits were the favorite sports of the upper classes, but the task of conducting actual wadare was given to the hired soldier, the condottiere with his paid army, who carried on the grim business of waging wars.

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Francesco Sforza, the fourth Duke of Milan and the original owner of the cards we are examining, had been one of these condottieri like his father before him, Muzio Attendolo. When Muzio Attendolo died, his nickname "Sforza" was made the hereditary surname of the family by Queen Joanna II of Naples. 5 The story is told that Muzio Attendolo was chopping wood near his home town of Cotignola, when a troop of hired soldiers rode past. "Why don't you come with us?" they called to him. He aimed his axe at a nearby tree, and as he threw it replied, "If it stays, I'll go!" The axe stuck in the tree, and Muzio joined the soldiers. So began the career which led him to become a condottiere. His military exploits won for him the respect of the rulers who employed him. In addition to financial rewards, he received the right to the several heraldic devices which together form what is known in heraldry as the "achievement" of the Sforza family. The first of these was the quince (in Ialian cotigna), given him by the anti-pope John XXIII in recognition of his rank as Count of Cotignola. He continued to use this device even when John withdrew it, somewhat as King Henry VIII of England, under similar circumstances, kept the papal title "Defender of the Faith." 6 At a later date, Rupert III, King of the Romans, gave him the right to bear on his shield a lion rampant, holding the quince in its left paw, while it challenged all comers with its right. The Sforza helmet, a winged dragon with a man's head, formed the crest. In 1409 the Mar­ quis of Este added a diamond ring, in recognition of Muzio's triumph over the tyrant of Parma, Ottobuono Terzo. The Sforza achievement is sometimes shown with the diamond ring repeated many times, either as a whole chain of rings, or as a separate ring at the tip of each rib in the dragon's bat-like wings. Muzio's son, Francesco Sforza, eventually adopted three interlaced diamond rings as his impresa. Muzio Attendolo maintained his army in a state of iron discipline. Cursing and gambling were forbidden in his camp. The soldier who failed to keep his gear in perfect order was Hogged, and the thief or traitor was put to death. Despite his sternness, the men in Muzio's army were proud to serve under him, and grieved when he died tragically in the year 1424. His favorite page had tumbled into a rapid stream, and Muzio dived in to save him. The current was too strong, and both were swept out to their deaths in the sea before anyone could save them. 7

On July 23 1401 a son had been born to Muzio in Florence. The romantic mysticism of the age is typified in this story of the dream his mother, Lucia, had before his birth. She dreamt that she was in a beau­ tiful house where there was a long and steep flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs was a painting of the Madonna with the Holy Child in her arms. The child had a golden apple in his hand. Suddenly the Madonna came to life, and the Holy Child threw into Lucia's bosom the golden apple which became her son Francesco. 8 Under his father's training Francesco became a first-rate condottiere. In addition, he had some of the talents of a civil ruler, and by trial and error learned how to exercise those talents. As he learned, his desire to rule increased, and he was understandably eager for the chance to prove his ability. His feeling was rather like that of a man seeing some­ one try to disentangle a snarl of string while his own fingers itch with the knowledge that they can do it better. Francesco Sforza finally realized his ambitions when he became the fourth Duke of Milan in 1450. The third Duke, Filippo Maria Visconti, had no male issue. Francesco knew that the man who married Filippo's only child, Bianca Maria, would have some claim to the ducal throne, slight though the claim might be. Helped by his friend Cosimo de' Medici of Florence, Francesco prevailed on the Duke to give him his daughter's hand. In 1430 the Duke promised her to him and gave Sforza the right to use the surname Visconti. From that time on we find Sforza signing himself "Franciscus Sfortia (or Sphortia) Vicecomes." The splendid betrothal ceremony of Bianca and Francesco was celebrated on February 23 1432 in the Castello di Porta Giovia. Nine years later they were married in the Church of St Sigismund in Cremona. He was forty years of age and she seventeen. Despite the great difference in age, they seem to have been a congenial enough couple, if one may judge from their portraits. One knows froin history that the daughters of rulers never in their wildest dreams expected to marry for love, and a great lady knew how to be discreet about her love affairs. In this case, Bianca with her warm Milanese heart and Francesco with the sense of humor of a good soldier and ruler in all probability got along together well enough. Six years after their marriage Duke Filippo died, and the citizens of Milan set up what they called the Golden Ambrosian Republic, and tried to resume the parliamentary government of two centuries earlier. This attempt at self-government was doomed to failure from the start.

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The centuries had sapped the democratic powers of the Milanese, and, as a further drain on their strength, Milan was at war with Venice. Several of the subject-cities of Milan immediately declared their own independence. We find later evidence of our painter, Bonifacio Bembo, reminding Sforza that he had done and said much to keep the city of Cremona on Sforza's side during the eventful year of 1447. At first Francesco Sforza continued to serve Milan as its condottiere. He did not, however, give up his ducal aspirations, and finally the turn of events left him free to fight for his own cause without loss of honor. A detailed account of the force and counter-forces at work is out of place here. Suffice it to say that the rulers of Milan, the twenty-four elected Captains and Defenders of the «Golden Ambrosian" republic were their own worst enemies. Their blind political hysteria led them to bring about a reign of terror within the city walls. People who spoke against their regime were put to death, and those who were seen talk­ ing together in groups had to prove they were innocent of any crime against the republic. Sforza took advantage of this folly and the inter­ nal dissension by besieging the city until it was reduced to a state of famine. In the meantime he demonstrated his fairness and political ability in the surrounding cities, whcih he conquered one· by one and ruled to the advantage of their citizens. The outcome was inevitable. There was a desperate uprising in Milan. The Captains and Defenders were overthrown, and the excited citizens sent an emissary to invite Sforza to be their Duke. As he had foreseen, his marriage was a factor in securing the dukedom. The Milanese were able to save their self­ respect by reminding themselves that they freely chose as their ruler the husband of their fellow-citizen Bianca Visconti. Duke Francesco ruled Milan well for the remaining sixteen years of his life. He continued the Visconti tradition, dating back at least to the time of Petrarch, of encouraging scholars and artists, including the dis­ tinguished scholar Francesco Filelfo. Filelfo planned an epic poem on the life of Duke Francesco, to be called the Sforziad, but the project was never finished. Unfortunately, Francesco had no more success than his friend Cosimo de' Medici in training his sons to be good rulers. Cosimo's son Lorenzo de' Medici, Galeazzo Maria Sforza and his brother, Lodovico «n Moro," were more interested in the enjoyment of pleasure than in work. However, in their time the brilliance of the court of Milan in­ creased. In fact, Lodovico's patronage of Leonardo da Vinci and

