PMB

DATING THE PMB

Now I'll move to the PMB. On  December 11, 1450, Francesco Sforza wrote a letter requesting that his treasurer get him two decks of triumph cards, the finest he cn get, by the 13th; then shortly after thanked him for the packs of playing cards but wanted "the pair of fruits like those you were kind enough to send to us" (http://trionfi.com/0/e/00/). "Pair" might mean "pack". In any case, he was interested in getting tarot cards. From where is not said. I would assume Cremona, where the Bembo had reestablished themselves after retreating to Beschia during the time of the Ambrosian Republic. Trionfi mentions Florence.

Then in November 1452 Sigismondo Malatesta requested from Bianca Maria Sforza  "a pack of the famous hand-painted trump cards from the highly praised artisans of Cremona" (http://trionfi.com/0/e/00/, giving as the source a "Pizzagalli 1988:129"). Here it is clear that Cremona is the place, and that some shop there is famous for its cards.

So it is a safe bet that the Sforzas had their triumph, i.e. tarot, cards made by the Bembo in Cremona. But what deck? It has been assumed to be the PMB, but it could also have been the CY, or something else, now lost. We have already seen that the Love card and Chariot card can be read as either 1428 or 1450. If the latter, and there is already a tradition in Milan of a Love card with Filippo and Maria, the CY could be  Francesco and Bianca in the role of the former couple, to emphasize the continuity of regimes.

And now in the PMB the theme on the CY Love card repeats, ust to reinforce the identification. The couple on the Love card is the same, with the same Cupid overhead. And one thing is stressed even more: in the CY the man may have been slightly shorter than the woman. In the PMB, he is clearly shorter. He is the subordinate, the vassal. The woman is the familial power, and thus the one through whom the inheritance of power descends, a generative power emphasized both by her higher stature and the green glove.

On the Chariot card, the leading role of the lady is stressed even more. There is no groom, and the horses have wings. The reference is to Plato's Phaedrus, in which the chariots of the gods have winged horses that go around and round a circular track in the sky, like the heavens at night. She is a goddess, probably Chastity. In real life, it is Bianca Maria Visconti-Sforza who is the link between the old and the new. In her the Viscontis live on, and her children have the former Duke as their grandfather.

To be sure, the PMB was made early in the Sforza regime. But just when is not clear. The interest in 1450 and 1452 might have produced the CY as a commemorative deck. On the other hand, Dummett has proposed 1460-1462, for both the cards by the first artist and by the second  either(Artibus Historia 56 (2007), pp. 15-26).

I do not think that the cards of the first artist are as early as 1450 or as late as 1460. A peculiarity of the PMB is that many of the people portryed look like certain people in the Sforza family: specifically, the oldest son Galeazzo Maria and his mother Bianca Maria. This point has been brought out by Marie Vogt-Luerssen in her books Bianca-Maria Visconti, Die Stammmmutter der Sforza; and while some of the attributions in her book are far-fetched, the ones concernng the PMB seem to me well taken.

An important detail is the face of the male figure on many of the court cards. Here I refer to the website http://www.kleio.org, created by Vogt-Luerssen with both English and German pages. On the web-page http://www.kleio.org/en/history/famtree/sforza/209.html#Mantegna101 is a series of portraits of Galeazzo Maria Sforza; many show him as one saint or another, but she also includes the PMB Knight of Batons. It is obvious from the other images in the series that this figure is the young Galeazzo on a white horse. He looks to me about 11, We cannot assume that the card was done when Galeazzo was the age he appears on the card, because the figure there could have been painted from a likeness made earlier. But we can at least say that it was not done much before he was that age, certainly not before age 8. Thus we have 1852 as a lower limit for the card, and 1455 or 1456 as the upper.

Here is the PMB Knight of Batons followed by one image of that Vogt-Luerssen takes to be Galeazzo as a child. The painting is Fra Angelico's Holy Virgin and Child and other Saints, now in St. Mark's in Florencee (Vogt-Luerssen p. p. 236). Vogt-Luerssen argues that Fra Angelico would have painted Bianca Maria and her child in these roles as an act of friendship on the part of Angelico's patron Cosimo de' Medici. And while it may seem odd to us to have one's wife and child painted as Virgin and Child, that was good propaganda for Mecici'-Sforza relations andusually good protection against its being taken away by future conquerers asr booty.



In 1459, when Galeazzo was 15, he was painted on his white horse in a Florentine fresco, "Journey of the Magi to Bethlehem" (below). Galeazzo did in fact visit Florence in 1459, and I think there is general agreement that it is Galeazzo's portrait. He has a leaner face than on the card, as would be expected in adolescence, three or four years after my projected date for the card..

In the PMB, the same figure on his white horse appears again in the Justice card (bottom right, first below). There are also cards where he appears older, say 16: e.g., the King of Swords (top right, first below) and the King of Cups (second below). But these portraits on the cards seem to me not taken from his appearance at that age. In real life, Galeazzo had a thinner face at 16, as we see from the painting of him on his horse (above) and in armor (left, first below).



The lower left above is an actual relief of Galeazzo Maria Sforza.

It would seem to me that all the cards above were at the same time. As King of Batons, he looks about 10-11. Age 12 might be an upper limit here. Any earlier and the painter would not have gotten such a lifelike image on the horse. Much later, he would have painted the more mature Galeanzo realistically. So we get a time period 1452-1456 for the original PMB cards.

