[start p. 13]
UNDOCUMENTED PRELUDE
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 his been wonder-
[start p. 14]
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 nervousness 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 dell’arte, he will be known as the Little Juggler.
His car now moves on, and the triumphal car of Cupid appears, preceded 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 captives ride on the front of the car: The Empress and Emperor, Popess and Pope. Two of the cardinal virtues are Cupid's attendants: Temperance 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,It minces no words in describing Cupid's virility.
None other than the god of Cnidus. . . .
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 is. 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."
[start p. 15]
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 half ago. She had seriously been chosen. 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 himself 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 worshipful 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 Apocalypse, the angel, lion, ox, and eagle. At the front of the car stand actors impersonating the Sun, Moon, and Stars. Each sets off fireworks suitable 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
[start p. 16]
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! This fellow's no more God than you or me! 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 pills 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 Carnival is over. Now home and to rest, and tomorrow there will be a grand bonfire in the Piazza. Playing cards will go into it, some of them showing pictures of all the figures who have taken part in the last procession of Carnival.
[Intrusion by M. Howard: At this point Moakley starts having notes at the end of each section. I am instead going to put the notes with the text, at the bottom of the page; this should make it easier to go from text to notes. I noticed that the OCR program makes quite a few errors when it comes to the notes; links to my scans of the actual pages are at the end of the post. Here is chapter 1.]
[start p. 19]
1
THE CARDS AND THEIR MAKER
THE TAROCCHI, or tarot cards, reproduced in this book have never before been pictured all together, in their original order, and correctly identified.
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 modern 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 regulation 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 combination 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.(1).
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)
_________________
[note 1 taken from Moakley p. 24; note 2 from 24-25]
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 ("Arte", p 551). For Petrarch and the motto see Arch stor lomb XII (1885) 542.
2. For the date when Francesco Sforza adopted the three-ring device we have this negative 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, pl 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 he 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 quince branch, and adopted the Visconti arms of the quartered eagle and serpent, and at the same time the devices of the "tizzoni con le [start p. 25] 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 Storia di Milano v1.1 296. 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 let 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, pl 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.
[start p. 20]
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 background 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.(3) 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.(4) These six (Temperance, Fortitude, the Star, Moon, Sun, and World) continue to be ascribed to that artist. The modelling of the plump 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
_____________
[footnotes 3-6 moved from Moakley p. 25].
3. The description of the cards is taken almost verbatim from the catalog of the Pierpont 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.
4. 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 example of Bembo's work.
5. The mention of Butinone and Zenale is in Malaguzzi-Valeri (Corte iv 67). He mentions in this connection only the Sun, Moon, and World, two of which are the only cards with putti. It seems to me worth noting 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.
6. The information about the earliest supposed owners of the cards (Ambivero, the Donati family, and the first 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, II (Milano 1929) 502.
[start 21]
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.
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 transparent front, so that scholars may occasionally examine the cards with-
_________
[notes 7-8 taken from Moakley pp. 25-26]
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 possesso Belle succitate carte da gioco," he writes, "precisamente con atto notarile it 18 Ottobre 1900 -n, 235 atti pubbl. del Dott. Enrico Tiraboschi, Notaio."
[start 26]
Dr John H. Plummer, Curator, of Mediaeval and Renaissance Manuscripts for the Pierpont 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.
[start p. 22]
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 illustrated, and several other items. The tarocchi described here are supposed to be among his earliest work.(10)
From letters by or about Bembo we learn something about his 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 independent or accept Sforza or another noble as their Duke. Sforza became Duke of Milan in 1450, and afterwards Bembo received many commissions 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) commissioned 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:
In another scene the same Alexio was to be shown attacking the offending stag with his sword. In addition to the hunting scenes, instructions were given to paint Duke Giangaleazzo with all his servantsItem, that Alexio is to be shown being thrown from his horse by a stag, with his legs in the air.
_______________
[notes 9-11 moved from Moakley p. 26]
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 dal Visconti agli Sforza, p 80-81.
11. The letters which date Bembo's work are in Baroni. (Pittura, p 1o7ff). Salmi (Italian; p 46) gives further details of his work.
[start p. 23]
"da naturale," and likewise the Duchess Catelina. Other ancestral 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 Grisante" 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 frescoes 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 empathy 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
[start p. 24]
with great warriors of the past, among them Julius Caesar and Hannibal. There is a Milanese heartiness and good humor here which contrast attractively with the unearthly quality of Botticelli's contemporary paintings of his tubercular model, for example. One of the liveliest of the miniatures in the Ufiziolo 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 hellishness 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)
_________________
[notes 12-13 taken from Moakley p. 26]
12. 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).
13. For cards found in wells and cisterns see Novati ("Storia," p 65). For cheap cards from Ferrara see Malaguzzi-Valeri (Corte I 575).
[Links to notes:
11. The letters which date Bembo's work are in Baroni. (Pittura, p 1o7ff). Salmi (Italian; p 46) gives further details of his work.
[start p. 23]
"da naturale," and likewise the Duchess Catelina. Other ancestral 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 Grisante" 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 frescoes 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 empathy 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
[start p. 24]
with great warriors of the past, among them Julius Caesar and Hannibal. There is a Milanese heartiness and good humor here which contrast attractively with the unearthly quality of Botticelli's contemporary paintings of his tubercular model, for example. One of the liveliest of the miniatures in the Ufiziolo 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 hellishness 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)
_________________
[notes 12-13 taken from Moakley p. 26]
12. 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).
13. For cards found in wells and cisterns see Novati ("Storia," p 65). For cheap cards from Ferrara see Malaguzzi-Valeri (Corte I 575).
[Links to notes:
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