Bramante marked the high point of the Italian Renaissance. But the days of the Sforza Dukes were numbered. In 1499 Milan was taken by the French, and Lodovico Sforza spent the few remaining years of his life as their prisoner. We have come a long way from the imaginary knights which make up the suit cards of the tarocchi, through the factual story of the family for whom the cards were made. But before we go on to the trump cards there is one more question to consider. Why are there fifty-six suit cards, and why are there twenty-one trumps? The answer is found when we remember that cards, as a game of chance, replaced dice almost completely. In the dice games which use three dice, there are fifty-six possible throws, and with two dice twenty-one. There are other, more fanciful, considerations which make these numbers suitable. Twenty-one is a triangular number with a base of six that is, 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 21. Fifty-six is a pyramidal number with a base of twenty-one (a pyramid of fifty-six balls may be raised with the former triangle of twenty-one as its base). Add the "wild" Fool to get seventy-eight cards and you have another triangular number with a base of twelve. Take away the Fool and you have the product of seven and eleven, those numbers symbolical of luck and dear to the dice player. 9

1 Justice was usually represented as a figure with scales and a sword, Temperance as pouring liquid from one vessel into another, Fortitude with a staff or a broken column, and Prudence with a mirror by means of which she can look behind her (coins as a sym­ bol of Prudence are rarer). The virtues are often mentioned in relation to the Visconti and Sforza, for one of their titles was "Conte di Virtu." At the death of Giangaleazzo Visconti the virtues were represented as mourning him as their lord: "0 chiara luce, 0 specchio, 0 colonna, 0 sostegno, 0 franca spada, che la nostra contrada mantenevi sicura in monte e in piano!" (Arch stor lomb, anno XVIIl p 792.) For "mirrors" and "columns" as names for the suits of coins and staves see Chatto (Facts, p 53). His authority is Innocentio Ringhieri, Cento giuochi liberali et d'ingegno (Bologna 1551) P 132. The quotation from Maurice Samuel's The Gentleman and the Jew (New York, Knopf, 1950, p 20ff) is made by permission of the publisher.

2

3 Hauser (Social, p 125) explains the high esteem in which war and hunting were held at this time, by showing that war and hunting involve skill and courage, whereas peace­ time occupations need only patience, and are therefore despised and relegated to slaves.

See Hauser (Social, p 197-310) for chivalry as the ground of Renaissance art. Huizinga ( Waning, ch IV-X) gives the same impression. Chaucer's repentance is in the last section

4

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of "The Persones Tale" at the end of The Canterbury Tales. St Teresa's is in The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus . .. Written by Herself (London, T. Baker, 1924) p 7. 5 The biographical sketch of Sforza is based mostly on Assum (Francesco). For the change of surname from Attendolo to Sforza see p 12.

6 The legend of the axe is from Ady (History p 2). For the heraldic achievement see Litta Famiglie, vol 1, pt 1). For Muzio and the anti-Pope see notes for the trump II Traditore, XII.

7 The discipline of Muzio's army and the story of his death are from Ady (History p 10). 8 Lucia's dream of the golden apple is from Assum (Francesco p 12). The rest of the historical material in this chapter is also either from Assum or Ady, except Bembo's claim to early partisanship of Sforza, which is from Baroni (Pittura p 107).

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9 It was Professor Maurice G. Kendall who pointed out to me that fifty-six is the number of throws with three dice. See Kendall ("Studies" p 1-14). He mentions the dice game of flfty-six throws which Bishop Wibold recommended to his clergy as a spiritual exercise in the year 970. Burckhardt (Civilization, p 409) mistakenly refers to this as a game of cards. The original source is Mon Germ SS. vii, p 433. The Chinese have special names for the twenty-one throws of two dice, just as we do. See British Museum (Catalogue . .. Lady Schreiber p 185) for a list of these names, which seem to be based on the picture made by the Chinese numerals, e. g. 2-2 which looks like this in Chinese: = =, is called "The bench." The term "triangular number" and "pyramidal number" are used in mathe­ matical works of reference. Robert Graves, in his Nazarene Gospel Restored, refers to a triangular number as the "Philonian fulfilment" of its base; e. g. twenty-one is the Phi­ Ionian fulfilment of six. For seven and eleven as symbolical of sin see Hopper (Medieval) p 24, 87, and 152 (Dante took over eleven as the basis for the dimensions of Hell). In the Morgante of Pulci the giant Margutte boasts of having seventy-seven mortal sins. The trumps plus the Fool (twenty-two cards) faintly suggest the ancient "pi" formula, which was twenty-two divided by seven (The White Goddess, by Robert Graves, New York, Creative Age Press, 1948, p 191). This seemed too far-fetched to mention in the text.