Tarot researchers have apparently  been misled about how Galeazzo looked. For one thing, the most familiar painting of Galeazzo Maria, seen on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galeazzo_Maria_Sforza), in Kaplan (Vol. 2 p. 104), and elsewhere, shows him with a bent or hooked nose. He did not have such a nose, at least in the images that Vogt-Luerssen offers. She says that this painting was done so as to portray him as a descendent of the hook-nosed first Duke, Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Another miscue is a painting reproduced in Kaplan's volume 2, identified as Galeazzo's son Gian Galeazzo reading (Vol. 2 p. 105). According to the current owner, the Wallace Collection, this fresco was done by Vincenzo Foppa c. 1464 for the Medici Bank building in Milan, a gift of Francesco Sforza to the Medici family. Gian Galleazzo wasn't even born until 1469.  According to Vogt-Luerssen, the painting is of Galeazzo Maria.. It seems to me that the resemblance to the tarot Knight of Batons is so close that it could have been a model for the fresco.

ONE MORE SYMBOL SYSTEM TO ADD TO THE MIX

 If the PMB is a product of the 1450s, whether 1451-52 or later., we know that by then other tarot decks were being made, in Florence and Ferrara to be sure and probably Bologna. My explanation is that someone took the Cary-Yale style deck to the East-West conclave of 1438-1439, where there was much spare time and opportunity to play cards. The game became popular there, and artisans in the cities involved responded to the demand. The conclave was originally in Ferrara but quickly moved to Florence. The first knwn instance of a tarot deck being made is in 1440 Florence, the circumstances suggesting that it was still something of a luxury item. We have no idea yet how many trumps there were in these decks. In any event, the PMB, a luxury deck of hand-painted card, came about in a milieu in which other decks were being manufactured in other cities.

In this milieu the idea of the pairing of cards, and the analogy to chess, would not have been lost on people. One problem with the CY is that there are plenty of virtues and virtuous personages, but no vices or vicious characters. Even the Michelino had gods and suits that were opposed to each other: "good" Virtues and Virginities vs. "bad" Riches and Pleasure. By the same token, Swords and Batons at some point were "bad" suits, vs. batons and cups as "good", as revealed in the custom of having the trump order go from 1 low to 10 high in cups and coins, vs. 1 high to 10 low in swords and batons: warfare was bad, money, wine, and the church good.

For vices, a famous source would have been Giotto's7 virtues and 7 vices in the Scrovegni Chapel of Padua, painted around 1305. Here there was foolishness, which could be paired with the virtue of prudence. There was despair, which could be paired with hope. There was infidelity vs. faith. There was inconstancy, which could also be paired with courage--holding true to one's faith even in bad or inconvenient times.There was injustice and justice. There was anger, which perhaps could be paired with temperance. There was envy, which might be paired with charity.

Tarot historians have noticed parallels between some of Giotto's personifications and the tarot cards of the 15th century.

Giotto's Justice has two pans, an angel protecting a worker at his table in one and an executioner in the other.

Fortitude has a lion on her shield.

Hope has a star in the corner, as in the case of the Cary-Yale Faith and also, o f course, to all the various Star cards.

Giotto's Faith has a scroll in one hand and a staff in the other, making her similar to the Popess card of the PMB, the Cary Sheet, and--minus the staff--the Marseille tradition.

 She also has a key at her abdomen (viewable below at the bottom margin, about one third the way from the left side); that is another feature found in early Popess cards.I show below the Catelin Geoffrey of Lyon 1558.

Other depictions are harder to relate: Temperance holds a sword to her chest and a bridle in her mouth.

Conceptually, both are the virtue Temperance. But Giotto's image doesn't relate at all to the tarot Temperance card, card, which always shows a female pouring from one vessel into another; the bridle, however, connects her to the PMB Moon card, if Marco is right that what she is holding is a bridle. But the bridle was a traditional attribute of Temperance and didn't need Giotto for inspiration.

Prudence has a book on a high table, of the sort traditionally used for accounting or lecturing, and also a mirror. The mirror is a traditional attribute of Prudence.

It seems to me that there is a resemblance to depictions of street conjurers as depicted in the "children of the moon" series. Next to the Giotto image I have put the one in the Da Sphaera series done for the Sforza in the 1460s. He is at a table and holds one arm up. In the tarot, similarly, the Magician is always at a table, typically holding something in one or both hands, usually a wand but sometimes a cup or coin. Below are three of the earliest, the PMB, the Cary Sheet, and the d'Este.

 

One could conceivably think of the Magician as prudent in a narrow sense, in that by his tricks he knows he will win against anyone who bets against him. His only danger is the wrath of the authorities and also the audience, if they catch on to him. However such short-term prudence is of course no good in the long term, because practicing deception will keep one out of heaven until one has atoned in the torments of purgatory.

Charity has a cherub giving something to a woman holding a full plate. Benefits from heaven are to be shared. That is the same message as the CY Charity card, but a different image. The Sun card sometimes showed a sun shining down on the trees, giving them the energy needed for them to thrive..

On the side of the vices, there are also matches, as people have frequently pointed out, although not agreeing on which correspond to which. Gioffo's Stultia clearly relates to the PMB Fool.
 
Inconstancy, with its woman in an earthquake, matches the Tower, which typically was visited by earthquake as well as fire (below the Charles VI, c. 1460, and the Rothschild, early 16th century)..

Despair matches the Hanged Man, with its hanged person. In the center I have enlarged the to right part of the card, to more easily show the devil grabbing at her soul and the serpent-like cord coming down from her gown. The "Charles VI" suggests Judas, who hanged himself in despair and in fact many early lists called the card "Judas". Some have seen Giotto's "infidelity" for this card. However the iconography suggests otherwise. Also, it was not betrayal that induced Judas to hang himself, but despaired when he realized what he had done.

 And on Envy, notice her horns, bat wings, and fire underneath her. That is a parallel to the medieval image of the Devil.. In the tarot, or perhaps in this case the Minchiate, we also see horns and bat wings.

