Updating Ch. 2 (Howard)

On the issue of Prince Fibbia, Michael Dummett wrote the following, in The Game of Tarot, pp. 66r-67l:

Doubt was cast upon the very existence of this painting by Robert Steele in his article of 1900, (13) and in this he was followed by Miss Gertrude Moakley in her book.(14) However, in another article written in the very next year, Steele acknowledged its existence, speaking of 'the famous inscription on the portrait of Castracani Fibbia (and stating that 'the portrait is now in the Palazzo Pallavicini in Bologna'.(15) It is not to Steele's credit that, in this article, he did not mention and withdraw his accusation against Count Cicognara. The existence of the portrait was confirmed by G.B. Cornelli in an article of 1909.(16) It is somewhat surprising that doubt about a point so relatively easily investigated should have been allowed to persist for so long.(17)

In fact, the portrait does exist, and tallies completely with Count Cicognara's description of it, including the inscription.. It is, however, far from being contemporary with its subject; by its style, it is to be assigned to the seventeenth century, and probably to the second half of that century. As recorded by Count Cicognara, it shows Prince Fibbia holding a pack of tarocco bolognese cards, some of which are falling to the floor: among them can be seen the Queen of Batons, bearing the Fibbia arms, and the Queen of Coins, bearing the Bentivoglio arms. The inscription is as quoted by Cicognara; but it appears that the original inscription was painted over and a new version painted on top, the original one having lacked the sentence ascribing to Prince Fibbia the invention of tarocchino and recording the privilege granted to him of placing his arms and those of his wife on the two Queens. The sentence may have been added to explain the presence of the playing cards in the picture.(18)

For the whole passage including the footnotes see http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1175  An alternative position, defending the Fibbia claim is that of Andrea Vitali at http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=107&lng=ENG

It is not only that the painting exists, and the cards with his insignia, but also Prince Fibbia himself, dying in precisely the year said in the inscription, 1419. This was not an easy fact to ascertain; Franco Pratesi confesses in a recent essay that he looked for Fibbia in the Bolognese documents and could not find him, but Vitali did. On the other hand, both the painting, with its inscription, and the cards are 17th century, two centuries after the event narrated. In the meantime even the word "tarocchi" has been lost, replaced by the word "tarocchini", meaning "little tarocchi"; it is a deck shortened by the removal of some of the number cards. Is it fact or legend? Many legends are simply not true. But he did exist and did die in the year stated.

Then there is the question of the deck allegedly made for Cardinal Ascanio Sforza in 1484. Moakley correctly points out that the existence of such a passage as that cited by Cicognara about his famous ancestor is dubious, given that others have looked and not found it, and that Cicognara's source was a notorious forger. She says:

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 supposed notes of Giacomo Torresino reported in Count Cicognara's book had no foundation in fact.

A problem is that by the time Gualazzini checked Torresino, the pagination indicates that pages of the source are missing:

Gian Giacomo Torresino was a XVI-century jurist and student of Cremonese antiquities. He kept a notebook each page of which was devoted to a single year, and on which he entered quotations from various sources relating to Cremonese events of that year. It, or what remains of it, can be seen at the Biblioteca Statale in Cremona, catalogued under Torresino's name as 'suoi scartafacci' [his notebooks]. The first year for which there is a page is 990, the last 1473, although what appears to be a table of contents refers to years between 800 and 1590. In his book, Count Leopoldo added that the passage had been communicated to him by Mgr. Antonio Dragoni.

So the years 1474-1590 of Torresino's notebook are missing, and the event in question is in 1484. Dragoni is of course the nefarious forger. But perhaps here he was telling the truth. In that case, there may well have been such a deck, made by his ancestor Antonio, just as Leopoldo said. He said nothing, at least in what is quoted, about that deck being the PMB now in New York and Bergamo. That was other people's conclusion. A later collector may or may not have combined cards from the two decks, if by then many were missing from the later deck's lower triumphs. 1484 perfectly fits the years Antonio was active; we would expect cards to be earlier rather than late. Cicognara and others may well have made several such luxury decks a that time. 