4 TRIUMPHS AND THE GAME OF TRIUMPHS

THE TRIUMPH, Joan Evans tells us in her book Pattern (II 14), was to the Renaissance what the sacrament had been to the Middle Ages. In Italy, this type of procession was so popular that it actually hindered the development of the drama. 1 The triumph had three ancestors: the ancient Roman triumph cele­ brated to honor a victorious military hero, the medieval religious pro­ cession, and the processions of knights traditionally held in connection with jousts and tourneys. The Renaissance interest in the Greek and Roman classics revived interest in the Roman triumph. History tells us that the Roman triumph originated in Etruria, which became the modem Tuscany in which Florence lies. It seems natural, therefore, that the Renaissance triumph was a special feature of festivals at Florence. 2 In Milan, the religious processions very early took on the dramatic quality of the triumph. At Epiphany, for example, the story of the Magi was acted out in a procession which used the whole city for a stage. 3 The three Kings from the East rode into the city on fine horses, pre­ ceded by a long cortege. Trumpets were blown. Apes, baboons, and other animals were to be seen in the procession, no doubt destined to be offered to the Holy Child as gifts, along with the gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Directly ahead of the Kings a golden star moved through the air, supported on a nearly invisible wire. At the columns of St Lawrence, Herod and his scribes appeared in effigy, as a reminder of the conference between them and the three Kings. From there the pro­ cession moved on to the Church of St Eustorgius, where the Kings worshipped before the image of the Christ Child in His Mother's arms. After that they lay down to sleep, and a winged angel Hew down (assisted by a cable) to warn them not to go back the way they had come, but to leave through the Roman Gate of the city.

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A procession such as this, with the gradual addition of more and more sideshows, could easily turn into the procession of triumphal cars so popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was the knights' processions which contributed to the triumph the exciting feature of rows of mounted men and footmen, all dressed alike, who marched before each triumphal car. Giorgio Vasari wrote that, in his opinion, it was the Florentine painter, Piero di Cosimo, who first adapted Carnival maskings to the character of a triumph, or at least that it was he who brought them to perfection, by introducing the long trains of men all dressed to suit the character of a particular triumph. At night this made a most impressive sight. The marchers carried lighted torches which were reflected in the rich caparisons of the horses and the splendid dress of their riders. Each cavalier was attended by six or eight men, also mounted, dressed alike, and carry­ ing torches. A triumphal car may have had as many as four hundred attendants. 4 Sometimes, instead of passing through the streets, a procession would go around the great courtyard of a palace while the spectators sat at the windows. It was then called a carrousel. Today our amusement park merry-go-rounds still have triumphal "cars" and horses for the "knights" - and are often called carrousels. The Visconti and Sforza families, like the Medici of Florence, loved these elaborate processions. The first Sforza duke had refused a tri­ umphal entry into Milan, but his descendants made up for it. Again and again in the art of their time it is a Sforza we see pictured on a triumphal car, from Battista Sforza, Duchess of Urbino, in Piero della Francesca's painting, to Bianca Maria Sforza, the Empress, in Jorg Kolderer's series of miniature paintings, "The Triumphs of Maximilian." Ii When Costanzo Sforza married Camilla D'Aragona in 1475, the occasion was celebrated by the performance of a Triumph of Fame, with Fame sitting in a car upon a great globe, surrounded by heroes: Scipio, Alexander, and Caesar. When the bride made her solemn entrance into the city of Pesaro, she was greeted by a Triumph of Chastity. The figure of Chastity was clothed in silver, and carried a golden palm-branch in her hand. Another car carrying six ladies who represented great heroines of purity followed the triumphal car. They were all clothed in white and carried lilies. At the end of a two-day celebration in the castle, with splendid banquets and congratulatory

44

recitations, a confectionery piece representing this same triumph of Chastity was offered to the newlyweds. 6 In the summer of 1481, when Catherine Sforza and her husband Girolamo Riario entered Forli, they passed through triumphal arches in streets hung with splendid tapestries . .They were met by crowds of young men in white, carrying palm-branches, and a car filled with children who addressed them in song. Bands of music played while the bells of the city rang joyfully. Catherine's horse was caparisoned in cloth of silver embroidered with pearls, and the noble pair were accom­ panied by a group of noblemen dressed in white and gold, who carried a canopy over their heads. Here we have all the magnificence of the triumph, without the characteristic triumphal car or its allegorical figures.7 Chastity as the subject of a triumph was derived from Petrarch's famous poem, I Trion-fi, 8 the main outline of which supplied themes for decorative art and triumphal processions, and finally for the game of triumphs played with the tarocchi. There were six triumphs in I Trion-fi. First was the triumph of Cupid over gods and men, even over the great god Jove, and Petrarch too, who was lovesick for his Laura. When artists illustrated this triumph 9 they showed Cupid on a great car drawn by white horses, aiming darts or arrows at the lovers who are the unhappy captives accompanying his triumph. The second triumph is that of Chastity, which celebrates Laura's refusal of Petrarch's love. The tradition of courtly love required the lover to choose a married woman for the object of his affections, and the lady to remain coldly aloof. Chastity is a silver-clad figure with ermine on her banner, who rides on a car drawn by unicorns and overcomes fickle Fortune. Fortune appears in the illustrations sometimes as a figure standing on a ball and carrying a sail, mmetimes simply as a storm at sea. Chastity's chief captive is Cupid himself, for the basic formula in a series of triumphs is that the leading figure in each becomes the chief captive or victim of the triumph which follows. In tapestries we some­ times see the victim lying beneath the wheels of the next triumphal car, but Cupid does not suffer this fate . Instead, he sits on the front of Chastity's car with his bow broken and his hands bound behind his back. Petrarch's Laura died in the Black Death, and the third triumph in his poem is the triumph of Death. Death, in the fonn of a skeleton, rides on a car drawn by black oxen. But Death in tum falls victim to Laura's fame, and the personified Fame rides in a car drawn by ele­