There are two vices left, Anger and Injustice, and only one card. Perhaps the designer meant to convey a secret message to those who knew what he was doing. The PMB's Pope looks angry, and in the d'Este he is an older man sitting down showing his profile with one hand raised, like Giotto's Injustice.

 In Bologna and Ferrara, which were part of the Papal States, popes were feared more than loved, given their propensity to send domineering prelates, exact unreasonable tribute, and threaten and occasionally act in ways calculated to get their way regardless of the wishes of the city's rulers. They also had ways of intimidating even Milan, by excommunication of rulers and the striking of bargains with more complaisant powers.

So my inclination is to say that Giotto's images did influence the post-Cary-Yale tarot, and not just in Milan. They served to increase the number of cards, adding, I think, the Fool, the Magician, Popess, the Pope, the Hanged Man, the Devil, and the Tower--6 in all. 

In addition, I think the CY's Hope, Faith, and Charity cards have been replaced by the Star, the Moon, and the Sun in the PMB. If you look at the Cary-Yale theological virtues, you can see the iconographic similarities of Star to Hope, as already shown with the PMB Star card. Their symbolism is also related: the star of hope is the star of Bethlehem, which seems to be represented on some early cards.

 I have already suggested, using a 16th century printed card, that Charity correlates with the Sun card conceptually. The beneficence of God is like the life and warmth giving Sun. We can see a visual correlation between the CY Charity and the PMB Sun. Both cards have a child, while the round object in the Charity card--a mirror, I assume--has become the Sun in the PMB.
 
That leaves Faith and the Moon. Again, I think a visual correlation can be maintained between the CY and the PMB. At the right, I have added the Moon card from a 16th century printed deck, which I think conveys the same mood and symbolic meaning.

 I think the symbolic meaning is that in the dark night of this world at its worst,  the Moon of faith is our guide, Compare for example to Bosch's Saint John at Patmos. .

In upshot, the 16 of the Cary-Yale are now 22, of which 21 are numbered.

In summary:

0. Fool: Giotto Stultitia

1. Magician: Giotto Prudence.

2. Popess: Giotto Faith

3. Empress: Imperator Empress, Giotto virtue Justice, chess Queen

4. Emperor: Imperator Emperor, Giotto Injustice, chess King

5. Pope: Giotto vices Injustice and Anger

6. Love: Petrarch Love, pawn

7. Chariot: Petrarch Chastity, knight

8. Justice: Cary-Yale and Giotto virtue, pawn

9. Hermit: Petrarch Time, chess bishop

10. Wheel: Giotto vice Infidelity, chess bishop

11. Strength: Cary-Yale and Giotto virtue, pawn.

12. Hanged Man: Giotto vice Inconstancy

13. Death. Petrarch Death, chess knight

14. Temperance: Cary-Yale virtue, pawn

15. Devil: Giotto vice Envy.

16. Tower: Giotto vice Inconstancy.

17. Star: Cary-Yale and Giotto Hope, pawn

18. Moon: Cary-Yale Faith,.Giotto Temperance, pawn

19. Sun: Cary-Yale and Giotto Charity, pawn.

20. Judgment: Petrarch Eternity, rook

21. World: Petrarch Fame, rook

Now the question is, did they all come quickly, so that the entire set of 22 was complete in a few years of 1440, or was it slower? The reason I ask is that the PMB has no Tower or Devil. And the "Charles VI' has no Magician, Popess, Wheel, Devil, Star, or Sun.

In favor of 22: There are cards with pictures of dominoes on them. This practice suggests that they were used for simple fortune-telling using the number of combinations of two dice, i.e. 21. The Fool card, being unnumbered, would not have been included. Even as zero, it would not be there, as there is no zero in dominoes or dice. However, the Fool might have corresponded, as Ross R.G. Caldwell has pointed out, to the bad roll that required to be done over.

On the other side, 20 numbered cards makes 2 decades, and multiples of 10 were in vogue. The alchemical Rosarium Philosophorum wasa sequence of exactly 20 images, with some of them parallel to the tarot (see Robert O'Neill's Tarot Symbolism and my own effort at http://tarotandalchemy.blogspot.com/). There were 10 spheres around the earth, the 7 planets and 3 after that. There were 9 muses plus Apollo. The "tarot of Mantegna" expanded that to five groups of 5 each, adding liberal arts, virtues (with 3 additions on each of these), and stations of life. 

 In addition, Huck has found that German  lot books were in mid century exported in Germany for 22 fortunes, then 20 fortunes in 1482, perhaps going back to 1373  (http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=2812997&postcount=1,. http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=154222.) He speculates that there were 20 trumps in the period 1465-1487. That seems to me rather odd. I can't think of why they would be reduced, but in any case that doesn't affect the situation at mid-century.

I have no opinion either way as to whether there were 22 trumps by the time the tarot became generally known in 1438-1440; on the whole, however, I don't see why not.

One other thing, pertaining to the order: it seems to me likely that the added cards were, with one exception, next to each other. So we have Fool-Magician and Popess-Pope. We also have Devil-Tower-Star-Moon-Sun. The exception is the Hanged Man, at 12. But that is where he logically goes, just before Death, to indicate his torment and impending end.

It seems to me that since the PMB is closest in imagery to the Giotto, probably the PMB is one of the earliest decks to have the Giotto-based cards, or at least the one closest to the original. But the PMB does not have the Tower and the Devil. I am inclined to think that someone simply didn't like these cards, and probably they were around then, at least the Tower, which we see in the Charles VI deck.  And by the same token, people may not have liked the Popess in some places, taking the idea literally and considering it heretical.

All the same the PMB added some extra wrinkles to the new cards they did use, in the case of the Popess and the Hanged Man. Maokley has called attention to the relevant details in both cases. The Popess was reminiscent of a Visconti ancestress Sister Manfreda, who was elected Pope by a heretical order of nuns that wore a brown habit. She was burned at the stake around 1300 in Verona,  just prior to Giotto's painting of the Scrovegni Chapel.

