Domenico di Giovanni (Burchiello) - Matteo Maria Boiardo - Anonymous - Pietro Aretino - Teofilo Folengo (Merlin Cocai) - Paolo Giovio - Ludovico Ariosto - Flavio Alberto Lollio - Vincenzo Imperiali - Giovanni Maria Cecchi - Giovan Battista Marino - Alessandro Tassoni - Torquato Tasso - Vincenzo Belando - Baltasar Gracián y Morales - Emanuele Tesauro - Troilo Pomeran - Girolamo Bargagli. 


Tarot has been the object of numerous literary writings since the XVI century. The essays Tarot in Literature I, II, and III, are intended to bring together, far from exhaustively, some of the most important passages and give some brief information on each. For other documents on the same theme, please see the essays: La Cassaria by Ariosto; The Theatre of Brain; The Hospital of Incurable Madman; Mundus Alter et Idem; Il Malmantile Racquistato; Triumphs, Trionfini and Trionfetti; Tarot in Literature II; I Tarocchi  in Letteratura III; Farsa Satyra Morale; Taroch: nulla latina ratione; My heart has become a "Taroch" ; Taroch - 1494;  Taroch: vulgar Latin and, at the moment only in  Italian version, Giordano Bruno e i Tarocchi ; I Sermoni del Giusti ; Il Tasso e i Tarocchi; Giulio Cesare Croce e i Tarocchi; Scrivendo e Taroccando; Saggia Pazzia - Piacevole Pazzia; Il Gioco del Bagattutiltimo. See also in the "Host Essays" the article edited by Giordano Berti I Trionfi de' Tarrochi di G. C. Croce - Lotto festevole, fatto in Villa, fra una nobil schiera di Cavalieri & di Dame,/con i Trionfi de Tarrochi, esplicati in / lode delle dette Dame (The Tarot Triumphs by G. C. Croce -  Festive Game made in Villa, in a noble crowd of Knights and Ladies, / with the Tarot Triumphs, explained for /the pleasure of these Ladies) (1602). About Le Carte Parlanti (The Talking Cards) by Pietro Aretino, quoted here, it is possible to read some passages in the articles Symbolic Suits and The Theatre of Brain. 

                                                                                      
                                                                                     .........................................

                                      

                            Here everything's grace and beauty.                       But among such joy and playing,

                            And such gentle hands,                                                 Take care, sweet young ladies

                            To hold such happy cards.                                            Not to be burned by the Fire of Love

                      

                                                                                           (figure 1)

 

From Le Pitture di Pellegrino Tibaldi e di Nicolò Abbati, descritte ed illustrate da Giampietro Zanotti (The paintings of Pellegrino Tibaldi and Nicolò Abbati, described and illustrated by Giampietro Zanotti), Venice, 1756.


A mistake about Burchiello

 

Before starting to examine the documents that are the subject of this analysis, we would like to underline the mistake made by some tarot historians who have connected the term Triomphi, quoted in one of the Sonnets by Burchiello, to the Tarot cards,  when it is unequivocally the fact that  the author is referring to the Trionfi of Petrarch. The works of Burchiello (nickname of  Domenico di Giovanni) had great diffusion and for this reason were objects of much interpolation and remaking. Burchiello lived from 1404 to 1449 and was a professional barber in Florence; his shop became a veritable art circle that gave hospitality to poets and artists of every kind. In about 1440 - tarot had already appeared almost twenty years before with the name of Triumphs - he composed some sonnets that were collected with those of others under the title Sonetti del Burchiello, del Bellincioni e d’altri poeti fiorentini alla burchiellesca (Sonnets by Burchiello, Bellincioni and other Florentine poets in the burchiello style).  The printed edition, edited very late, in 1757, and which seems even to have been published in London (but in Livorno, actually), takes for granted that the sonnets are by our author.

                                                                           


Burchiello’s cultural position is clearly that of derisory parody of the project and values of Humanism. His real originality is expressed in the sonnets “alla burchia”, so called probably  because they referred (even if not directly) to the French tradition of “boat” verses (burchia: boat), which is to say, mixed at random, like the goods on river boats. Examples of this are the notable verses of his most famous sonnet, which, according to some critics, hide double meanings, primarily of an obscene type (impossible to translate into English):

 
Nominativi fritti, e Mappamondi,
E l'Arca di Noè fra due colonne
Cantavan tutti Chirieleisonne
Per l'influenza de' taglier mal tondi

 

To underline the mistake of attribution mentioned earlier, we report the whole Sonnet XXXI “Se tu volessi fare un buon minuto” (If you would take a good moment):

 

SONNETT XXXI

Se tu volessi fare un buon minuto,
togli Aretini et Orvietani e Bessi,
e sarti mulattieri bugiardi e messi,
e fa’ che ciaschedun sie ben battuto;
poi gli condisci con uno scrignuto
e per sale vi trita entro votacessi,
e per agresto minchiatar fra essi
accioché sia di tutto ben compiuto.
Spècchiati ne’ Triomphi, el gran mescuglio
d’arme, d’amor, di Bruti e di Catoni
con femine e poeti in guazabuglio:
questi fanno patire i maccheroni
veghiando il verno, e meriggiando il luglio
dormir pegli scriptoi i mocciconi,
Dè parliàn de’ moscioni,
quanta gratia ha il ciel donato loro,
che trassinando merda si fa d’oro

The Sonnet shows itself as a critique against idlers, false literati, the falsely learned, who are totally useless to society, of whom it would be better to be rid. The verses erroneously interpreted as referring to the tarot are the following:

 

Spècchiati ne’ Triomphi, el gran mescuglio
d’arme, d’amor, di Bruti e di Catoni

See yourself in the Triumphs, the great mix
Of arms, loves, Brutuses and Catos.

 

The verse “the great mix of arms, loves” could at first sight be understood as referring to the tarot: Love is represented in the VI Triumph, while the arms could remind us of the armour of various characters in the Triumphs. If we also consider that Cato is in the so-called Sola Busca Tarots (1), the attribution of these verses to Triumphs or tarots appears plausible. To understand fully the true meaning (2), which is that the Triumphs indicated by Burchiello refer to the work by Petrarch and not to the tarot Triumphs, it is necessary to consider the whole stanza in which the quoted verses appear:

 

Spècchiati ne’ Triomphi, el gran mescuglio
d’arme, d’amor, di Bruti e di Catoni
con femine e poeti in guazabuglio:
questi fanno patire i maccheroni
veghiando il verno, e meriggiando il luglio
dormir pegli scriptoi i mocciconi,

See yourself in the Triumphs, in that mix
of arms, loves, Brutuses and Catos,
a jumble of women and poets:
these Triumphs make fools suffer
and stay awake in wintertime
and make idiots sleep
on their writing desks in summer

“Women” are present in Tarot cards, but there are not in them poets, who abound instead, together with a great variety of women, in Petrarch; but the next verses are really clarifying. First of all it is necessary to consider the meaning of “macaroni” (3), a term that in the Renaissance meant “fool”. Let’s read again the verses: “These (the Petrarch Triumphs) make fools suffer and stay awake in wintertime and make idiots (4) sleep on their writing desks in summer" (5). To understand Petrarch’s Triumphs, it was necessary to have a sharp literary mind, not a foolish one: for that kind of mind it would have been impossible to disentangle that great jumble of arms and loves, women and poets, Brutuses and Catos that we find in the work.

 

Boiardo

 

Boiardo was author of various tercets united under the name of Cinque Capituli, sopra el Timore, Zelosia, Speranza, Amore et uno Trionfo del Mondo (Five Chapters, about Fear, Jealousy, Hope, Love and one Triumph of the World) (6). 

                                                                       


The first four chapters allude to the suits of the cards (figure 2) while the fifth, structured in 22 tercets, refers to Triumphs. It wouldn’t have been easy to connect this work to tarot if the author hadn't inserted at the end of his work two sonnets: in the second, called Sonetto Escusato (Excuse Sonnet), he apologizes to his readers for having created this piece, while with the first, called Argumento de li detti capituli di Mattheo Maria Boiardo sopra un nuovo gioco di carte (Argument of the chapters by Matteo Maria Boiardo on a new game of cards), the author offers the true interpretative key of the work. The relationship between the figures of the Triumphs and the abstract subject matters of each tercet is not immediately clear, and this means that Boiardo, while composing his verses, was referring to a classically didactic tarot deck such as the Sola-Busca Tarot (1). Since the work has already been the subject of various competent analyses, it is considered unnecessary repeat the text and interpretation.

A poet in love

 

In Ferrara of the XVI century two sonnets (7) were dedicated to a noblewoman from an admirer who used various triumphs to describe the beauty of the woman and the strategy to conquer her.  The first of these two sonnets (figure 3) can be interpreted as a burlesque satire written by a man in love refused by his beloved as a tarot player. The woman preferred one of his rivals, a certain Giovanmaria, considered a fool by everybody. Jealousy, envy and rage give to the author words full of harshness towards both his beloved and his rival. This is its translation in current Italian:

“The house of the lady Mother Riminaldi can appear a Paradise, given the beauty of the woman who owns the house, the breadth of the road that surrounds the palace,  and the games and songs full of gaiety that continuously echo; but into this Paradise only those may enter who do not play tarot, such as that “famous madman” who is Giovanmaria. And if such a one as he can enter, it means that for one to hope to get in there, it is better to be without intellect, since every fool goes to Paradise”.