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phants, blowing her own many-mouthed trumpet. Time brings oblivion even to great fame, and so the next car, drawn by stags, carries Time, old, leaning on crutches and holding an hourglass. The happy ending comes with the triumph of Eternity, in which Petrarch and Laura are to enjoy everlasting bliss. The illustrators show this as an image of the Holy Trinity, mounted on a car drawn by the "four living creatures" which are symbols of the four Gospels: a man, an eagle, a lion, and an ox. In the ~ky appear the chief captives of this triumph, the Sun and Moon, representatives of the Time which they measure. They are no longer necessary in the full light of Eternity. That is why the last of modern tarocchi trumps has the four living crea­ tures in its four corners, and the Star, the Moon, and the Sun are three of the highest tarocchi trumps. The ludus triumphorum, or game of triumphs, had several variations before it became fixed as the game played with twenty-one triumphs and a Fool which we find condemned in sermons of the fifteenth cen­ tury. (In calling them "triumphs" we are using the English word of which "trump" is a variant form; in Italian the same word, "trionfo," is used both for triumphs and for trumps.) The earliest game of triumphs may have been the sixteen-card set which is thought to have been painted for the third Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti, by Mich­ elino da Besozzo. In this set there were four groups of triumphs, with four cards in each group. The lowest was the triumph of the Virtues: Jupiter, Apollo, Mercury, Hercules. Next was the triumph of Riches represented by Juno, Neptune, Mars, Aeolus. Then the Virginities: Chastity (Pallas), Diana, Vesta, Daphne. Finally came the Pleasures: Venus, Bacchus, Ceres, and Cupid, with Cupid triumphing over all. The plot of this grouping of triumphs may have been suggested by an ironic passage in the Divinae Institutiones of Lactantius, one of the ante-Nicene Church Fathers.10 Sometimes it is difficult to conclude whether a series of triumphs is simply a set of pictures, or whether it is a set of playing cards. The so­ called "Tarot of Mantegna," for example, is a set of five triumphs with ten cards in each but so large and thin that one wonders if they should be called "cards" at all. Another set obviously not a card game is Kold­ erer's "Triumphs of Maximilian," boasting of that emperor's achieve­ ments and possessions,u The modern minchiate cards of Florence have thirty-five numbered trumps and six unnumbered "wild" cards, which originally must have

been the "game of the triumphs of Petrarch" which we find listed in the Rosselli inventory. All six of Petrarch's triumphs are clearly to be seen in the minchiate trumps. They show Cupid and his captives, as in the tarocchi, but with more respectable captives than the Pope and Popess; then the triumph of Chastity accompanied by Temperance, Fortitude, Justice, and her captive, Fortune. The triumphs of Death and Time are the same as in the tarocchi, except that the Hanged Man has a pair of money bags, and Time has not been changed into the Hermit of the modern tarocchi. The triumph of Fame is represented by the virtues Hope, Prudence, Faith, and Charity, each wearing Fame's curious aureole. The triumph of Time also appears in the cards representing each of the four elements and the twelve signs of the zodiac. In the six unnumbered cards appears the triumph of Eternity: the Star of the Magi, the Sun and Moon (for some odd reason the Sun ranks below the Moon in the minchiate), the World, the Angel (blowing Fame's many­ mouthed trumpet, and sometimes actually going by her name, "La Renommee"), and the Fool.12 Often there was a sentimental softening of Peh'arch's story when its theme was used in decoration, making it the story of Everyman rather than the specific story of Petrarch's love for Laura. We find this as far away from Italy as England, where Sir Thomas More's father had on his walls the "pageants" of Childhood, Manhood, Venus and Cupid, Age, Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity. Wedding chests, too, were fre­ quently decorated with a selection made from the six triumphs, only those most appropriate for the occasion being depicted. 13 Shakespeare's comedy, Love's Labour's Lost, opens with lines which refer to the last four triumphs: Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,

Live registered upon our brazen tombs,

And then grace us in the disgrace of death;

When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,

The endeavour of this present breath may buy

That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge,

And make us heirs of all eternity,

The other triumphs were omitted - perhaps designedly, for in this play the speaker of these lines is suggesting to his audience such a womanless life that even Chastity would be out of place, and much more Cupid.

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The tarocchi trumps are not so much a softening of the Petrarch story as they are a ribald take-off. Perhaps because, in the merry mood of Carnival, everything possible was done to make fun of the solemn story. Two of the great Cardinal Virtues are, in the tarocchi, taken out of context and made to accompany Cupid with obviously sexual and scatological reference ("inter urinas et faeces nascimur"). The Pope is given a mate, but those who wish may take the Pope and Popess for Jupiter and Juno. Chastity is banished in favor of her enemy, Fortune. Time is reduced to being an attendant of Death, and Fame is forgotten. Most impudent of all, Eternity is put on a level with the other triumphs, instead of being unnumbered and so left "out of this world" as in the minchiate pack. Undoubtedly it was this audacity and irreverence that made the tarocchi trumps so popular, in fact the game of triumphs par excellence. The story told by the tarocchi trumps is a basic human story, and it is not surprising to find chapter headings in a recent Freudian study of history that might have been suggested by the trumps, although there is nothing to show that the author is acquainted with them: "The Problem. - Eros. - Death. - Sublimation. - Studies in Anality [much concerned with the Devil]. - The Way Out; the Resurrection of the Body." 14 Today the names of the more auspicious trumps are favorite names for magazines and newspapers: Fortune, Time, The Sun, The World. There is even a magazine which goes by the name of Eros, Cupid's Greek name. Since the tarocchi included such universally favorite themes, it is no wonder that they attracted much interest, particularly after Time began to triumph over the Fame of Petrarch himself and his original story was forgotten. Even as early as 1550 an invective against playing cards entitled Il Traditor could ask: "What does the Popess mean, the Car and the Traitor, the Wheel, the Fool, the Star, the Sun, Strength, Death, and Hell?" 15 Boiardo, who wrote his Orlando Innamorato less than fifty years after the Visconti-Sforza tarot cards were painted, shows more understand­ ing of their meaning. He wrote a set of verses, two sonnets and seventy­ eight terzine (one for each of the tarocchi), which were a fanciful design for a proposed new set. The suit signs were to be darts (for Love), vases (for Hope), eyes (for Jealousy), and whips (for Fear). It was customary in his time to think of the court cards in each suit as having a personal name. For his fancied set they were to be: in the suit