 Also, the Hanged Man would have reminded the Sforza family of Francesco's father Muzio Attendola, who had had "shame" posters with the image of a man hanged by his feet and his name on them, plastered on all the bridges of Rome by the anti-Pope John XXIII. Since Attendola was the patriarch of the Sforza clan, the PMB card is more positive than the others. His action helped to end the schism, after all. Thus there is a hole beneath his head, as if he were a seed to be planted; and his leggings are green, in the PMB a sign of fertility (shared by the Empress, the female Lover, and all the baton court figures).

THE SIX CARDS BY THE SECOND ARTIST

The main way in which I would date the cards by the second artist is by the woman on the Temperance, Star, and Moon cards. She does not look like the other ladies on the cards. She might simply be Bianca Maria again, painted in a later style (in which case my argument for why it was replaced would be wrong). I also considered Galeazzo's mistresses, Lucrezia Landriani and Lucia Marliani (the links are on Galeazzo's page at kleio.org). None of their portraits looks much like the cards.

But a more promising candidate is in the artwork below right (http://www.kleio.org/en/history/famtree/sforza/440.html). From left to right, the three ladies, according to Vogt-Luerssen, are Galeazzo's sister Ippolita as St. Lucia, his wife Bona as St. Catherine of Alexandria, and his sister Elisabetta as St. Mary Magdalene. It is from the altarpiece at Treviglio Cathedral, done around 1485 by Bernardo Zenale and Bernardino Butinone (http://bode.diee.unica.it/~giua/SEBASTIAN/).  The three were together only once, July of 1468 for Galeazzo’s wedding (Lubkin, A Renaissance Court, pp. 53, 64). The painting is much later than that, of course, but we can presume that portraits were available, now lost. (Butinone may even have worked for Bembo. Venturi notes that in the St. Anthony of the Cremona polyptych "we seem to find a forerunner of the figures painted by Butinone." (p. 12) ).

Next to the three in the altarpiece I have put the PMB Moon card, and below them Temperance and the Star.As you can see, the three tarot ladies are all the same person.It could be merely the use of a type that the author favored, but my idea is to compare her to the ladies in the altarpiece.



Among the three ladies in the altarpiece, my vote would for the tarot lady would be Elisabetta, on the right. She died in 1472 at the age of 16, shortly after childbirth (Lubkin p. 118). So perhaps the cards are Galeazzo's memorial to her. He had been the one to arrange her early marriage (Lubkin p. 81) to a man five times her age; perhaps he felt guilty. Of the three cards, the Moon is especially poignant. It shows a dejected maiden holding a crescent moon in one hand and in the other hand what people have taken as either a broken bow (Kaplan Vol. 1 p. 72) or a bridle. The bridle is an attribute of temperance, meaning restraint of the passions. The only reference I can find to broken bows and the Moon is in Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls, where Diana's virgins break their bows in regret at the years in her service (Complete Poetical Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, p. 346, in Google Books). Such irreverence toward chastity would have appealed to the lustful Galeazzo. In any case, the result of Elisabetta's fulfillment of her marriage vows was was disastrous. The Duke, Lubkin tells us, “concerned himself particularly with the deaths of persons who belonged by blood or marriage, such as his sister Elisabetta” (p. 150). And in fact a “massive service” was held (p. 151). Perhaps the cards were by way of a special memorial. You will notice a cliff at the bottom of each card. There is a cliff at the bottom of the Death card, too, and a few other of the original cards. The general significance was that of death or at least danger, although sometimes it seems to have been simply decorative.

Her untimely death gives there a reason for redoing the cards, an occasion, like a wedding.

Elisabetta as saint appears older than 13 or even 16. That is the art of the painter. She is also plumper than the lady on the card. This difference might be explained by two letters excerpted by Lubkin. In February of 1467 Galeazzo told her that “if she put on a little flesh, she would be much more beautiful than the lady duchess, her sister” (Renaissance Court p. 43; the sister is Ippolita). Then from October of 1469, here is Lubkin’s paraphrase and quotation from another letter: “With Galeazzo, ‘she was ordinarily eating meat four or five times a day, which totally ruined her complexion.’ In Montferrat, she was ‘eating more correctly,’ gaining weight, and generally doing better than ever” (p. 81).

Another card by the second artist is the one usually called Fortezza, meaning Fortitude or Strength. It shows a man beating a lion (below). Besides representing Hercules and the Nemean Lion, I suspect it is a memorial to Francesco Sforza, who died in 1455, and that the card would have been called Forza, meaning Strength.

 The Sun card and the World card (above center and right) both feature cherubs, on the Sun just one, gesturing to the Sun, and in the world two cherubs, one looking very much like the one on the Sun card. And there is a second one who looks like someone else. What that might be, we will see in the next section.

"Huck" at Trionfi maintains that these cards were done in 1465 as a present to the Sforza on the occasion of Ippolita's wedding in Milan. That is possible, too. However iconographically they show a close relationship to the Hope, Faith, and Charity cards in the Cary-Yale. Also, all the cards except Strength have cliffs, like some of the original cards. I cannot imagine that Lorenzo.de' Medici would have been aware of this..

DUMMETT'S CANDIDATE FOR THE SECOND ARTIST

It thus appears that there was a 15-20 year gap between the two artists of the PMB, with the second artist probably after 1470. Weak support for this idea comes from Ross R. G. Caldwell in his article on the Strength card (http://www.trionfi.com/0/i/r/11.html), where he puts "c. 1475" in his caption for the card--although his article only says 1460-1480. I will use his article later on in support of a post 1470 date.  Dummett in The Visconti-Sforza Cards, p. 118, simply said "a later artist, probably from Ferrara." Later he changed his mind about "later," as we shall see.. 