 

Here is the second sonnet (figure 4).

 

Par che l’angel, la stella, il sol, la luna
Col mondo, et chi con lui di viver brama, 
Odiano la beltà, che il ciel aduna 
Nel viso altier de la signora Mama. 
Forsi per esser tra le Dee queste una 
Che lor spogli del ben, che ‘l valor ama, 
O pur, per che ne morte, o ria fortuna 
Dal fermo suo voler maj la richiama: 
Però dee creder fermamente ognuno
Ch’un spirito malvagio habbia costei 
Supposta solamente al Bagattino, 
Per poter dire i buon tarocchi mej
Saran, s’avien ch’io giuochi, et questi uno
Vo trarre il Matto che ‘è cervel divino.

 

Because the angel, the star, the sun, the moon,
With the world, and the one who craves living,
Hate the beauty that the sky concentrates
In the proud face of the Lady Mother.
That from them is stripped of good, those who love valor,
Or maybe, because neither death nor bad fortune
Deters the firmness of her will:
But all must firmly believe
That a malevolent spirit has her,
Submitting only to the small Magician,
So that to be able to say the good tarots will be
Mine, I have to play, and this one card
I draw will be the Fool, which is the divine brain.

The Divine Aretino

 

Another important literary figure who wrote about tarot is Pietro Aretino. His work Le Carte Parlanti (The Talking Cards) (8) is composed in the form of a dialogue between the "talking" cards, and an artist who depicted them called "Paduvano", i.e. "the Paduan." for his birthplace. In this work, which in the beginning bore the title Dialogue of the divine Aretino in which he speaks of the games with an agreeable morality, Aretino also proposes an examination of the meaning of the tarot Trumps, in which transpires, accented with an evident sarcasm, an attitude of respectful homage towards cards and games.  Really, if used with proper moderation, card games are exalted  in many respects, as capable of teaching constancy, perseverance, attention, and how to lose and administer money with care and also the right amount of risk.

 

                                                                        

His interpretation of the Trumps is inspired above all by the emotions of the players and the consequences that the game induces in its practitioners. The resulting interpretations are sometimes very interesting, with content of a nearly doctrinal character; for example we find proposals about the heavenly bodies (Sun, Moon, Stars), Justice, the Angel, the Tower and the Popess. Regarding the three luminaries and the zodiacal signs, the interpretation, here as elsewhere in the Trumps, is consistent for the most part with what is presented in the Florentine tarots (in this case that the game can be played at every hour of the day and night); we even find the concept that "no glass can be broken down on earth if that which is above doesn't allow it", the reason for which is that "Heaven intervenes in the whole group" of the cards.

 

The presence of Justice and the Angel is defined as a necessity, the first to avoid deception even in things almost impossible to do without fraud, and the second as the beatitude reserved for those who have lived in suffering. Concerning the Tower, here called "Mansion of Pluto", the author's interpretation underlines what I have expressed about this Trump (please read the essay concerned), where the God of Hell "drags to the accursed house everyone who lacks the prudence, the temperance and the strength portrayed on the cards". Of interest also is the evaluation of the Popess, from which results an unequivocal relation with Popess Joan. Aretino actually writes that she "is there for the shrewdness of those who defraud our being with falsehoods that falsify us". Even if nowadays we give to the Popess card the meaning of Christian faith, referring to the Mystical Staircase that the whole 22 Trumps signify, it is evident how much the myth of Popess Joan was present in the collective imagination of the Renaissance. Using tarots, Aretino also composed a famous satire (reported below under the entry “The satires”) and cited the tarot in the work La Talanta.

 

La Talanta, a comedy in five acts inspired to Terence  (Eunuchus) and Plautus (Miles gloriosus and Menaechmi), was commissioned to Aretino by the Venetian Company of the Sempiterni and was presented in Venice in 1542 with set design by Vasari. The plot takes place in Rome and tells the story of a modern Taide, Talanta, courted by four men of different ages and social conditions: the young Orfinio, the old Messer Vergolo (from Venice), and the elder Tinca (from Naples) and Armileo (from Rome). This last pretends to love her by frequenting her house,  where the slave Stellina also lives, the young girl whom he is really in love with. After kidnappings, escapes, imprisonments, disguises and a finale of sudden revelations (9), Talanta will give her love freely to Orfinio. 

I give the beginning of Act III Scene XII, where the following occurs between the parasite Branca and Captain Tinca.

 
Here are the original lines, followed by a translation.

 

Tinca: A. ferirmi tu ? volsi dire, afferrimi tu ?
Branca. Mi vi pare avere.
Tinca: Io le ne ho donata prima, perch'io l'amo, e poi per tormi dinanzi il pericolo de l'avermi a condurre in duello con non so chi Armileo, che la civettava d'ogni ora.
Branca: Me ne ero accorto, per essermene avvisto.
Tinca: Be, il dono le ha cavato l' anima eh ?
Branca: Non, si potrebbe dire.
Tinca: Quei poveracci, che denno portar le altre cose, rinnegavano ah ?
Branca:  Pensatel voi
Tinca: Rodevano i catenacci dentro in casa, o pur di fuori?
Branca: Da ogni banda.
Tinca: Che grafie rendette ella a coloro, che le mandarono i presenti?
Branca: Quelle, che renderebbe il Tevere a chi gettasse dentro un tesoro .
Tinca: Magnificando solamente la mia magnifica magnificenzia eh?
Branca: Padre sì.
Tinca. Toccossi punto de le mie prove?
Branca:  Non ve ne ragguaglio, per non parere adulatore .
Tinca: Le pajon grandi, n'è vero?
Branca. Grandissimi.
Tinca:  Adunque ella mi tiene per uno Ettor Trojano ?
Branca: Più ancora.
Tinca. Stimandomi fortemente ?
Branca: Ben sapete .
Tinca: Me ne congratulo.
Branca: Avete ben ragione di farlo.
Tinca: Di donde si cominciò il ragionamento?
Branca: Da l' organo de la voce; e dice, che bisogna che le orecchie, che l' ascoltano, abbino un buon nerbo.
Tinca:. Sua Maestà la commendò quasi in simil senso .
Branca. Per vostra fe .
Tinca: Dicendo, che ella rimbombava ne' petti, come i tuoni ne l' aria.
Branca: Sua Altézza vorria sentirvi fare un proemio a l’ esercito .
Tinca: Ella diventarebbe una Marfisa, udendo ciò, perocchè la mia eloquenza metterìa cuore a' tarocchi.
Branca: Bella similitudine!
Etc.

 

(Tinca. Did you hurt me -- I mean, understand me?
Branca. It seems to me that I did.
Tinca. I gave it to her, firstly, because I love her, but also so to avoid the danger of having a duel with somebody named Armileo, who was flirting with her at all hours.
Branca. I was aware of it, being in its sight.
Tinca. Well, the gift captured her soul, eh?
Branca. No, if I could say it.
Tinca. And those poor creatures who brought the other things, they were denied?
Branca. You may think so.
Tinca. And did they gnash their teeth inside the house, or only outside?
Branca. In every group.
Tinca. And what did she answer to those who sent her presents?
Branca. The sort that the Tiber would give, to one who might throw in a treasure.
Tinca. Only glorifying my own magnificent magnificence, eh?
Branca. Holy Father, yes.
Tinca. Were the points of my exploits touched upon?
Branca. I am not going to list them, so as not to appear a flatterer.
Tinca. Great hymns of praise, isn't it so?
Branca. The greatest.
Tinca. So she holds me as a Hector of Troy?
Branca. Still more.
Tinca. Esteeming me strongly?
Branca. You know well.
Tinca. I congratulate myself.
Branca. You have good reason to.
Tinca. Where did the presentation begin?
Branca. With the organ of your voice. She said that to listen, the ears needed to be coupled with a backbone [i.e. courage].
Tinca. His Majesty has commended it in much the same way.
Branca. For your "fa".
Tinca. Saying that it resounded in the chest like the thunder in the air.
Branca. His Highness would feel like making you the introduction to an [army] exercise.
Tinca. She would become a Marfisa [warrior-queen in Orlando Furioso, who falls in love with Ruggiero], hearing me, because my eloquence would move the hearts of tarocchi.
Branca. A beautiful simile.)

Tinca's last speech affirms him to have so persuasive an eloquence as to be able to touch and soften even tarots: “since my eloquence could move the hearts of tarots ”. Here, we must understand the word Tarots with the meaning of "Knaves", but also of crazy, stupid, idiotic people, who do not know feelings. To understand the existing relationship between these categories of persons and the name assigned to Tarot cards, see the essays About the etymology of Tarot and Taroch - 1494.