of Love, Polyphemus for the Page, because he loved Galatea; Paris for Knight, because of his love for Helen of Troy; Venus for Queen, pic­ tured in a car drawn by swans, as she is shown on a wall of the Schif­ anoia Palace at Ferrara. Jupiter would be King. In the suit of Hope, Horatius Codes, noted for his bravery, would be Page; Jason, Knight; Judith of Bethulia, Queen; and Aeneas, King, because of the hope which sustained him in his journey from Troy to Italy. Hundred-eyed ATgus would be Page in the suit of Jealousy; the Knight, Turnus, rival of Aeneas for the hand of Lavinia; the Queen, Juno, to be shown rid­ ing in a car drawn by peacocks, whose many-eyed tails are a symbol of watchful jealousy. Juno's jealousy of the amorous Jupiter was prover­ bial. The King of this suit would be Vulcan, jealous of Mars's success with his wife Venus. In the suit of Fear the court cards are to be Phineus, Ptolemy, Andromeda, and Dionysius, all unhappy victims of this emotion. 16 In listing his proposed trumps Boiardo starts with the Matto, the Fool, who stands for "the world, by madmen vainly loved." The Fool is to be dressed very gaily in red and yellow adorned with bells, and is to be shown riding on an ass. Here is the first evidence of the tendency of the Fool to usurp the place of the first, which we shall consider later. A complete list of Boiardo's proposed trumps follows: I Idleness ( Sardanapalus ), II Labor (Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons), III Desire (Actaeon), IV Reason (Petrarch's Laura, with her ermine ban­ ner of Chastity and Cupid as her captive), V Secrecy (Antiochus), VI Grace (the three Graces), VII Disdain (King Herod, who killed his beloved Mariamne "per sdegno"), VIII Patience (Psyche), IX Error (depicted by Jacob, who found he was in error in thinking he had won Rachel through seven years' labor), X Perseverance (Penelope), XI Doubt (King Aegeus, who was in doubt about the return of his son Theseus from Crete), XII Faith (Sophonisba), XIII Deception (Nes­ sus), XIV Wisdom (Hypermnestra), XV Chance (Pompey), XVI Mod­ esty (Emilia, Scipio's wife), XVII Peril (Julius Caesar), XVIII Expe­ rience (Rhea, mother of Jove), XIX Time (Nestor), XX Oblivion (Dido), XXI Strength of mind (Lucretia, who killed herself because her honor had been violated). Boiardo's writing also gives some rules for playing the game. The pip cards of the good suits, Love and Hope, are to rank from ten as high card to ace as lowest. In the bad suits (Fear and Jealousy) the order is to be reversed "because more love and more hope are better

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than less, and less jealousy and fear are better than more." After the play for tricks the players score the number of points they have made in the good suits, and subtract from this the pOints they have in the bad suits. The player who has the best score has the right to impose a forfeit on the one with the lowest. In these rules there is a kind of gal­ lant reversal of the actual rules, for Boiardo's vases are certainly femi­ nine symbols, yet he equalizes this suit of Hope with the masculine suits of Swords and Staves in the existing tarocchi. In French literature of the Renaissance the best known mention of the tarot is in Rabelais' Five Books of Gargantua and Pantagruel, where tarot is listed as one of the games played by Gargantua, and is signifi­ cantly missing from the list of the various means of divination used by him. However, we know that cards were used for fortune-telling in Renaissance times. The method was based on the older system of for­ tune-telling with dice, and involved only one of the ordinary suits ­ never the tarocchi trumps. Yet one seldom or never finds cartomancy listed as one of the serious methods of divination used during the Renaissance. 17 Further reference to the tarot is found in this curious riddle which appears in a French translation of Straparola's Facetious Nights, although it is nowhere in the original Italian work: Ce guerrier indompte, hardy, victorieux,

Et qui, tousjours vainqueur, triomphe en toute guerre,

Sera d'un coustelas mort renverse par terre,

Et son regne detruict, jadis tant glorieux.

Apres, pour un vieillard, 0 cruaute des cieux!

L'homicide poison secrettement s'enserre

Dans une couppe d'or au d'argent au de verre,

Dont en fin il mourra dolent et soucieux.

Mais Ie ciel pour cela n'apaisera son ire,

Car avec un baston, au premier de l'empire

Peu apres l'on verra rompre et briser Ie chef.

Ce faict, pour peu d'argent la fortune ennemie

Le monde accablera, puis taus reprendront vie

Tant grands comme petits, pour mourir de rechef.

The story goes on to say that this riddle was heard with great won­ der, and no one could think what it might mean. Then the gentleman

who had posed it revealed that the answer was nothing other than the game of tarot. Although this solution was apparently received without comment by the rest of his companions, the riddle seems rather obscure. It is true that each of the four stanzas contains the name of one of the four suits ("coustelas," "couppe," "baston," "argent")' and here and there some of the bumps seem to be hinted at. Beyond that, one can only guess at what seems to be a likely explanation. It is possible that the first stanza refers to an undaunted warrior who loses a trick in swords, and the second to an old man who loses in cups. In the third a great man loses a trick in staves, and in the last someone is able to trump because he has no cards of the suit led, which was coins. Here all the characters of the card world come to life, only to die once more. This is rather like the imaginative parables about the game of chess, where all the pieces "die" and are put away in their bag at the end of the game. lS We have seen that the trumps of our cards are visual representations of the popular triumphs of the fifteenth century, and that they were originally a separate game, based on the story of the three triumphs of Cupid, Death, and Eternity. Now we will look more particularly at the two characters in the triumphal procession who are the most important of them all in their relationship to the tarocchi.

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1 For the hindrance to the drama see Burckhardt (Civilization p 407). 2 For triumphs in general see Burckhardt (Civilization pt V ch 8). For the processions of knights see Evans (Pattern I 108) and Bacon (Selected), essay 37: "Of Masques and Triumphs." His essay 45: "Of Building," should also be read, for it explains why palaces built during the Renaissance have their great halls "for feasts and triumphs." For the Etruscan origin of the triumph see Beard (History p 23).

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3 For the Epiphany procession at Milan see Vianello (Teatro p 18). 4

For Vasari's remarks see his Lives

II

416.