On the other side, "Huck" on ATF and THF has posited 1465, as a gift to the Sforza brought by Lorenzo de' Medici on the occasion of Ippolita Sforza's marriage.

Even further from my dating, Dummet in a more recent article (Artibus Historia 56 (2007), pp. 15-26)  posited that that both artists, Bonifacio and Benedetto Bembo, worked at the same time on the PMB, c. 1462, with Benedetto doing the six cards by the "second artist" and Bonifacio doing the rest.After spending most of the article refuting the idea that a painter named Cicognara was the second artist, here is what Dummett says:  

The most probable attribution seems to me to be to Benedetto Bembo, an artist agreed to have been influenced by Ferrarese art, as shown by the female figures on the Temperance, Star and Moon cards. These figures, with their high foreheads and pursed lips, have affinities with the Madonna and female saints in Benedetto's Torrechiara polyptych, now in the Castello Forzescho in Milan, and his Madonna of Humility, now in the Museo Civico, La Specia, and probably painted in Ferrara. The very expressive male heads in the polyptych are close to the male figure on the Fortitude card, and the particularly curly russet hair of the boy on the Sun card and of the putti is characteristic of Benedetto. The pack was the product of the Bembo workshop: of the surviving 35 picture cards, Benedetto executed six and Bonifacio the remainder (missing are the Devil, the Tower or Lightning and the Cavallo di Denari). Benedetto's earliest datable work is the Torchiara polyptych, signed and dated by him to 1462. The pack must therefore have been painted in the early 1460's. It may have been made for Bianca Maria, or she may have inherited it from her husband; in either case she probably gave it to Cremona during the two years between his death and hers. On the hypothesis that Benedetto painted the six cards, there is no need to suppose the original versions of them to have been lost or damaged: we have the original versions.

 I will wait until a later section to discuss the idea in the last two sentences, that Bianca Maria gave the pack to Cremona during 1466-1468, when she was living there in her dowry city prior to her death. I want to deal with the idea that Benedetto Bembo did the six cards by the "second painter" in the "early 1460s.

 He bases his claims on two works by Benedetto, the Madonna of Humility, of uncertain date, and the Polyptych of Torchiara. signed and dated 1462. First, here is the Polytych (from Roenttgen's Italian Frescoes: The Early Renaissance)

I should probably give a closer view of the middle four panels.

To me this looks very International Gothic, and not very "Ferrarese," if I understand the term. Adolfo Venturi, writing in 1931, called this work "one of the most notable examples of the relationship existing betwen the art of Lombardy and the great school of Padua" (North Italian Painting of the Quattrocento: Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria, p 12f). Roettgen calls it "of the Venetian type" (p. 359). 

Dummett calls our attention to the "expressive faces" of the males. comparing them tothe PMB "Strength" card. Well, let's see.

I am not impressed with the parallel. All I see is Gothic devoutness. There is nothing of the secular emotionality of the Ferrara painters (as exhibited e.g. in the Schifanoia frescoes).

Dummett also talks about the "high foreheads and pursed lips" of the Madonna and female saints, similar to the Temperance, Star, and Moon cards. The features he points to, it seems to me, are common in Lombard art at that time..I looked at a bunch of Lombardy Madonnas and other women from that period and before. Quite a few have high foreheads and pursed lips. That seemed to have been the fashionable way to portray high-born women, at least in Lombardy. Look, for example, at this scene from Monza Cathedral (Roettgen, Italian Frescoes: The Early Renaissance, plate 96:
Another example is this Madonna and Child by Michelino (Pittura a Milano dall'Alto Medioevo al Tardogotico, p. 160):

And this one (p 171):

Is there any other similarity not shared by such as these? Well, here are Benedetto's faces alongside the tarot images:

I don't see much similarity, other than a generic one common to many artists. Even the curly russet hair is shared by the Michelino.

So let us turn to the Madonna of Humility. Here it is (http://mal.spezianet.it/en/index.htm):

This painting is more of the same. The Madonna's face is identical to that of the Polytyp, and the child has even less similarity to the child of the Sun card. The "particularly curly russet hair" noted by Dummett is as characteristic of Benedetto is indeed prominent on the Christ child in the Polytyp. But again, they all painted putti and baby Jesuses that way, russet, yellow, or gold: the color is that of the morning sun, appropriate to young children (see Roettgen's book, or Alexander's Italian Renaissance Illuminations); the curls might come from Apollo. (See e.g. the Michelino above.)

However there is one more work that bears inspection, posted by Ross Caldwell on p. 4 of the thread with this title on ATF. He identifies it as "Madonna introno col Bambino," Cremona, Museo Civico, with the link
http://www.alfonsomariadeliguori.ne...IS77IS2006.html). There is no date for given for this work.

When I line up Temperance’s face with the Virgin's, I seem to see a resemblance:

And here is the Christ child next to the child on the Sun card:

Here there is indeed a resemblance. Moreover, the style in this painting is quite different from the earlier one, There is a three-dimensionality to the figures that is perhaps associated with the "Ferrara" style which the second artist's cards also have, even while conforming in outline to Gothic convention.

Venturi, writing in 1931, says of this piece, "his methods recall in some degree the earlier works of the Paduan school" (p. 12). It seems to me (as it did to Venturi, p. 12) that this painting was painted later than the Torrecharia of 1462. Here is more of Venturi's analysis:

The artist strives to impart relief to his figures, and for this purposes emphasizes the shadows on the Virgin's face to such an extent that the whole face appears swollen, while at the same time he tucks her body away into a mantle of gold filigree as though it were a sword in its scabbard.