The macaronic Merlin Cocai

 

The unquestioned master of the so-called macaronic literary genre was Teofilo Folengo of Mantua. Under the pseudonym of Merlin Cocai, he wrote, in his work Caos del Tri per uno, ovvero dialogo delle Tre etadi (Chaos of Three for one, or dialogue of the three  ages) (10), one of the very first proofs of the divinatory use of triumphs. Triperuno (Threeforone) tells his friend Limerno that he  had been brought the day before by four people to a room “where, as they found the triumph playing cards, they divided them casually and, to me, each of them told  of the triumphs they had, praying me to write a sonnet upon those cards”. The four divinations in verse are followed by a fifth sonnet, always centred on tarot. The sonnet that Triperuno composed for Giuberto,  on the basis of the cards he drew--Justice, the Angel, the Devil, the Fire and Love--explained: the fire of love, even if it apparently is an angel, actually it is a devil, so if there is malice there cannot justice.

 

Quando ‘l Foco d'Amor, che m'arde ognora,
penso e ripenso, fra me stesso i' dico:
Angiol di Dio non è, ma lo nemico
che la Giustizia spinse del ciel fora.
Ed è pur chi qual Angiolo l’adora,
chiamando le sue fiamme «dolce intrico».
Ma nego ciò, che di Giustizia amico
non mai fu chi in Demonio s'innamora.
Amor di donna è ardor d’un spirto nero,
lo cui viso se ‘n gli occhi un Angiol pare,
non t’ingannar, eh’ è fraude e non Giustizia.
Giustizia esser non puote, ove malizia
ripose de sue faci il crudo arciero,
per cui Satàn Angiol di luce appare.

 

When I consider and consider again the fire of Love
that always burns me, I say to myself:
This is not an Angel of God, but the enemy
that Justice drove out of heaven.
And some still adore him as an Angel,
calling his flames a “sweet tangle”.
I deny this: one who falls in love with the Devil
never was a friend to Justice.
The love of a woman is the ardour of a black spirit,
whose face appears in his eyes to be an Angel,
but do not be deceived: it is a fraud, not Justice.
There can be no Justice, where the cruel
archer has maliciously placed his flames,
so that Satan looks like an Angel of light.

 
In the fifth sonnet are listed, even if in casual order, all  22 Triumphs:

 

Amor, sotto ’l cui impero molte imprese
Van senza tempo sciolte da fortuna,
vide morte su ’l carro orrenda e bruna
volger fra quanta gente al mondo prese.
Per qual giustizia, disse, a te si rese
Né papa mai, né papessa alcuna?
Rispose: chi col sol fece la luna
Tolse contra mie forze lor difese,
Sciocco qual sei, quel foco, disse amore,
ch’or angiol or demonio appare, come
temprar sannosi altrui sotto mia stella.
Tu imperatrice ai corpi sei, ma un cuore
Benché sospendi, non uccidi, e un nome
Sol d’alta fama tienti un bagatella.

 

Love, under whose empire many deeds
go, lacking time, dissipating fortune
saw ugly and dark death on a chariot,
weaving among the many people taken in the world.
It [Death] said: by what justice, to you was rendered
neither pope nor, if there be one, papesse?
The answer [of Love]: He who with the sun made the moon
defended them from my strength.
What a fool you are, continued Love, my fire,
that can appear as an angel or as a devil,
can be tempered by those who live under my star.
You are empress of bodies, but although you
can hang a heart, you can't kill it, and a name
Of high fame remains a small Magician .

 

 The Satires

 

A further literary aspects, centred on tarots, was the satire. Giovio (11) (figure 5 - figure 6) and other illustrious personages or anonymous, composed many of them. Among the most famous, we want to remind the one by Aretino, the Pasquinata per l’elezione di Adriano VI  (Lampoon for the election of Adrian VI) (12), which appeared in Rome in 1521 (figure 7 - figure 8). The Conclave was opened on December the 27^th 1521 and closes on January the 9^th 1522 with the election as pope of Adrian Dedel (Adrian VI). Since no one of the Cardinals seemed to obtain the majority necessary for the election, Aretino wrote that the decision was that to make each of them to pick up a tarot card and the one who would have drawn the homonymous card would have been the Pope.  Aretino selected 22 among the 39 cardinals who really gathered in that conclave and wanted to be elected. In spite of this, the card of the Pope was impossible to be found. The clear intention was to prove that no one of the cardinals deserved to sit on the throne of Saint Peter. Aretino end his work writing that the cardinals, seeing the lack of the card of the Pope among the ones distributed, decided to go and search it and so the story ends: “While everyone tries, / Mantua, Siena, Farnese going around / found a card, but it was an ace”.

 

Venti duo cardinal senza romore
giucavano a tarocchi in la lor cella;
fe' Medici e mischiò, poi diè la stella
a Farnese, ad Egidio il traditore;
a Santa Croce diè lo 'mperadore,
Vico ebbe il sol, Grimano il bagatella
Grassi l'imperatrice e poi la bella
papessa Como, Mantova l'amore.
Ancona il mondo e l'angelo l'Orsino,
il matto Siena e Monte ebbe la luna,
la iustizia Colonna, el Soderino
il diavol, Flisco ruota di fortuna
Punzetta il vecchio, il carro l'Armellino,
la casa il frate in vesta bianca e bruna,
san Francesco n'ebbe una,
ciò fu tempranzia e Jacobacci morte,
Santi Quattro fortezza e stavan forte.
In questo furon scorte
le carte e restò Medici una crapa,
quando s'avvide ch'era fatto papa.
Onde smorto qual rapa,
disse: "Il papa mi tocca e non lo tegno."
Rispose il Soderin: "Non ne se' degno."
Mossonsi tutti a sdegno,
e tra lor ferno questa legge nuova,
che papa sia quello che lo ritrova.
Mentre ciascun si prova,
Mantoa, Siena, Farnese andando a spasso,
una carta trovorno, ma fu un asso

 

Twenty-two cardinals making no noise
Were playing tarots into their cellars;
Cardinal Medici took the deck and shuffled it, then gave the card of the star
To Farnese, the traitor to Egidio;
To Santa Croce gave the emperor,
Vico had the sun. Grimano the magician,
Grassi the empress and Como the beautiful
Popess, Mantua had love.
Ancona had the world and Orsino the angel,
Siene the fool and Monte had the moon,
Colonna had Justice, Soderino
The devil, Flisco the wheel of fortune,
Punzetta had the old man, Arnellino the chariot,
The monk white and black dresses, the house,
Sanfrancesco had the Temperance and Jacobacci death,
Santi Quattro had fortress and they all were nervous.
At this point the cards were shown
And Medici had nothing
When he realized he would have got the card of the pope
So, pale as a turnip,
He said: “I should have the card of the Pope and I haven’t got it”.
Soderin answered “You do not deserve it”.
Everyone was outraged
And they created this new law,
That the pope would have been the one who would have found the card of the pope.
While everyone was moving to find it
Mantua, Siene, Farnese going around,
found a card, but it was an ace.

 

Satiric Ariosto

While about his comedy La Cassaria we have dedicated a specific essay (13), now it is necessary to talk about the satiric side of Ariosto. His Satires were composed in triplets between 1517 and 1525. 


                                                                        


The model for the lifestyle is the great Latin poet Horace, unusual at that time, and the literary style get higher in the autobiographic passages where expression and language are even more incisive, indignant and resentful. According to Cesare Segre, the more authoritative scholar of the Satires, the analysis is so large to constitute a “representation” consistent with reality made of good and evil, such as the political and administrative corruption of those times. The Satire VII, elaborated in Garfagnana, had been addressed to Bonaventura Pistofilo, secretary of the Duke Alfonso d'Este I.  In it Ariosto explains his refuse to become ambassador of the Pope Clemente VII, expressing at the same time all his desire to live serenely in his beloved Ferrara. With the verses 46-54 the writer offers us an extraordinary description of the Wheel of Fortune, really similar to the homonym representation on the Visconti Tarot, where the character who sits on the top of the Wheel is connoted by donkey ears, that come out even from the ascending figure. 

 

Quella ruota dipinta mi sgomenta                                                       46
ch'ogni mastro di carte a un modo finge:
tanta concordia non credo io che menta.

Quel che le siede in cima si dipinge
uno asinello: ognun lo enigma intende,                                              50
senza che chiami a interpretarlo Sfinge.