The triumph of Federigo of Urbino and his wife will be found in most collections of Piero della Francesca's work. The two paintings are reproduced in miniature in Burck­ hardt (Civilization, the edition published by Harper, 1958, II 418-419) but they appear over the wrong captions, which have been transposed. For Kolderer's triumphs see Waetzoldt ("Jorg"). KOiderer was also responsible for the architectural design of the huge print by Albrecht Durer and his assistants, made up of 192 separate woodblocks, "The Triumphal Arch of Maximilian." A copy of this is on permanent exhibition on the main floor of The New York Public Library, in the south corridor. Here the serpent of Milan appears among the many heraldic devices. 5

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6

For Costanzo Sforza's wedding see Weisbach (Trionfi p 86).

7

For Catherine Sforza's entry see Young (Medici PSIS).

B For the popularity of Petrarch's poem see Ernest H. Wilkins, The Making of the "Canzoniere" (Roma 1951, p 379); also Massena (Petrarque, p 102 note 3). Though the poem was dull, the idea of the six triumphs (not Petrarch's, by the way; in the actual poem there is only one triumphal car, that of Cupid) was so attractive that everyone wanted to own a copy of the poem, preferably with illustrations. Wilkins (p 217) quotes an inscription made by the owner of one copy claiming that he wanted to have his darling Petrarch beside him in bed and at table, and to live and die with it - claiming also to have ordered the copy at a date (1370) which Wilkins calls "unreliable" (for Petrarch had not yet finished the poem then). For the use of the theme in decorative art see Hind (Catalogue, p 10) and Schubring (Cassoni, text p 21-22, 199, and many in­ stances in the volume of plates).

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9 The best source for illustrations of The Triumphs is Massena (Petrarque), which is profusely illustrated. No one seems to have noticed that playing cards originated at a time when pictures in general were becoming portable, in contrast to the art of earlier times, which had been mainly mural painting and the illumination of books. As soon as you have a set of little pictures you can hold in your hand, especially if they belong to a series, a game is almost inevitable (witness the games children play with the cards given away with bubble-gum, etc). For the rise of panel painting see Hauser (Social p 264). If playing cards were brought to Europe from China, as is sometimes supposed, why were they so late in com­ ing? Marco Polo could have brought them back half a century before we begin to hear any authentic mention of their existence in Europe.

10 For the sermons condemning the game of triumphs see the notes for VI: "The Trumps and the Fool." For the sixteen-card set see Durrieu ("Michelino"). This may be the set mentioned in Decembrio ("Philippi"), which is worth quoting in full: "Cap. LXI. De variis ludendi modis: Variis etiam ludendi modis ab adolescentia usus est, nam modo pila se exercebat, nunc folliculo: plerunque eo ludi genere, qui ex imaginibus depictis sit, in quo praecipue oblectatus est adeo, ut integrum eorum mille, & quingentis aureis emerit, auctore vel in primis Martiano Terdonensi eius Secretario, qui Deorum imagines, subjectasque his animalium figures, & avium miro ingenio, summaque industria perfecit ...· Massena (Petrarque p 106-7) quotes the passage from Lactantius (liber I, cap XI) who mentions a poem about the "triumphum Cupidinis . . . pompam in qua Jupiter cum caeteris diis ante currum triumphantis ducitur catenatus." The game of triumphs must have originated among the aristocracy, f:>r it is seldom or never legislated against, as were ordinary playing cards. Schreiber (Altesten p 76) shows that "taxillos vel naybos" were forbidden by the statutes of the city of Perugia in 1425, but triumphs were not mentioned (possibly, of course, because they had not yet been invented). In 1488 Brescia forbade "buschatia" and defined this as "omnis ludus taxillorum et cartarum exceptis ludis tabularum et rectis ludis triumphorum et sca­ chorum." Schreiber shows also that in 1489 the city of "Salo am Gardasee," and in 1491 the city of Bergamo, passed similar laws, both excepting the game of triumphs from the prohibition. At Carnival time the prohibition was temporarily lifted (Arch stor lomb XVIII (1886) 28-29).

11 In looking through Hind (Early) one often comes upon series of pictures which might easily have served for the game of triumphs, especially a set by Nicoletto da Modena (pI 640 ff), which show Minerva, Hercules, Orpheus, Abundance, Mercury, Neptune, Venus, Ceres, Apollo, Pallas, Mars, Fortune, and Ceres. This artist actually made tarocchi (pI 698). For the "Tarot of Mantegna" see Hind (Catalogue p 17-25). For Kiilderer see Waetzoldt ("Jiirg"). The Sola-Busca tarocchi (shown in Hind, Early, vol IV of plates, 370 ff) are a fanciful set with twenty-one trumps representing characters of antiquity: Catullus, Nero, Nimrod, etc. The suit cards are also pictures, and are obviously the source of the more attractive suit cards drawn by Pamela Colman Smith in 1910 for A. E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot.

12 For the minchiate see Hargrave (History p 228-230). The Rosselli inventory is quoted in Hind (Early vol I). Item no 72 is a set of plates for printing the "giuocho del trionfo del petrarcha in 3 pezi." Other blocks or plates for printing games are also listed: "giuoco d'apostoli chol nostro singnore, in sette pezi, di lengno" (Hind thinks this pious game of Apostles and Our Lord shows Savonarola's influence), a "giuoco di sete virtU in 5 pezi, di lengno," and a "giuocho di pianeti cho loro fregi [friezes], in 4 pezi." 13 For More's pageants see Evans (Pattern) I 153. She cites and quotes the passage from "Dibdin, Typographical Antiquities, II, 431." For the wedding-chests see Schubring (Cassoni). 14 Chapters in Norman O. Brown, Life against Death; the Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (Middletown, Conn. Wesleyan Univ Press 1959).

Hi The invective against cards is cited and quoted in Morley (Old P 25). I have para­ phrased it somewhat.

16

See Boiardo (Tutte

II

702-716 and 748-749) for the proposed new tarocchi.

17 See our bibliography for the Rabelais references. The Renaissance method of car­ tomancy, using only the suit of coins, is shown in Grillot de Givry (Witchcraft figs 283­ 284). Compare this with fig 28g, which shows the Sixteenth-century (and earlier) method of telling fortunes from the fifty-six throws of three dice. Grillot de Givry has a good deal to say about tarot cards, and apart from his unsupported statement that medieval sorcerers used them for divination, there is much good sense in what he says.