Moakley returns to Cicognara in discussing another group of cards very similar to the 6 added cards, in which the initials "A. C." appear on one of the cards. She writes, in footnote 11 (hence my small print):

A strange sidelight on the Cicognara mix-up is a set of thirteen cards all at one time owned by Mr Piero Tozzi of New York, who still has some of them. He believes they are part of an extra set made at the same time, and by the same artist, as our set. Unfortunately, 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 Connoisseur (March 1954, p 54-60) and reproduced there in color. I am grateful to Mr Tozzi [start p. 34] 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.

Of this Dummett said, in Game of Tarot, footnote 22, starting on p. 70 (same link as above):

Miss Moakley, in her book cited in footnote 24, draws attention to the initials ' A. C.' on the base of the throne of the King of Swords in the Tozzi set. She thinks that these initials are intended as those of Antonio Cicognara, a painter to whom many authorities have credited various surviving fifteenth-century Italian tarocchi. ... Now Miss Moakley was convinced that the quotation was spurious, and hence that there was no reason to suppose that Antonio Cicognara ever painted any Tarot cards at all. Hence she advanced two alternative hypotheses: that the initials "A. C." had been added some time after 1831; or that the entire set was a modern forgery. The second hypothesis is surely unlikely: a forger would either have made the cards more unlike the Visconti-Sforza ones, to reduce the suspicion of forgery, or have made them exact copies, so as to throw doubt on which was the original, which the copy. Whether Miss Moakley's first hypothesis is correct, or whether the initials have some altogether different significance, I cannot say.

So much for documents and the written word. Meanwhile, the art historians are convinced that the 6 added cards are in fact by Antonio Cicognara, based on matters of technique.

The rest of Chapter 2 discusses a subject of considerable importance that is rarely talked about, namely, cataloguers, of which Moakley numbers herself, as how she makes a living. How reliable are they? In Moakley's view they are very unreliable--except, of course, for her, who as a researcher has discovered the truth. Cataloguers do not have time to research every acquisition that does not wear its title on its cover, and they are as good as their sources, the reliability of which varies with the times. With that in mind, she argues that both Cicognara and the Pierpont-Morgan's cataloguer are based on the spurious theories of Court de Gebelin.

Unfortunately her presentation is rather confused. Court de Gebelin published two accounts, one by him and the other by the C. de M., as the Count de Mellet styled himself. Moakley recounts de Mellet's account only, calling it de Gebelin's:

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 man and woman precipitated from the earthly Paradise, XV The. Devil, bringing to an end the Golden Age.

But she misrepresents him. He clearly says that the 21st represents the "l'Universe"; that indeed is one meanng of the word "Monde" on the bottom of the card (http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Recherch ... les_Tarots). He identifies the lady in the middle as Isis, but that is not for him the title of the card, but rather its hidden meaning. The second card is called "Jugement", even if what is expressed is the "creation of man". As for the rest, he doesn't give their names--which, after all, are right on the cards--but rather what they "express". So the 19th expresses "the creation of the Sun, which illuminates man and woman", and so on. De Mellet is simply adding his glosses to the titles that are given right there on the "Tarot de Besancon" card, as his proposals for what these cards are really about, the Golden Age.

Meanwhile, the cataloguer is faced with a problem. Is he or she supposed to put the "meaning" of the cards in addition to their title. And if so, meaning according to whom? And what title? Suppose the cards have no titles? Should there be a description of what is literally depicted. It is often not clear what is depicted. So we come to Cicognara's list, which Moakley thinks is influenced by de Gebelin.

Here is Cicognara's list: Mondo, Giudizio, Sole, Luna, Li sette pianeti, Il castello di Pluto, Tifone, Temperanza, Morte, Prudenza, Forza, Ruota della Fortuna, Saggio o Filosofo, Giustitia, Osiride, Matrimonio, Jerofante (Papa), Re, Regina, Sacerdotessa o Papessa, Giocolatore, Matto.