Vi si vede anco che ciascun che ascende
comincia a inasinir le prime membre,
e resta umano quel che a dietro pende.                                               54 

 

That pictured wheel, I own, annoys me sorely,                                46
Which every master paints in the same way,
And such agreement cannot be a lie,

When that which sits aloft they make an ass.
Now every one may understand this riddle,                                      50
Without the sphinx to interpret;

For, mark well, Each, as he climbs, begins to Assify
From top to toe; head, shoulders, arms, thence downward ;
The limbs below remaining human still.                                             54

 

Two literary men from Ferrara

 

Two precious documents of the XVI  century are about tarots game in Ferrara. It deals with poetic writings composed by a famous literary man of that time, Flavio Alberto Lollio and a friend of his, Vincenzo Imperiali. Both the texts are in the same manuscript (ms. 257, cc. 30) in the Ariostea Library in Ferrara. The first one is Invettiva contra il gioco dei Tarocchi (The invective against the game of tarots) by Lollio, the second one is the Risposta all’Invettiva (Answer to the invective) by Imperiali. In the first one, Lollio describes in a playful way an unlucky serving in tarots game of three players, in which he lost much money. So he curses the game, with bright tones, showing off his erudition. In the second work, his friend Imperiali uses that unlucky game serving to praise the game of tarots and to accuse Lollio to be stingy. Of the text by Lollio, a translator from Latin, who sustained Tuscan Language during the age-old quarrel about the language, an orator, a philanthropist and patron, who Guarini quoted as “excellent philosopher and full of fame, who composed various works very considered for their doctrine, in particular an Oration of the villa very celebrated”, we here report the passage in which, condemning the game of tarots, he shows his great literary ability:

 

Onde mal grado tuo, spogliar ti senti
Del buon c’havevi: et sembri la cornacchia,
che restò spennacchiata infra gli uccelli.
Alhora se tu fossi uno Aristide,
un Socrate, un Zenone, un Giobbe un sasso,
Tu sprezzaresti il fren della patienza,
Stracciaresti i Tarocchi in mille pezzi,
Maladicendo il primo che ti pose
Mai carte in mano, e t’insegnò a giocare.
Dove lasso quel numerar noioso
D’ogni Trionfo, ch’esca fuori? o quanto
Fastidio hai tu di questo, che non puoi
Pur ragionar pur dire una parola:
Anzi servar convien maggior silentio
Che non si fà alla Predica, o la Messa

 
So, although you are deprived of the money you got on you and it seems to be the crow that remained with no feathers among the other birds. Therefore, if you were Aristides or Sophocles, or Zeno, a stone, you would break the restrains that make you impatient, tearing tarots up into pieces, cursing the first person who gave the cards in your hands and taught you to play. How can you let that annoying listing of Triumphs to be made?  Or how much this thing does disturb you since you cannot think or say a world. Better to keep a bigger silence than the one we keep during the sermon or the Mass.

 

The Comedies by M. Gianmaria Cecchi Florentine

 

The notary and comedies writer Giovanni Maria Cecchi (Florence, 1518-1587), was really near to the Medici Family for which he made many public duties. As great lover of Tuscan language he wrote many works useful to understand the Florentine language of that time, a compilation of poems, a Sommario de’ magistrati di Firenze (Summary of Florence magistrates) (1562) and Per una storia istituzionale dello Stato fiorentino (For an institutional history of the Florentine State). Nevertheless, his fame is connected to the production of about fifty comedies, scenic intermezzo, dramas and spiritual farces. The twenty one comedies were written on the model of the Latin ones, but with a special care towards the modern world, so they became true important documents about domestic and social life of that time. He also wrote original comedies such as L’Assiuolo (The Scops) and Il Diamante (The Diamond).

 

The comedy Il Corredo (The Trousseau), that was published in Venice in 1585 (by Bernardo Giunti), is really interesting, above all for the knowledge about feminine dresses and costumes of the XVI century. The action, that obviously takes place in Florence, concerns the finding of a nuptial trousseau, among misunderstandings, adversities of the characters, etc. The drama is inspired to the ancient one, as the author writes in the preamble “The Comedy is in Florence, & the stage shows this to you. The case is new, but already happened in part in Greece”.  In the sixth scene of Act Three, in occasion of the dialogue between Hercules, a bold, and Pecchia, his adulator, the author puts in Hercules’ mouth an expression with which the bold wants to underline his own importance: “I was among them (as we use to say) the Fool of Tarots”, become a typical idiom in the Renaissance, as the sentence “as we use to say” punt into parenthesis suggests. From this phrase it is evident that at that time the Fool was the most important card, as was this Hercules for women, as salt in banquets. 

 

Let’s read how Hercules justifies this affirmation:

 
Her.  To say the truth above all with women, I have grace. I remember that in France
I really couldn’t get free from those fat Mon Ami (My love, meaning women),  and I say that sincerely as a captain, and sometimes I had my face wasted for it was too much kissed, and my hands in Spain. But hell, those Spanish women when they kissed my hands they sucked my rings as Gypsies do (it seems they want to take them away).
Pec. I’m not surprised that even men in this nation kiss hands and leave sauce upon them.
Her. And what about Naples? What did those ladies to me? And those Princesses? Then, if there are really nobles women it is better not to tell. I was among them (as we use to say) the Fool in Tarots (the most desired), as the salts in food and during banquets.
Pec.  Oh I heard that making love is really great there
Her. I will tell you.
Etc.

 

The expression that is matter of the following examine had long life, since was still used at the end of the XVII century. It was quoted, for example, in one of the Lettere Famigliari (Familiar Letters) of the literary man Giuseppe Baretti (published in London in 1779) and then in Milan in 1822 in the volume Scritti scelti, inediti o rari di Giuseppe Baretti con nuove memorie della sua vita (Selected writings, unpublished or rare by Giuseppe Baretti with new memories of his life). This work has the title of Descriptive Letters; letter I concerning the Description of London.

Here there are some considerations of Westminster Abbey by the author:

“Westminster Cathedral, which is to say the Abbey, has a considerable greatness, if not compared to our Cathedral in Milan, that wins for the double, in measure, marbles, or in ornaments. The Abbey is in Gothic style and majestically dark, with a different style form our Cathedral. I don’t know who was the architect. Into it there are many corpses of kings, writers, warriors and strange artifices famous at their lifetime. The most part of great English poets have here their bones or statue, or bust, or unless a tombstone. Among them, as the fool of tarots, there is Saint-Evremond (14), French man, of few goods (quality) (15), both in philosophy as in poetry. An English friend of his buried him in the church, paying much money. I have to say that to have the honour to be buried or bury someone else in that famous Abbey is to be paid in cash money” (16).

 
Giovan Battista Marino  

Giovan Battista Marino was born in Naples on October the 14^th 1569 and died in the same city on March the 26^th 1625. Considered one of the most important representatives of the baroque Italian poetry, he created his own style then called Marinismo. His works, exasperating the artifices of Mannerism, were centred upon an intensive use of metaphors, of the antithesis and all the games of phonic correspondences, starting from the Para-etymologic ones, the shown descriptions and upon the music of the verse. In the XVIII and XIX centuries the fortune of Marino fell down: his works started to be considered as origin and symbol of the baroque bad taste. His work has been reappraised during the XX century (he was very estimated by Benedetto Croce), after the rebirth of the interest in analogical proceeding of poetry. Between 1602 and 1614 he wrote more than nine hundred poems, sonnets above all, united under the title of La Lira (The Lira). In one of these the author gives the meaning of the Fool of Tarots to one of his acquaintances, who he really did not like very much:

Murtola, tu ti stilli, e ti lambicchi
Quel cervellaccio da giocar a scacchi,
E da far oriuoli ed almanacchi,
E ti sprucchi collepoli e rincricchi;
Ma, mentre in tutti i buchi il naso ficchi,
E con tuoi versi tutto il mondo stracchi,
Ogni un t’appende dietro i tricchi tracchi,
E ti manda alla forca, che t’appicchi.
O grand’ archimandrita degli allocchi
O supremo arcifanfano de’ cucchi,
O burbucione, o matto da' Tarocchi
E non t’accorgi omai, che tu ci hai secchi?
Vattene ad abitar tra’mammalucchi,
O farai meglio a conversar co i becchi.

Murtola (Gasparo Murtola, from Genoa, secretary of Carlo Emanuele, Duke of Savoy), you rack your brain / that bad brain good to play chess,/ the more suitable to make watches and calendars / and you are full of rage, you are agitated and you huddle up for passion; / but while you do snoop in every hole, / and annoy everybody with your verses, / everyone laughs about you with deafening clamours (17) / and send you to the gallows so that you are hanged. / Oh great chief of fools, / oh supreme braggart of idiots, / oh boaster, oh fool of tarots, / you don’t realize that now you have really bored us? / If you do not go living among stupid people, / you’d better chat with bastards.

 

Tassoni’s The Stolen Pail

Poet and writer, Alessandro Tassoni (1565-1635) wrote his most famous composition, La Secchia Rapita (The Stolen Pail), in 1614. The work in octaves was published in Paris just six years later. To surpass the controls and censorship of the Congregation of Forbidden Books Index, in 1624 the author wrote a particular version for the Pope. The definitive one was published in Venice in 1630.  