18 The Straparola riddle was brought to my attention by Prof Archer Taylor, who is an authority on riddles as well as on many other things. See Straparola (Facetieuses II 371-372: 12th night, 7th tale).

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5 THE DEATH OF CARNIVAL

THERE ARE TWO characters in the triumphal procession who are rather hard to account for. They are the lowest of the trumps and the wild card known as the Fool. The Fool has no place in the procession, either with the four ordinary suits or among the trumps. We find that the lowest trump is named Bagatino. This Bagatino was one of the Carnival clowns, and later became the "Little Juggler" of the commedia deZtarte. In our procession he is the Carnival King, and the real object of the whole procession is to lead him to his execution. He is one of Cupid's captives because Carnival is a great time for love as well as farce. He is also the principal victim of the triumph of Death, and he rises hopefully from the grave in the triumph of Eternity.l The Fool has no place among the seventy-seven regular cards because they are not his world at all. Like the six unnumbered cards of the minchiate pack, he is "out of this world." He has his own world, the approaching season of Lent, from which he comes in advance to warn all the gay figures of Carnival that they have but a short time to enjoy themselves. 2 Carnival, like a noble wedding or a solemn entry, was one of the favor­ ite occasions for triumphal processions. In particular, there would be a procession to greet King Carnival before the beginning of Lent. This took place just after Christmas, when he would be the highest and most victorious of the triumphs. At the close of the pre-Lenten season his position would be reversed, for he then had only one day to live. The mock execution of King Carnival is a vestige of the ancient Saturnalia, when the man who had acted as king of the revels was actually put to death at the end of his reign. This practice continued in parts of the Roman army well into Christian times. We read of a soldier who refused to act as king of the Saturnalia because he was a Christian, and was martyred (anyway) in consequence. The stubborn persistence

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of this grisly human sacrifice is all the more remarkable when we remember that it had been forbidden by the Roman Emperor Tlberius centuries before. 3 "--­ The Saturnalia was a winter festival commemorating the golden age of Saturn, the age when the fruits of the earth were bountiful and men were at peace. There was no money in that time, and therefore no greed for gold. No man was a slave, and all property was held in common. Good King Saturn died, and the golden age was dead except when brought to life again for a few days each year during the festival. For that short time slaves and masters were equal. Slaves were permitted to speak as boldly as they wished, to get drunk, issue orders to their masters, and in general be excused for behavior which would have been fatal at any other time. Psychologically speaking, it was an excellent safety valve. But it had its dark side. In the earliest times the man elected to play the part of King Saturn during the festival had to die at its close. When the actual death was prohibited in later days, no doubt there was an execution in effigy, as in the medieval Carnival. The early Christians would have nothing to do with the winter revels of Saturnalia. But to Christians of a later age, compelled by civil law to observe numerous ecclesiastical precepts, something was again needed as a safety valve. This must have been especially true during the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, when many of the clergy, the very class which insisted on Christian behavior, were openly seen to be act- . ing in direct opposition to the prmciples they preached. Then, as the temporal power of the Church declined, so did the necessity for the Carnival, and today it is given, at best, only token observance in a few sections of the Christian world. 4 We have a glimpse of the Carnival in its heyday from the program of a Carnival at Rome in 1891, which was celebrated in the medieval man­ ner.5 The Carnival season began on January seventeenth, and from that date it was lawful to wear any costume and to cover the face with a mask. The formal celebrations began two weeks later, and lasted for ten days, from February first to the tenth. The official Carnival was inaugurated by the grand Senatorial Pro­ cession, with participants wearing costumes of the fourteenth century. This procession started at two o'clock in the afternoon at the Piazza del Popolo and moved by way of the Corso and the Via Nazionale to the Costanzi Theater. It was a procession of men-at-arms, cavalcades, heralds, and trumpeters, preceding the Senator of Rome and his suite.

When it arrived at the theater, the first grand veglione (masked ball) of the Carnival began. This was a children's party, with prizes for the best costumes. In the evening there were two more veglioni in other theaters. The next day, Monday, featured a band contest and a f€~te at the Wine Show. Here too, prizes were awarded for the best costumes. On Tuesday there was a parade of the Senatorial Cortege, the race in which the rioni (the various quarters of the city) competed, and a horse race. There was throwing of red chalk in the Corso, and in the evening a veglione with prizes. On Wednesday the horse races continued, and there was a grand artistic fancy dress ball in the evening, with prizes again for the best costumes. An added attraction was a great chess board in one of the theaters, on which the pieces were living people. This chess game was played by two members chosen from the Roman chess society. On Thursday, February fifth, a traditional triumphal procession was held, with decorated vans, masqueraders on horseback and on foot, all competing for prizes. A battle of flowers took place from two o'clock until dusk. In the evening there was a grand illumination of the Piazza del Popolo by Messrs Fantappie and Sons from Florence. In it were twenty colossal transparent Chinese fans lighted with various colors, and twenty streams of light from the top of the obelisk. Two separate veglioni were held, each with prizes. The next evening there was a "white" veglione at the Costanzi Theater, to which only masqueraders in white were admitted. The program for Saturday the seventh included another battle of flowers, more racing, and the usual veglione. On Sunday there was a parade of two-horse carriages and a veglione. Monday, the last day but one of the Carnival, was marked by the award of prizes for the most elegantly decorated balconies along the Corso, the route by which the Senatorial Cortege proceeded to the racing in the Piazzo del Popolo. In addition, there was a wine fair, and of course, a veglione in the eve­ ning. People were advised that the best time to see this veglione was from midnight until two. The Carnival ended on Tuesday with a battle of flowers and a repeti­ tion of all the previous parades. In the final triumphal procession was a colossal statue of Justice on a float eight yards long, another huge float with a statue of Rome, and the Wedding of Romulus and Tazia on a third. In the evening there was the special candlelight display called ~,