Venturi goes on to describe the paintings that are on either side of the main scene of this polyptych, of St. George and St. Anthony. Then he returns to the Virgin:

The drawing of the contours, especially in the case of the Virgin, the angels perched on the throne and the rugged St. George, is crude and stiff; the types are devoid of grace, with puffy cheeks, bulging foreheads and small features; the patterns on the brocades are put in with a sort of mechanical precision that might have been achieved with the point of a needle.

Especially note the needle-point pattern of the brocades that he describes, since many of the cards also have such brocades. All in all, the painting is just the thing to use as a model for some trionfi cards! 

As far as the dating, I have already quoted Venturi's opinion that it is later than the others. It shows non-Lombard influences. With his contours, h e is trying to create the illusion of depth It strikes me that the place for Benedetto to have learned such influences is Ferrara. And the most likely time to have been there would be c. 1458-1470, during the painting of the Schifonoia Palace, when Borso d'Este needed many painters to come to his city to get the job done quickly. If so, that suggests that the cards, to the extent that they, too, exhibit a "Ferrarese" influence, are post 1470.

In fact there is one section of the Schifonoia frescoes that people have found similar to the cards. Longhi in 1934 saw a resemblance between the six added cards and the female figures in the "August" section of the frescoes at the Schifanoia in Ferrara. That was a major part of the argument that Cicognara painted in the Ferrarese style--it was thought that he painted that section of the frescoes. Here is Dummett, p. 17:

He [Longhi] supported his speculative attribution to Antonio Cicognara of the "August" section of the murals in the Schifonaia Palace in Ferrara by the similarity of its female figures to those of the six supplementary trumps. (Footnote to Longhi, Officini ferrarese, 1934, note 79).

Nobody believes any longer that Cicognara painted any of the Schifanoia. So at least there is not that basis for connecting Cicognara with Ferrara. But what still remains interesting about Longhi's thesis, something Dummett does not pursue, is the resemblance between the female figures in the "August" fresco and the six added cards. That seems to be the source of the idea the cards show a Ferrarese style. And if we knew who really did paint these figures, then perhaps we would know who did the added cards. Here are the women in question; it is one part of a "Triumph of Ceres" (scanned from Roettgen’s Italian Frescoes, the Early Renaissance:

And here again are the cards. Either the frescoes have aged badly, or the cards are much better done.
 

You will notice the same pursed lips and high foreheads that Dummett called attention to at the end of his article, as similarities between Benedetto's work and these same cards. Another resemblance between the fresco and the cards: the cliff below the female figures. It is very much like the cliffs at the bottom of the three cards. These cliffs are also present in some of the original cards, too..And as I have already said, the similarities in the figures are ones shared by the Zavatarri, Michelino, and much of Lombard art. They are not characteristic of Ferrara, other than these very figures. You will not find them together elsewhere in the Schifanoia. I would say it is an example of Lombard influence in Ferrara, and I suspect the hand of  Benedetto Bembo.

 I also suspect that while Benedetto was there, he learned a thing or two about the "Ferrarese style," i.e. perspective, the use of shading to create depth, a sculptured look, and maybe something about the Schifanoia style of mysterious allegorical figures (I am thinking of the Schifanoia decans and the PMB Moon, Sun, and World cards). He never quite got the hang of it, as the rather crude sculptural effects of the Cremona triptych show. The cards show a Lombard painter attempting a Ferrarese look, whether Benedetto or someone else. 

Another striking thing pointing to a Schifanoia-influenced artist is that the probable specific source for the Strength card, as found by Ross G.R. Caldwell (http://www.trionfi.com/0/i/r/11.html) is the same source for the enigmatic "decan" images there, three of which dominate each of the months illustrated there. (A decan is 10 days, approximately one third of a month.) That source is Petrus de Abano’s images of the decans and degrees in his Astrolabium Planum. It wasn't published until 1494, but both the Schifanoia in Ferrara and Palazzo della Ragione in Padua used them as sources. The peculiar thing about the event being depicted, Hercules and the Nemean Lion, is that the story doesn't have him beating it with a club; so most depictions of it don't either. But here on the card is a man with a club. Where else would an artist know about that particular design, so atypical in representing that labor of Hercules, than while working on a project using these images?

 But even if we knew with certainty when the the "Madonna Enthroned" was done, and that it was from the same workshop that did the Temperance card, and that the same workshop did both, we still wouldn't know when the cards were done. They could have been made any time after the painting, using the preliminary studies, and even by someone else in the workshop. Presumably this painting has always been in Cremona. If so, the person commissioning the cards could have just said, "Make her like in that painting."

Did that painting in particular have to be the model? Well, whoever did the cards knew his International Gothic but also learned from Padua or Ferrara. The three-dimensionality is evident in the folds of the Temperance lady's dress and in the skin of the putti of the Sun and World cards.

Another reason for thinking that the two artists worked at different times is the condition of the cards. The six added PMB cards are physically in much better shape than the original ones, especially the green in the foreground. The only one in comparable shape are the Popess and the Empress, but there isn't much green in them. Oddly, the green in the upper portions of the original cards is in better shape. I don’t know the explanation, but something happened to the green at the bottom of the original cards that did not happen to the cards by the later artist. Or vice versa. Perhaps the workshop had learned better methods for preparing and applying tempera.

OTHER CANDIDATES FOR THE "SECOND ARTIST"

While looking for a possible engraver of the "Mantegna" among miniaturists, I came across two possibilities for the second artist of the PMB. One is suggested by Ulrike Bauer-Eberhardt, in her article, "Zur ferrareschen Buchmalerei unter Borso d'Este: Taddeo Crivelli, Girgio d'Alemagna, Leonardo Bellini und Franco dei Russi" (Pantheon, Muenchen 1997, pp. 32-45).