                                                            

The poet had his inspiration from a fact really happened in 1325, that he stuffed with fantastic events and anachronisms: people from Bologna, who had invaded Modena’s territory, had been rejected and pursued until Bologna by people from Modena who, after having stopped at a well to drink, they took away, as a war trophy, a wooden pail. Tassoni images that, after the refuse of people from Modena to give back the pail, the Bolognese would have kept King Enzo as prisoner and the ones from Modena the pail. They are really famous the verses with which the Pope in Chant XII answers to the questions by Bolognese about the lack of money to provide for the war expenses against the enemy town:

CHANT XII
Octave I, verses 1-4

Le cose de la guerra andavan zoppe:
I Bolognesi richiedean Danari
Al Papa; ed egli rispondeva coppe,
E mandava indulgenze per gli altari.

 

The war events limped
Bolognese asked for money
To the Pope and he answered cups
And sent indulgences from the altars (18).

 

The expression “he answered cups” is connected to the locution “to give the two of spades” and also “give the two of cups” (in Italian) that, in a figurative sense, means to deny or refuse something firmly. Cards players know that the two of spades is the card with the minor worth in the deck, but is enough sometimes to loose the game and therefore to cast the adversary out. Metaphorically the one who gives the two of spades, or the two of cups, or answers spades or cups, let other people understand that his intensions are not favourable to who’s asking (19).

 

In the XIII, XIV and XV Octave of Chant XII Tassoni tells how the Pope Legate, waiting to meet a Nuncio who had to give him some papal information, stopped with his escort in the Solera fields to eat some food. After lunch cards and table were prepared so nobles and cardinals who accompanied the Legate started playing Tarots and Sbaraglino. This passage represents one of the moments suspected by the Congregation of Forbidden Books Index: since the game of Tarots was considered as a game of chance at that time, and in particular forbidden to churchmen, the fact that Tassoni made many Cardinals play, and the Legate as well, who had even pull out of his pockets “a handful of  baiocchi (coins)” with the clear purpose to pay his adversaries if he would have lost, could not be accepted.

 

XIII

E ‘l Papa già co’ Genovesi havea
D’un mezzo million fatto partito,
Talché sicuramente egli potea
Ragunar soldatesca a suo appetito;
Ma il trascorrer qua, e là ch’egli facea
Il trasse fuor del camin dritto, e trito,
Fin che con lunga, & onorata schiera
Egli arrivò ne' prati di Solera.

 

XIII

And thanks to Genoa the Pope had
Accumulated half a million,
So with no problems the Legate could
Gather how many soldiers as he whished
But going around as he did
Took him away from the right and good path,
Till with long and honoured crowd
He came to the Solera fields.

XIV

 

Quivi stanco dal caldo, e fastidito
Fermossi a l'ombra e d'aspettar dispose
Il Nŭzio, a cui già un messo havea spedito
Per intender da lui diverse cose:
In tanto i servi suoi sù'l verde lito
Vivande apparecchiar laute, e gustose, 
Ed egli in fretta trattisi gli sproni,
Mangiò per compagnia cento bocconi

XIV

 
Here tired for the hot weather and bored
He stopped in the shade and ordered to wait
The Nuncio, to whom he had already sent a messenger
To understand many things:
In the meanwhile his messengers on the green grass
Had prepared lavish and delightful food,
And he fast took his spurs away,
Then ate not to leave alone hundred of bites.

XV

Mangiato ch’hebbe stè fuora pensiero
Rompendo certi stecchi di finocchi;
Indi venner le carte, e’ tavoliero,
E trasse una manciata di baiocchi,
E Pietro Bardi e Monsignor del Nero
Si misero a giuocar seco a tarrochi,
E il Conte d’Elci, e Monsignor Bandino
Giuocarono in disparte a sbaraglino

XV

 

After eating he relaxed without thinking
Breaking some fennel twig to eat;
Then cards and table were brought
And he pulled out of his pocket some money
Pietro Baldi and Monsignor Del Nero
Begun playing tarots,
And Count d’Elci and Monsignor Bandino
Played apart Sbaraglino.

 

Tarots and Prostitutes

 

The only example we have about the use of the Minchiate or Germini (Tuscan Tarots) in a right way, belongs to the half of the XVI century and has the title of I Germini, sopra quaranta meretrice della Città di Fiorenza, dove si conviene quattro ruffiane, le quali danno a ciascuna il trionfo, ch’e a loro conveniente dimostrando di ciascuna il suo essere. Con una aggiunta nuovamente messa in questi. (The Germini concerning forty prostitutes of the City if Florence, in which four women pimps, who give to everyone a Triumph showing them their condition. With a new add in this work).

The writing by an anonymous author, was published in Florence in 1553. It is a work really characteristic and unique, with the four cardinal virtues (indicated with the numbers 19, 18, 17 and 16 called salamanders) combined with four women pimps. Each of them introduces in turn nine famous Florentine prostitutes, street whores, who worked in squares and local markets, identified with the other 36 cards of Germini set in decrescendo order, from the major to the minor. In this work there is a mention dedicated to Padovano, quoted by Aretino in his work Le Carte Parlanti (The Talking Cards), here represented as good print and sheet Germini maker.

After the “excuse stanzas” of the author (in which is quoted the above mentioned Padovano), introduced by a woman pimp there are the verses concerning the 40 prostitutes, divided in four groups of ten. After this, every woman describes herself and her qualities in octave, all in relation with a specific Triumph.  Here we report some octave starting the one concerning the First Woman Pimp and, following, three prostitutes to be identified, in relation to Triumphs, respectively with Charity, the Hanged Man, the Moon and the Star.

Prima Ruffiana

Io sono il diciannove, e fui puttana
nella mia gioventù molto onorata
persino in trentotto anni stetti sana
poi venni come gazzera pelata
per sostentarmi mi feci ruffiana
duna figliuola chi mero allevata
e perché male ella non capitassi
la presto a chi vuole e meco stassi.

The first procuress

I am the nineteen, and I was a whore
of great honour, in my youth,
I was healthy until I was thirty-eight,
then I became as bald as a magpie.
To make a living, I became the procuress
of a I girl I had raised.
To save her from all misfortune,
I lend her to whoever wants her, but she lives with me. 

XII  La Fiammetta (L'Appeso)

Io son quel traditor poltron di Gano
e impicchato pel pie come ognun vede
e Fiammetta per nome chi mi chiamo
non tengo legge alcuna e nonno fede
del sangue de furfanti sol mi sfamo
e manchami un calzin: del ritto piede
e’nchasa ognun trema alla mia voce
sono il dodici e sto in borgo la noce.

XII  Fiammetta - The little flame (The Hanged Man)

I am Gano, that treacherous idler,
hanged from his feet, as anyone can see,
and my name is Fiammetta,
I respect no law and I have no faith,
I only feed of the blood of scoundrels
and my right foot has no sock.
In my house everyone trembles at my voice,
I am the twelve and I live in Borgo la Noce.

XXXVII  La Ricciolina

Man fatto de Germini la Luna
la Ricciolina sono e son pur bella
e certo che mi doggo di Fortuna
po che non piglio piu su che la Stella
che meritavo desser io quelluna
che avessi delle trombe la novella
a certamente me fatto gran torto
ma pur perdono, e volentier sopporto

XXXVII  Ricciolina - The curly-headed (The Moon)

They made me the Moon of the Germini
I am the curly-headed and I am beautiful,
so I complain with Fortune
since I do not win on anything higher than the star,
but I deserved to be the one
that had the news of the trumpet.
What has been done is unjust,
but I forgive and I am willing to be patient.

.
XXXVI  La Buda

Quella che apparse a Magi in Oriente
Diana stella sono, & son la Buda
che non conosco amico ne parente
più traditora son che non fú Giuda
son ‘co gli amanti mia si diligente
quando chentro cõ lor nel letto nuda
chognun per amor mio forte martella
bella son io e degna della Stella.

 

XXXVI Buda (The Star)

 

I am that star of Diana that appeared
to the Magi in the East, I am Buda
who does not bear respect to friends and relatives.
I am more treacherous than Judas.
I am so diligent with my lovers,
when I am naked and I go to bed with them,
that everyone hammers hardly for my love.
I am beautiful and worthy of the Star.

 
Tasso and Tarots

 

In occasion of a research that aims to individualize the word Tarots in great Renaissance literati texts, after La Cassaria by Ariosto, we run into the Dialogues by Tasso. Two of these, results to be very important because the author quotes tarots and also to understand his feelings towards game, fortune, love and other matters he delineates with almost philosophical traits (Extensive discusion of this work in an essay in the Italian version).

                      
                                                                                                                                        


Tasso was a great tarots player and lover, so much that he considered the game as an art: we are informed by one of his letters of September the 16^th 1575 sent to “The very Magnificent Mr. Luca Scalabrino” of Rome. Writing about theatrical machines and other wonders, he concludes his letter in this way: “So this admirable and wonderful is convenient to every part of the epic poem, and about the part in which I write upon scenographic errors I will write another time, since now I’m tired and I want to play tarots, an art in which I’m more able than poetic” (21).