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the moccoletti, with a procession of, bengal lights and illuminated vehi­ cles. The evening concluded with tl~cremation of King Carnival, fire­ works, and a balloon ascent. From the historical evidence we have gathered, we may quite logi­ cally deduce that the commedia delfarte was an outgrowth of the fifteenth-century Carnival. This type of farcical comedy improvised by skilled actors on the basis of a written plot could easily have developed from the sort of procession which appears in the Visconti-Sforza tarocchi. 6 If we imagine the Fool, the representative of Lent, running alongside the procession and calling his warnings to the riders in the cars, we can assume that they talked back to him. Happy bits of repartee would please the crowds and encourage the actors to do even better. Finally the representative of Lent might invite King Carnival to leave the safety of his car and fight like a man. 7 Then we would have a scene such as Breughel shows us in his painting "The Battle between Carni­ val and Lent," where jolly fat Carnival sits on a wine barrel. With a spitted goose for his weapon, he fights the representative of Lent, in this case an old woman like the Popess of the tarocchi, who had to take the place of the Fool when the latter eventually assumed the guise of Carnival King. In Breughel's painting we see in one comer a comedy troupe engaged in playing "The Dirty Bride", and observe that they look very much like characters who were Originally part of our tri­ umphal procession. The metamorphosis of the Fool into the Carnival King can be seen quite plainly in later tarocchi packs and in other paintings. His rags and patches became gayer and gayer, as did the feathers in his hair. At some time or other he may have won his batde with the Carnival King, or more likely, he was such a dominant figure in the gaiety that people forgot he had not always been the Carnival King. 8 So even in the tarocchi we have the old story of the sacred king, who has a merry reign for a short time and then is put to death by his suc­ cessor. The Carnival King is the first of the trumps, and his successor, King Lent, is just outside the door, waiting to dethrone him and take over his staff of office. The King is deadl Long live the King!

1 For the identification of II Bagatino and II Matta as Carnival King and Lent see the notes for those two cards.

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For the Carnival triumphs see Burckhardt (Civilization) pt V ch 8: "The Festivals."

a For Saturnalia and Carnival see the abridged edition of The Golden Bough, by Sir James George Frazer (New York, Macmillan 1940) 583-587 and 301-307. Our bibliog­ raphy lists T.H. Gaster's revised abridgment, The New Golden Bough, which seems not to object to these passages, and Professor Homer W. Smith, in his Man and his Gods (New York, Grosset 1952) 138-139, says practically the same thing as Frazer about the Saturnalia. See also Bernheimer (Wild) p 53ff - who is, however, too inclined toward the idea of a secret society being involved, I think. 4 The resentment of the laity against the clergy during our period appears in the tarocchi themselves, which make the Pope and Popess captives of Cupid, and again and again in the secular literature of the time. See Huizinga ( Waning) p 178f and Burckhardt (Civilization) pt VI ch 2: "Religion in Daily Life."

5

The description of the Carnival of 1891 is from Carnival at Rome.

The best books I have found on the commedia dell' arte are Smith (Commedia) and Lea (Italian), which is much more detailed than Smith. Enci spett has good articles on "Carnevale" and "Commedia dell;arte." I suspect a connection between the tarocchi characters and those of the commedia because they are so similar; Smith (p 59, note) gives as the list of essential charcaters in the commedia two lovers, three women, one Scaramouche who plays the part of the braggart Captain, Pantalone, the Doctor of Law, Mezzetin, and HarleqUin. The boastful Captain says that he once took prisoner Love, Death, and the Devil, and went to Hell to steal Proserpina. The Moon forgot Endymion for him, and he conquered Cupid in battle. (Smith 93-95). See also the first paragraph of the Notes for II Bagatino, the first of the trumps, who was a character of the com­ media. Pictures of the Carnival characters and the commedia characters can hardly be distinguished, and there is the same slapstick in both. 6

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See the reconstruction in my "Undocumented Prologue," above.

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For the metamorphosis of the Fool see the notes for that card.

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PART

II

THE PROCESSION

ready to examine the characters of the Procession one by one as they are represented in the Visconti-Sforza cards, in their origi­ nal order, and with their original names: WE ARE NOW

II Bagatino Le Coppe II L'lmperatrice III L'lmperadore IV La Papessa V II Papa VI La Temperanza VII II Carro VIII L'Amore IX La Fortezza I Bastoni X La Ruota I Danari I

II Gobbo II Traditore La Morte II Diavolo La Casa del Diavolo Le Spade XVI La Stella XVII La Luna XVIII II Sole XIX L'Agnolo XX La Justicia XXI II Mondo II Matto XI XII XIII XIV XV

The original names and order of the trumps are known to us from two fifteenth-century sermons and from a set of versified tarocchi of the same period, written in honor of the ladies of Ferrara. One of the sermons is cited and quoted by Steele ("Notice") . The preacher speaks of three kinds of gambling games: dice, cards ("denarii, cuppe, bastoni, enses"), and triumphs; so in his time they must still have been a separate game. His list of the trumps is essentially the same as that in the versified tarocchi, except that he calls II Traditore "Lo impichato" and the Casa del Diavolo "La sagitta," and his name for Bagatino is "El bagatelIa." His list is in a queer mixture of Latin, Italian, and Spanish. The other sermon is cited and quoted in Hargrave (History) p 227 and 387. It has the same list as in the other semlon except that the spelling is slightly different. The versified tarocchi ("Trionphi de tarocchi appropriati") are from Bertoni (Poesie) p 220. As the names in this list are more like modem Italian, I have preferred to use them. Another source for the order of the trumps, but not for their names, is a set of two uncut sheets of fifteenth- or Sixteenth-century tarocchi in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (26.101.5 and 31.54.159 in the print collection). It is not complete, the eards have num­ bers but no names, and in it the top of the Popess' head appears with the numeral III, so in this set she has already begun her descent. Otherwise there are no differences from the other three sources.

I IL BAGATINO (Quarterpenny, The Juggler) ·

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The lowest of the trumps, as we have said, is the Carnival King, Bagatino (Quarterpenny). The pro­