And here is de Gebelin (http://www.tarock.info/gebelin.htm):

Le Tems mal nommé le Monde ... Tableau mal nommé le Jugement dernier ... Canicule...intitulé l'Etoile ... Maison-Dieu ou Château de Plutus ... Typhon .... Tempérance ... Mort .... Prudence ... Force ... Roue de la Fortune ... Sage ou le Chercheur de la Vérité & du Juste ... Justice ...Osiris Triomphant ... Mariage ...Grand-Prêtre .... Roi ... Reine ... Grande-Prêtresse ... Jouer de Gobelets, ou Bateleur ... Fou

But what is Cicognara reporting? We don't know how he has introduced this list. Could he be describing an actual deck produced in Italy at his time? If so, I don't know what it is, but it is believable. Card makers read de Gebelin and wanted to keep up with the times. All kinds of words were put on cards. If not an actual deck, then perhaps he is giving what the cards were called by people he knew. In fact, although the list does not fit the list that she quoted as de Gebelin's, it does precisely fit de Gebelin's own proposed titles. Again we have to remember that de Gebelin was proposing, not describing: the titles did not need to be described, they were there on the Tarot de Marseille cards. If Cicognara is describing the tarot as it was conceived in his time, is he wrong to do so?

However the poor cataloguer is faced with a problem. Not knowing when the objects in front of her were made, or what similar objects were called in the time in question, what is she to do? Well, she has to use some source. I'd say: use the best you know, and state what it is. Moakley mentions in a footnote that the Pierpont Morgan had a list of the sources used. Moakley apparently didn't see it. Did she ask for it? Before criticizing others, it is always best to check the sources of the person you are criticizing. I hope they didn't throw the list away.

She does give us some of what the Pierpont Morgan's cataloguing says, if not its sources. (I put where they are located in brackets: M=Morgan; A=Accademia Carrera, Bergamo:

The Juggler [M] was called Castle of Plutus and the Empress [M], Queen of Staves; despite the fact that the set has another card which really is the Queen of Staves [A], 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 [A] was identified as the Queen of Swords, even though this showed a duplication of the actual Queen of Swords [M] which is still part of the set. The World [A] 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 Knights of Cups [M], although one is on foot and therefore most certainly a Page [M].

And footnote 6:

6. I conclude that the cards were catalogued after they had been separated because otherwise we could hardly have had two Castles of Pluto.

You notice that the duplication is always with cards held in different places, except for the two Knights of Cups. Why there were two Knights of Cups is still not very clear, as there are still four court cards in Cups, since neither of the males in New York has a crown.

"Plutus" and "Pluto" are in fact different gods, the one the Greek god of wealth and the other the Roman god of the underworld. However the cataloguer may be taking the PMB World card as a card with the same title as that of the first card in a different deck, because of the "sometimes represented as a city in Heaven" in footnote 7 (below). In fact we don't really know what the PMB World card was called. It looks more like a castle or a city than a world.

For the rest, the problem is indeed that the cards were separated. So yes, it is important to know what cards of the same deck look like that are held by other collections, and to watch for telltale attributes that separate one card's identity from another. We still have that problem today (e.g. in identifying the Rothschild cards).

In a footnote she has more:

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 entry (as of 1959 — no doubt these cards will be recatalogued as soon as the facts about them become absolutely certain, 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 Mercury 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 (generally represented as Osiris in his triumphal car, the symbol of war in the age 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.

Yes, de Gebelin is there as "Castle of Plutus" ,"Philosopher", "Prudence", "poised on one foot", and "Osiris in his truimphal car"; de Mellet is in "opening the age of silver" and "symbol of war in the age of bronze". On the other hand, there is the qualifier "generally" for the chariot, as if the cataloger knew it wasn't Osiris on a war chariot, and "sometimes" for the man upright on one foot. In fact this man was standardly upright in the "Belgian" tarot throughout 18th century, see http://i-p-c-s.org/pattern/ps-19.html). Imperiali (1550) even called the card "prudence", (viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1160&p=18800&hilit=Imperiali+prudence#p18800). Hermits usually do have lanterns. While Time "makes sense", the usual term then was "hunchback" or "old man". But it is true that the cataloguer didn't give any description of the actual cards being catalogued, except the lame attempt to do justice to a card put in the wrong envelope, the Bagatella (as I would call it).