 

Tasso wrote the two dialogues about game with one year of time among them: Il Romeo, o‘ vero del Giuoco (Romeo, or about the game), composed during his first year of imprisonment, appeared in the Parte prima delle Rime del signor Torquato Tasso, insieme con altri componimenti del medesimo (First part of Rhymes of mister Torquato Tasso, together with other poems of the same man) (Venice, Aldo Manuzio, 1580) while Il Gonzaga Secondo, o ‘ vero del Giuoco, dialogo del signor Torquato Tasso (The Second Gonzaga, or the Game, dialogue of mister Torquato Tasso) was published apart in 1582 (Venice, Bernardo Giunti and brothers).

 
This last one, that configures itself as a correction (it could be defined in this way) of the Romeo, was written by Tasso in the Saint Anna Hospital in Ferrara in 1581, which is to say one year after having written the Romeo, and it then had been printed the next year. To these two dialogues we have dedicated a specific essay in the Italian version of the web site. For this English version we report the Matter of the Romeo and the passages in which appears the word “tarots” even the “Tarochi” version that clearly show the attraction of Tasso for this game.

Matter of the Romeo, or about the Game

 

“On Carnival 1579 Count Annibale Romei, Ferrara Cavalier, and lover of every kind of game, but very acculturated and full of style, in presence of Margherita Gonzaga, recently married with Alfonso II Este and of the two princesses of Ferrara, Lucrezia and Eleonora, talked very much about the Game. So the author pretends that Annibale Pocaterra, a young man who studies philosophy, who had listened to that reasoning, finding himself into the conversation with lady Margherita Bentivogli, talks to her of the games and in the measure she asks, he explains the basic things of the discourse he heard. This is The Romeo, the summary of that conversation. Here it deals first with pleasure to obtain by a game or another. And it deals also with chess, of its origin, and the study it needs: passing then to examine the word Game and it can be seen that it has a double sense, and it means not just victory and  winning money or something strictly connected to money, but even imitation of real things such as tournaments, assaults, and so on. Left apart this second way of games we define the first, saying that it is a fight of fortune and ingenuous among two or more people, made for pleasure or soul entertainment, which worst thing is money or measured by money. This definition is explained by showing how the player has to be honoured and he has to let know clearly which role in this kind of games fortune and ingenious have. Finally we talk about that mix of hope and fear that the player feels; and the conversation ends with some considerations about the sweetness of winning” (22).

 
The Romeo, or about the Game
Speakers: Annibale Pocaterra and Margherita Bentivoglia

M. B. Don’t you play?
A. P. I’m more able to turn Socratic cards then these ones: sometimes I do play primero; but I like some others. And in this company since there was no place for me to play primero I preferred looking at instead of getting breathless in playing with someone trap or Sbaraglino.
M. B. You would have met Tarots friends.
A. P. I would not refuse to play this game.
.......
.......
M. B. Let’s put apart this second way, since it is proper of theatres and let’s talk about the other, very used at home; sometimes in public, and it seems to me that it is an imitation of the first. So not only chess represent war, but even the ball or tarots and many other games of this kind, seem to be something else’ imitation. We women make some other little games in our privet rooms, and according to me the first are different from the second.
Etc.

 

Tarots and Commedia dell’Arte

 

Vincenzo Belando, maybe Sicilian, wrote two works:  Lettere facete e chiribizzose in lengua antiga, venitiana, et una a la gratiana, con alcuni sonetti e canzoni piasevoli venitiani e toscani e, nel fin trenta villanelle a diversi signori e donne lucchesi et altri (Funny and nifty letters in ancient Venetian language and one with some sonnets and pleasant Venetian and Tuscan songs and in a Graziano way, at the end, thirty villanelle to various gentlemen and ladies from Lucca and others), published in Paris in 1588 and the comedy Gli Amorosi Inganni (The Amorous Deceives), which draft started in 1593 and ended and was published in Paris in 1609. Belando was writer and actor (maybe even gourmet, an activity he started to earn money, seeing the typical economical difficulties of actors of that time). He belongs to the heterogeneous category of court emigrants who exported culture, services and jobs from the Italian courts to the French ones. When he went to Paris, he then lived there permanently taking acting roles ad lonely buffoon or pedantic parts, engaged as external by the theatrical passing through companies. 


                                               
  
                                                                                       Italian and French Comedians


Published when its author was already old, The Amorous Deceives configures as a testamentary work. The name Catonzo, who in the work is a Sicilian serve immigrated in Paris, results an evident autobiographical projection of the author, degraded, of course: the name Cataldo, that alludes to the job of castaldo, therefore butler, with a comical deformation becomes Catonzo.

 

With this comedy, one of the many published by actors (in this case by one who “never went to school, and hardly knows the syllables”, as Belando writes to the “good reader” in the introduction), the author intended to arouse laughing and certainly not to give proof of academic or prosaic ability, prerogatives that did not belong to him: “if you laugh about my foolishness, don’t do it with open mouth, but in the way girls do when someone tell them they are going to get married, which is to say with a cachino smile” (23). 

 

There are many dialects used in the best way, made understandable, used in the comedy by as many characters: “If she does not speak Florentine, she speaks half Tuscan; if Zanni does not speak completely bergamasco, he will speak half Lombard, nut more comprehensible, the Magnificent will speak in the ancient venetian language, and not in the modern way of Venice; the Spanish will speak Castilian the more he can; the Sicilian, my origin language , will explain his concepts in the most understandable way, even if I’m away from my native land since forty four years” (24).

 

The structure of the comedy underlines a primitive level of the Commedia dell’Arte, for what concerns the plot and the distribution of the roles. There are two relationships with a partner exchange (Cinzia and Camilla, The Captain and Dorotea); a Magnificent who teams up with Zanne (instead of another old man); another zanni (Catonzo) and a young serve. The places go from Sicily to Naples, passing through Rome, Genoa, Milan, Marseille, Avignon, Lyon and Saint James of  Galicia (the course made by the author to reach Paris), while the alternative culture places that Belardo loved so much are strictly Parisian, such as Greva Square and Place Maubert, sites of capital executions and meeting place of wrongdoers, besides the inn such as the “Bue Coronato” and “Poma de Pin”. Everything’s flavoured with scents of Loire wines, Frontignan  Muscat and abundant food meticulously described.

 

We have prolonged this illustration on the work, because it seems to be made in an extraordinary way and in particular the dialogue, opening the thirteenth scene of the first Act, between the Magnificent and his servant Zanne. The subject is love – with an involvement of Fortune and Predestination -, in which there are writings and thoughts by Petrarch, Burchiello, Virgil and by other classical important authors. 

 
Here we report the indicated passage followed by the translation from current Italian:

This is what I desired to tell you, my lord, which is to say that this love has made you vile, you were worthy and now you are idle; from shrewd made you awkward, from scholar to ignorant,  from wise to fool, and from a Spanish horse has made you a horse to accompany mules, since from the moment you fell in love, you just compose, write sonnets and sing in the streets and nothing more, holding in your hand your Petrarch book [The Triumphs of Love], and you seem the fool of tarots and worse: because it is impossible to eat at your place, the kitchen is cold, the cellar is empty as a cavern, everything is upset, you’d better return to your senses and try to catch up your daughter, and forget this love, that fits you like a saddle on a donkey….Catch up your brain, my lord. 

 

In this case the expression “fool of tarots” moves away from the meaning tied up to the game Cecchi gave to it in his comedy Il Corredo (The Trousseau) (see above), and it assumes a psychological worth, the one of a character who, overpowered by madness, goes away alone, without taking care of what is happening around him, so much to be recalled to reason with the expression “Stay into your brain, lord”.

 
An enigmatic “Nine of Tarots”

 

By the Jesuit and famous essayist of the first XVII century, the Spanish Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) was published a famous work Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia  (The Oracle manual of art and prudence) in 1647.  Largely translated (25) even in Italy starting from 1679 (26), this volume had great diffusion during the Illuminism in an epoch of bright and renewed interests for the philosophical aspects of the essay. 


                                                               


The Oracle, that configures itself as an ethic manual with the intention to exalt the importance of Prudence and social discipline, is composed by three hundreds aphorisms concerning the fundamental rules of behaviour for the man of Court, necessary to conquer the consideration and respect of powerful men without betraying one’s own principles.

 

What we are interested in here is the Aphorism LXXXIV with the title Non essere il Nove del Tarocco che serve in ogni punto del giuoco (Not to be the Nine of Tarot that is used in every point of the game). For the translation of the work we have chosen one of the first made by D. Vicenzo Giovanni de La Stanosa, published in Venice and addressed to the Nobility of the city in 1678 with the title Oracolo manuale e Arte di Prudenza, cavata dagli Aforismi che si discorrono nell’Opre di Gratiano (Manual Oracle and Art of Prudence, extracted by the Aphorisms discussed in the works by Graziano).

 

Now we do not know what was the “Nine of Tarot” to which is referred the aphorism, since in Spain in the XVII century the game of tarots had characteristics different from the Italian ones.  Anyway the teaching is that every good court man had not to expose himself in an excessive way, but show with fineness his own talent, with no ostentation, as a torch that the less shines, the more it lasts.   