After discussing the title page of an Office of Mary illuminated by Franco dei Russi (Lat 823, Biblioteca Estense, Modena), she says (my translation follows):

Eine andere Miniatur desselben Manuskriptes - der wappenhaltende Putto auf fol.22v (Abb.25) - zeigt in ihrem Stil starke Aehnlichkeit mit Francos Darstellungen aus der Zeit um 1470; den recht feist gerundeten und modellierten Puttenkoerper gibt es auch in der von Franco signierten ausgeschnittenen Rahmenbordüre in London (British Library, Add.ms.20916, fol. 1). Darüber hinaus hat dieser Putto einen Zwillingsbruder, mit aehnlichem puppenartigen Gesicht, in einer Miniatur an ganz anderer Stelle: in der Tarockkarte "il mondo" in Bergamo (Accademia Carrara, Inv. 99: Abb.26).

My machine-aided translation:

Another miniature of the same manuscript - of a putto holding a coat of arms, in fol.22v (ill. 25) - shows in style a strong similarity to Franco's depictions of the time around 1470; his quite charming, rounded, and modeled putto's body is also in a detached, framed border, signed by Franco, in London (British Library, Add.ms.20916, fol. 1). In addition, this Putto has a twin brother, with a similar doll-like face, in a miniature of a completely different place: in the tarot card " il mondo " in Bergamo (Accademia Carrara, Inv. 99: ill. 26).

Here are the relevant illustrations, 23 and 26:
 

In a footnote she adds that the British Library illumination may be found in G. Mariani Canova, La miniatura veneta del renascimento 1450-1500, Venice 1969, Ill. 24, Cat. 53.

Personally, it seems to me that the similarity of the putti could just as well be generic. The similarities she observes characterize putti by numerous artists of this time and part of Italy

Bauer-Eberhardt then reviews the history of the discussion of who did the 6 added cards., ending with:

Es war Michael Dummett, der schliesslich die ferraresische Komponente im Stil der ergaenzten Tarocchi erkannt hat und die Karten nunmehr einem anonymen Künstler aus Ferrara, um 1470, zuwies. Damit ist er bereits der richtegen Loesung nahegekommen; denn die enge Stilverwandtschaft der sechs spaeteren Karten in Bergamo und New York mit Werken von Franco dei Russi - beispielweise die "stella" oder "luna" Kartre (abb.27, 28) mit der Adam-und-Eva-Miniatur der Biblia Italica in Wolfenbüttel (Herzog August-Bibliothek, Slg.2 151, Bd. I, fol.1a) - macht deutlich, wer hier Hand angelegt hat: Franco dei Russi, Genaugenommen ein Wahl-Ferrarese, hat die lückenhaften Bembo-Tarocchi ergaenzt.

I translate

It was Michael Dummett who has finally recognized the Ferrarese component in the style of the added Tarocchi and assigned the cards now to an anonymous artist from Ferrara, around 1470. Thereby he has already come close to the correct solution; the close stylistic relationship of the six later cards) in Bergamo and New York with works from Franco dei Russi - for example "Stella" or "luna" cards (ill. 27, 28) with the Adam and Eve miniature of the Biblia Italica in Wolfenbüttel (Duke August library, Slg.2 151, Vol. I, fol.1a) - makes it clear who has put their hand here: Franco dei Russi, strictly speaking a Ferrarese by choice, has supplemented the incomplete Bembo-Tarocchi.

In footnotes she says that Dummett's assignation is in The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards, 1986 (p. 118); Actually, he doesn't say "around 1470"; he just says "a later artist, probably from Ferrara."  Bauer-Eberhardt is writing before Dummett's more recent attribution of the 6 cards to the early 1460's and Benedetto Bembo. The Adam and Eve may be found in Mariani Canova's book already cited, Cat. 38 and Ill. 22, 23. Dei Rossi was originally from Mantua; hence he is a Ferrarese "by choice."

I looked in Mariani Canova's La Miniatura Veneta del Rinascimento, Venice 1969, to see the "Adam and Eve" illumination Bauer-Eberhardt is referring to, indicated in her footnote as Mariani Canova's Fig. 23. It is a frontispiece to a Bible printed in Venice by Vindelinus de Spera, dated 1 August 1471. Since Mariani Canova's reproduction is in black and white, I post here the full-color reproduction in The Painted Page, p. 170, which appeared after Bauer-Eberhardt's article. I include the putti in the margins, which are generic but do resemble the putti in the PMB World card.

Bauer-Eberhardt also indicates in her footnote a comparison with another illumination in the same Bible, Mariana Canova's Fig. 22. It illustrates the Judgment of Solomon. Mariani Canova identifies the artist, on stylistic grounds, as the same Franco dei Russi:

Comparing the two figures in these illustrations with the lady in the Star and Moon cards, there is indeed a resemblance.

The The similarities are rather singular; in fact I know of no others so similar. The only ones close to it are the ones I posted earlier, in altarpieces by Benedetto Bembo and Bernardino Butinoni (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=365&start=60#p4912, near the end). The emotions depicted in the illuminations, I think, are anxiety and regret, regarding actions the women have taken: eating a forbidden fruit, and laying false claim to an infant. Such emotions may, as if suggesting some unknown mystery, fit the two cards. (They also fit emotions that Galeazzo Maria Sforza might have attributed to his sister Elisabetta after her marriage.) The hairline on dei Russi's lady is lower than on the cards, and the eyes further up; to that extent the faces reflects the Lombard style, of which I gave examples in the post just referred to (including the ladies in the altarpieces). But this may simply be a case of an artist adjusting himself to the style of another region.

Also, the hills behind the lady of the Temperance card are similar to the ones in the "Adam and Eve" illustration.