Perhaps Moakley is saying: don't describe the general in lieu of the particular. But if so, why use a list from a different region of Italy 100 years later (Bertoni) to describe the particular cards in front of us? When there are no titles on the cards and no contemporary accounts from the same place, we are inevitably driven to use particulars as though they were generalities. It is only a matter of degree. But at least we can have some humility about it. What we don't know, we don't know, and can only make rational guesses among alternative hypotheses. The guesses are relative to what the guesser knows at a particular time and place. So what seems absurd at one time may look rational at another. Hopefully the reasons for choices are recorded, and nobody throws anything away from one's predecessors. The history of the name assigned is part of the history of the card.

Moakley observes that "no doubt these cards will be re-catalogued as soon as the facts about them become absolutely certain, but no library wants to incur the expense of recataloguing until that happens." Since it is unlikely that the relevant facts about these cards--titles, order--will ever be "absolutely certain", on that reasoning, they will never update their cataloguing. In fact that is true of many libraries. The British Museum website is an online catalog. Some of its entries for tarot images are based on 1876 information that has been out of date since at least 1909, despite the absolute certainty of the information, as Ross once gently prodded me into realizing (viewtopic.php?f=12&t=334&hilit=moors+british&start=250). They should have a place where we can email when we spot errors, and someone to make the judgments as to what's correct.

In this context it might be useful to look at the list of triumphs at Yale, which were catalogued in the 1980s (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collec ... onti-tarot). It goes as follows, leaving off the suit-assignments for now: Empress, Emperor, Love, Chariot, Fortitude, Faith, Hope, Charity, Chariot, Death, (no caption, scene of castles), (no caption, scene of people in tombs). I see no translation issues. The titles fit not only later decks in Milan but also depictions of these types in other art. This list seems to me not to be influenced by any cataloguing prejudice. It does not seem the sort of thing a cataloguer would make up, on the basis of descriptions of other decks. For example, the cataloguer put "Love" as one title, as opposed to "Lover" or "Lovers", as has been done since the 17th century. Even then, why isn't there at least the caption "Angel" or "Judgment" on the last card. And why would it be last, since all the lists of Lombardy have it next to last? The order here also does not correspond to the Minchiate order of these particular cards. The only problem is that there are no sources given and no explanations.That is not helpful to the researcher.But itt surely didn't come out of thin air. I will come back to the issue of the Cary-Yale cataloguing in my comments on Moakley's next chapter.

In footnote 9 Moakley makes a laudatory comment about A.E. Waite:

The best and most amusing account of the growth of occult Tarotisrn is in Arthur E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, pt 1, section 4: "The Tarot in History."

Looking there, I find that it is devoted to debunking the idea that tarot has an Egyptian origin, saying of de Gebelin in particular (http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/pkt0104.htm):

.. he set the opinion which is prevalent to this day throughout the occult schools, that in the mystery and wonder, the strange night of the gods, the unknown tongue and the undeciphered hieroglyphics which symbolized Egypt at the end of the eighteenth century, the origin of the cards was lost. So dreamed one of the characteristic literati of France, and one can almost understand and sympathize, for the country about the Delta and the Nile was beginning to loom largely in the preoccupation of learned thought, and omne ignolum pro Ægyptiaco was the way of delusion to which many minds tended. It was excusable enough then, but that the madness has continued and, within the charmed circle of the occult sciences, still passes from mouth to mouth--there is no excuse for this.

and ending:

We have now seen that there is no particle of evidence for the Egyptian origin of Tarot cards.

It is nice to know that occultism and respect for historical evidence could go together for one of the tarot's most celebrated proponents. And that Moakley admired that.