 

APHORISM LXXXIV - Not to be the Nine of Tarot that is used in every point of the game 

 

When vice excels, its use becomes an abuse. If everyone desires it, it annoys everyone. Not to be able to do anything involves a great unhappiness; even it brings to the desire to be born to be able to make everything. These persons earning very much at the moment, then loose all, so they now are hated as much as before they were desired. This characteristic of the Nine of Tarots suits to each man of talent, who at the beginning loses the consideration of a few, then get the despise of mediocre people. The only remedy to this, know clearly by everyone, is to maintain one’s own imagine in a right balance, since Excellence consists in showing with fineness our own talent and Moderation in the way to boast it. The more a torch shines, the more it wears thin and less it lasts.  When pompous shows of us are scares, they are rewarded with a long and firm respect.

 

 The Aristotle Telescope

 

The Abbey Girolamo Tiraboschi writes in this way about Emanuele Tesauro (Second Part – Volume VII) in his Storia della Letteratura Italiana del Cavaliere Abate Girolamo Tiraboschi,  Consigliere di S. A.S. Il Signor Duca di Modena, dall’Anno MDC all’ Anno MDCC (History of Italian Literature of the Cavalier Abate Girolamo Tiraboschi, Counsellor of H. S. M. Lord Duke of Modena from the year MDC to the year MDCC) printed in Modena in 1793. “Count Emanuele Tesauro, noble from Turin and Cavalier of Great Cross of the Order of the Saints Maurice and Lazarus made many works about different matters in the half of the century published in Turin in 1654 Il Regno d’Italia sotto i Barbari (The Italian Kingdom under barbarians), a work in which as in all the others, it is possible to see a bright minded author, who could have had an honourable place in the Republic of Literature, if he would have not let himself go to the century prejudices”.

 

Tesauro, literary man and historiographer, was born in Turin in 1592 and died in the same city in 1675.  He entered into Jesuits Order in 1611. He wrote historian works among which the Campeggiamenti di Fiandre (Camping in Flanders) (1646) and the summary of The Italian Kingdom under barbarians (1654). In the same year he composed the Cannocchiale Aristotelico (The Aristotle Telescope), the most important essay of baroque rhetoric, in which the author highlights and defines clearly the relations between the forms privileged by literati and innovative tendencies that the transforming world was going to impose to the mentality of Six Hundred men (Extensive discussion of this work in an essay in the Italian version).
 

                                                       


The expression the Aristotle Telescope is an oxymoron, a rhetoric figure that consists in approaching two terms in strong antithesis: in this case the classical Aristotle philosophy and modern science. While the Aristotle philosophy – for which everything has its place into a system – and uses the deductive system (by a general affirmation the particular is explained), the Galilean science, symbolized by the Telescope, use the inductive method, which is to say observing the particular to come to the enunciation of a general theory. In this case the oxymoron had the function to bring near the two divergent aspects giving an acceptable capacity to the reason methods base upon metaphors, which for the author represent the rhetoric figure par excellence, as capable to connect distant phenomena through the basic analogy.

 

The complete title is Cannocchiale Aristotelico, o sia Idea dell'Arguta et Ingeniosa Elocutione che serve à tutta l'Arte Oratoria, Lapidaria, et Simbolica esaminata co’ Principij del divino Aristotile (Aristotle Telescope or Idea of the Witty and Ingenious Locution that serves to all Oratory, Lapidary and Symbolic Art examined with the Principles of the divine Aristotle).  Here we report, from the edition printed in Turin in 1670 (by Bartolomeo Zavatta), the passage in which the author talking of the “Composed Symbols” of “Mute” kind in Chapter II dedicated to “Instrumentals Witticism Reasons” introduces the symbols of Tarots and Chess. The close examination about Chess has been reported since, according to the new charming discovers by Lothar Teikemeier tarots would have been born by an elaboration of this last game. About the Aristotle Telescope has been made a close examination in a specific essay, readable in Italian.

Instrumental Reasons - Chapter II
About the Oratory, Symbolic & Lapidary witticisms (pages 57 - 58) 

 

“Finally from the same origin proceeds what is agreeable and ingenious in the MUTE GAMES, representing no heroic matter.  As it is the game of Tarots; worthy concept of barbarian genius: where you see every  person of the world becoming ruffle in a mix way with uniforms, Rich people with Money, Drunk with Cup, Warriors with Spades, Shepherds with Batons. Emperors, Prelates, Angels, Demons: as the player holding a card deck in his hand had the whole world in a punch: & playing metaphorically is just putting the universe in confusion; & the one who more ruins is the winner. But the game the most heroic and witty; even a war school is the Chess; where in a small battle Field there are two armies, one of White Assyrians, the other of Black African Moors: & here there are Kings, Queens, Soldiers, Knights, Towered Elephants; and  Infantrymen: at the sign of the two players, as War Masters, facing, assaulting, ling in wait, surprising, running, helping, hurting, covering, imprisoning, getting out of the world: finally after having won the adversary army & imprisoned the King (the only one whose life is preserved) there is a difficult but sweet victory, a conflict with no blood, but not without the looser’ rage. A game really born from the war intellect of   Palmed among the Greek tents, to fight against idleness, so you have not to be surprised, if from Zeus brain was born Pallade warrior, since by a soldier’ brain are born armies. So, what is this game, but a heroic symbol, a continuous metaphor? Those little images animated by a living hand allegorically represent the conflict of ingenious; they have the moving for the Word.  So the player identifies in the characters represented by wooden soldiers: & in our images lives the player’ mind” (27).

 

Tarots and Chess therefore, according to the author, belong to the Heroic Matters; they are Mute symbols (images of words) and are Composed. The author writes about Composed Symbols: “In the COMPOSED WITTICISM there are two or more of the simple witticisms…; so the Witticism which is nothing but a poetical Imitation; with the mix of MUTE and TALKING methods, & of these or the ones into them; gives birth to a numerous and various and pretty offspring of Symbols; many of them even today are know more by opinion than by their name by literati” (page 39).

 

Appropriated Verses

 

A real literary under gender came from the habit to put tarots in rhyme and verses making them “proper” to various personages of different social classes. Among the most famous poems of the XVI century we can remind the one about Florentine prostitutes described above, the Motti alle Signore di Pavia sotto il titolo dei tarocchi (Motto to Pavia ladies under the title of tarots) (28); the Triomphi de’ Troilo Pomeran da Cittadela composti sopra i Tarrochi in Laude delle famose Gentil donne di Vinegia (The Triumphs by Troilo Pomeran from Cittadella composed upon tarots to praise the famous noble women of Venice) (29) of which we report two pages from the original text (figure 9); the verses of Trionphi de Tarocchi appropriati (Triumphs of appropriated Tarots) (30) dedicated to Ferrara women and Il Trionfo Tridentino (The Tridentine Triumph) by Leonardo Colombino (1524-1580). This last triumph is a poem of 86 stanzas that Colombino, notary and amateur writer, very prominent character in the city, dedicated to Christoforo Madruzzo, Prince-Bishop of Trent and his protector. The poem was recited during  the feast that the bishop proclaimed May 3, 1547 to celebrate the imperial victory of Mühlberg on  Protestants. The feast took place at Palazzo all’Adige, just outside the city with parades accompanied by music, recitations and dances. In that occasion the ladies of the noblest families impersonated the symbolic figures of the Tarot. The Devil (verse XXIX) was interpreted by Mrs. Bartolomea Podestessa:

Apena il Diavolo nel giardin comparse
Che già scandalizar comincian molti,
Tanta zizania dai belli occhi sparse
A chi nel mal oprar vi eran già involti.
Ma a questa Podestessa già non parse
Che in gratia alcun di lor fossero tolti
E altri che il suo consorte mai in eterno
Non speri entrar la porta del suo inferno.  

The habit to combine verses and tarots meanings last until the following centuries, so much that in Bologna during the XVIII century this practise became usual. An anonymous poem has as ironical subject the canons of Saint Peter’s Church among which it is possible to identify names belonging to low clergy and good bourgeoisie. The poem ha the title of Thrionfi de Tarocchi e motivi latini appropriati a ciascuno dei canonici di San Pietro (Triumphs of Tarots and Latin motives combined to every canons of Saint Peter) (31) where we find the names of Triumphs in Italian and Latin motto. Among the satiric attributes we find a “scarcely sufficient”, a “never sufficient”, a “his tongue is an acuminate word” and a “brothers be sober” near to others with positive connotation such as “shines everywhere” and “powerful in thinking and acting” (figure 10).