Could the same artist have done the man on the "Strength" card? I do not see much similarity to the Adam of the first illustration. However the sword-wielder of "Judgment of Solomon" does bear some resemblance to the man on the PMB card.

Dei Russi's earlier illuminations, of which there are several, do not depict their women in the way he does in this Bible. Compare, for example, the "Adam and Eve" scene done by him and Crivelli for Borso's Bible, below.

 

 If de Russi is the artist of the six added cards, we can say that he probably did the cards later rather than earlier, within a few years of 1471. Dei Russi was known to be in Padua in the period 1461-1471 (documented in The Painted Page and in Bauer-Eberhardt), closely associated with Venice.  So he would not likely have done them during that period. In 1474 we find him in Urbino. His whereabouts from the end of 1471 through 1473 are unaccounted for, with no known datable illuminations. If he did the cards, it would likely have been in that period.

The second candidate for painter of the 6 cards that I have noticed recently is a miniaturist who worked with dei Russi on a series of choir books initiated in Bologna by Bessarion, c. 1452. It probably wasn't finished until the late 1450's, in Ferrara, since Borso d'Este's coat of arms are found on the later volumes (Pia Palladino, Treasures of a Lost Art, 2003, p. 83). He is known only as "the Third Bessarion Master." Like dei Rossi, he uses gold paint in the way that the PMB second painter does, and if anything his colors are a bit darker, closer to those of the PMB painter. Their styles are similar. What is of interest is that he is Lombard. Bessarion recruited both Lombard and Emilian artists for his project in Bologna (Palladino, p. 78). That combination of styles fits the 6 cards. Then in 1460 his style is recognizable in a series of panels done for the Church of San Silvestro, Mantua (dei Rossi's home town), now in theMuseo Poldi Pezzoii, Milan (Palladino, p. 83). I surmise that he would have eventually returned to Lombardy, but with Ferrarese influences.

However my first choice for artist of the 6 cards remains Benedetto Bembo, if only because he is the one best positioned to do the work, as part of the same workshop that did the original cards..


Besides the PMB, there were numerous similar decks, of which only a few cards of each survive.When were they painted? I think the Bonomi deck is instructive in this regard. Below, the Bonomi card is in black and white (from Kaplan Vol. 1) on the right and the PMB is in color to its leftt. The Bonomi King of Cups, on the right in the last set, is hard to make out, so I have included one more version, the Biedack card (Kaplan Vol. 1 p. 105), to the left of the PMB. Another similar version, except facing left, is the von Bartsch (Kaplan Vol. 1, p. 101), not shown:





What is interesting is that the Bonomi World card is quite similar to that of the PMB; the two cherubs there would be Galeazzo and one of his brothers, probably Asconio, who as a Cardinal would not be in line for the succession. The Bonomi  Justice card looks to me like it has someone other than Galeazzo; and likewise the King of Cups. It is as though the artist wanted to change the identities of the King of Cups and the young man on the horse in Justice.. Yet clearly the same artist painted all three Bonomi and probably also painted, or at least copied, the PMB World.

But whose face is on the Bomoni cards? I see two possibilities: Galeazzo’s younger brother Ludovico, at the top right below, and Galeazzo’s son Gian Galeazzo, at the bottom right (images from http://www.flickr.com/photos/49968232@N00/2546360858/).

On the outside, the upper medal says “Ludovico, Dux Bari.” He could not call himself Duke of Milan until Gian Galeazzo died in 1494. Officially he was only the Count of Bari. These two medallions were probably done around the same time. Gian Galeazzo looks in his early twenties; he died at age 25. Since he was born in 1469, the medals were done in the early 1490’s. At that time his uncle Ludovico, born in 1451, was in his 40’s. My pick for the man on the King of Cups card would be Ludovico in the early part of his reign, which started in 1479.

Since Ludovico was born in 1452, his rule would have commenced when he was 27. Here is how Ludovico looked in his 20's (from http://www.kleio.org/en/history/famtree/sforza/350.html).

Thus on the Justice card, the horseman has changed from blond to dark hair. Ludovico was called “Il Moro” precisely because of his dark hair and other features. These cards would have been painted after the transition to the new de facto duke after Galeazzo’s death. Since the ruler changed, the identity of the King of Cups and the Justice horseman also changed. The switch not only helps date the later decks; it is further evidence that Galeazzo is on the earlier Justice and King of Cups. Galeazzo is also edited out of the other von Bartsch court cards, although I won’t take time here to show the contrasting images for these five cards.

From the samples I have showed, the similarity of the cards one to another, except in the faces, is striking. Dummett thinks that not only were they produced by the same workshop as the PMB, both first and second artist, and not only did they use sketches of the PMB figures to guide their work, but the actual cards themselves. Here is what he writes, in the article from which I have already quoted:

Sandrina Bandera, in the catalogue to the Brera exhibition of the three packs by Bonifacio Bembo, emphasises the production by the Bembo worhop of paintings and of decorated objects of all kinds; she also stresses the use by such workshops of “sketchbooks" containing standardized motifs which could be used in different works. Almost all of the fragmentary sets are probably authentic, and if the packs from which they derive were painted in Cremona, it thus seems likely that in the later XV or early XVI century the Colleoni pack was held in Cremona, and was available to artists to copy from. It must have been given to the city by some member of the ducal family who had a particular connection with Cremona.

By "Colleoni pack" Dummett means the PMB.  I have already quoted Dummett's particular suggestion for what member of the ducal family he has in mind, namely, Bianca Maria, whose city Cremona was, as a dowry gift from her father, and where she lived 1466-1468 immediately prior to her death. That is possible but not necessary, it seems to me. Sketchbooks could have been detailed enough to do the job; or the pack was loaned briefly to the Bembo so as to make careful sketches from which to make more decks.