Also addressed to ladies and by an anonymous author, are the verses whose title is I Trionfi de Tarocchini Apropriati ciascheduno ad una Dama Bolognese con la spiegazione in fine per capire meglio li sudeti Trionfi ossia satira da N.N. (The Triumphs of Tarocchino everyone combined to a Bologna lady with the explanation to better understand the mentioned Triumphs or satire written by N. N.) (27). The work, certainly dated before 1725 as it still has the four Popes figures, is divided in two distinct parts: the first lists the correspondences between Triumphs and each lady; in the second one, near the ladies names, there are information about their fathers, husbands, fathers in low and nobility appellation with a motive for the attribution given to every woman as described in the first part. Among the various attributions some result really brutal, as for example that of the Devil, combined to Countess Baldi “because she is terribly ugly and deformed”.

 

 A board game with Tarots

 

Girolamo Bargagli, who lived between 1537 and 1586,  literati and expert of law from Siena, was a member of the Accademia degli Intronati (here he was called Materiale) that represented in the second half of the XVI century the most meaningful centre of production of regular comedies.  The most famous Bargagli’s work was certainly La Pellegrina (The Pilgrim), that he wrote in 1564 on behalf of Piccolomini to whom Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici (then, from 1587, Gran Duke of Tuscany) had turned to. But Piccolomini had many interests and duties, and he passed the charge to his young colleague, who asked for help to another academic, Fausto Sozzini called Frastagliato. This Intronato stuffed the text with numerous polemic inklings concerning the corruption of clergy, for this reason the work was represented and printed just in 1589, after Bargagli’s death. On his brother Scipione own initiative the work was represented, even if censored in some of its parts, by the Intronati in Florence for the marriage Grand Duke Ferdinando I who, after having  put the cardinal purple dress down in 1588, the following year got married with Cristina di Lorena, niece of Caterina de’ Medici, queen of France.

The historians of music know this work very well, since in the occasion of its representations the Count Giovanni Bardi created six intermezzo, with the words by Ottavio Rinuccini, Giovanni de' Bardi, Giambattista Strozzi, Laura Lucchesini  and put in music by the most famous artists of the moment, such as Emilio de' Cavalieri, Cristofano Malvezzi, Luca Marenzio and Giulio Caccini. It was a memorable show and it couldn’t be otherwise, seen the names of the participants, the costumes and Scenography by Buontalenti.

 

Bargagli’s work in relation with Tarots is the Dialogo de' giuochi che nelle vegghie Sane­si si usano di fare del materiale Intronato (Dialogue of games usually made that in Siena watches of the Intronato material) (Siena, 1572), a real essay about games of the time, which improvement was attributed to the Intronati Academia author. The work is composed by a series of sentences or judgments born by a dialogue to which participate the Intronati. About tarots (judgment 57) we read: “And I even (added Mansueto) have seen the game of Tarots, giving to everybody the name of a tarot and then someone declaring and calling, for his own motive, that to the one or another was given this or that tarot name”. It is evident that the game of tarots, as it is describe here, has to be put in relation to pasquinade, to sonnets and motto, based upon the association of a triumph to a certain person.

 

Rebel Tekeli

 

The liberation of Hungary from Moslems assumed in Europe the characters of a true crusade against unfaithful. The Noble Hungarian Imre Thökoly (1657-1705) who had fought together with the Ottoman Empire denying his native land and his religion, became the emblem of betrayal. Meaningful about that is a sonnet of condemn addressed to him centred on Bologna Triumphs reported in descending order, Il giuoco de Tarocchini sopra Michele Tekely Ribello (The Game of Tarocchino above Michael Tekely Rebel) (figure 11) where the traitor Tekely (inexact transcription of the last name) is defined “Angel of Hell” to have pushed Turkey in war against Austria. By the end of the sonnet we understand that the work was written when Thökoly was still alive, after his great defeats, so probably about the last decade of the XVII century.

 

This is the sonnet incipit:

Angel d'Inferno sei Michel, che al Mondo
Tentasti d'Austria il Sol rendere nero,
tu la Luna Ottomana, astro che immondo
suscitasti fellon contro l'Impero.

You are an Angel of Hell, Michael, since
you tried to darken the Sun of Austria, you rogue
Aroused against the Empire the filthy
Star, which is the Ottoman Moon.

 
A ruinous politics

 

In the Almanacco della Commedia Umana per il 1886 (Almanac of the Human Comedy for 1866) published by Sonzogno appeared a satire on economic, social and political life of Italy made with tarots. The work, which has title of Il Nuovo Giuoco dei Tarocchi (The new Game of Tarots), has been written combining two quatrains to each Triumph card, which figures were freely moulded for the occasion and framed by sketches of allegorical type.

The Magician is associated to Agostino Depretis, Prime Minister of the time; the verses that accompany the card of the Pope (Leone XIII) appear as a heavy accuse of radical type to the Vatican richness; the card of the Emperor critics the Foreign Minister Pasquale Mancini, guilty of the new combination between Austria and Germany; the Hanged Man becomes the good taxpayer overburden by taxes, particularly those of the tenth of war and on the mill.

Really expressive are the verses that accompany the card of Tower (figure 10) against the colonial politics of the government, which had occupied Assab bay in 1870 and Massawa in 1885. Prophetical verses, we daresay, as they foresaw the decay of Italian ambitions in Eritrea that happened one year later in Dogali, on January the 25^th 1887.

 
Here are the verses:

Con tant’arte l’avevan fabbricata
A base di perfidia e ipocrisia,
Che di supporla un giorno rovinata 
Per lo men reputavano pazzia. 

Eppur non correrà lunga stagione 
Che si vedrà cangiar questa bonaccia 
In uragan tremendo, e il torrione 
Di sé nemmen più lascerà la traccia.

 

With so much art they mad it
Based upon evil and hypocrisy
They thought it could be just mad
To think it could be ruined

Yet there will pass no so much time
We’ll see this calm passing by
In a terrible hurricane and the tower
Will leave no trace.

Notes

 

1 - Sola-Busca Tarots date back to the end of the XV century. Their name derives from the owners’ family. Recently they have been sold for 800.000 euro (really a good price) to the Italian State for the Brera Picture Gallery. The author, probably the miniaturist Mattia Serrati, whose monogram M. S. is on several cards) never represented traditional figures in Triumphs but, except the Fool, he illustrated warriors and characters of the classical age (for example Lempius, Catullus, Nero, Sabinus, Cato, etc) and in two cases some biblical characters: Nabuchodonosor (Triumph XXI) and Nimrod (Teriumph XX). Of this last one it is possible to make a parallelism with the meaning of the Tower, as the character (The Bible quotes him as Nimrod or Nemrod and attributes him the idea of the construction of the tower of Babel)  is represented in front of a column hit by a fire falling down from the sky. The 56 minor cards are instead illustrated with everyday and fantastic scenes.
2 - The excellent examination is due to Giuseppe Crimi in the work L' oscura lingua e il parlar sottile. Tradizione e fortuna del Burchiello (The obscure language and the subtle talking, tradition and fortune of Burchiello),  Manziana (Rome), 2005, page 210.
3 - About “macaroni” with the meaning of “fool”, compare: Angelico Prati, Vicende di parole, (Facts of words), in “Il Folclore Italiano” (The Italian Folklore), IX, 1934, Pages 33-35.
4 - Burlesque Sonnet LXXXI, 5-8: “Questo si è, ch' egli han patito pene / a star tanto in su' libri spenzolati, / sì che meritano d'essere dottorati / e ser Pecora faccia questo bene”  (This is that / they had pains / spending time on books / so they deserve to degree / and Mr. Pecora has to do this good thing).
5 - About the parody trend of the verses compare F. Petrarca, Rime Extravaganti (Extravagant Rhymes), 6, 9-11: “di questa spene mi nutrico et vivo / al caldo, al freddo, a l'alba et a le squille; / con essa vegghio et dormo, et leggo et scrivo” (Of this hope I eat and live/ with hot, cold, at dawn and when bells ring; / and with it I see and sleep, I read and write), in  Francesco Petrarca, Trionfi, Rime Estravaganti, codice degli abbozzi (Triumphs, Extravagant Rhymes, code of drafts), edited by Vinicio Pacca and Laura Paolino, introduction by Marco Santagata, Milan, 1996, page 674. 
6 - The work, which was printend in 1523, was written by Boiardo probably towards 1487.
7 - Two amorous sonnets, in Gaspare Sardi, Adversaria…, cod. lat. 228 = ά. W. 2, II, two little sheets between the cards, Ferrara, ca.1530-1560. Modena, Estense Library.
8 - Venice, 1543.
9 - In theatrical and novel literature, it is an act with which a character knows his the true identity or the one of someone else, ignored until that moment for various motives.
10 - Venice, 1546.
11 - Ms. 2.5. I/30 Rome 1550; fund P. Giovio. Como, Municipal Library.  The anonymous’ satire refers to the conclave after the death of Paolo III Farnese from which got out as Pope cardinal Gianmaria Ciocchi del Monte with the name of  Giulio III (February 7^th 1550).
12 - Rome 1521, Cod. Magliabechiano XXXVII.10. 205; c. 14v. Florence, National Library.
13 - A closer examination of the Cassaria can be found in an essay by Andrea Vitali.
14 - French writer, Charles de Saint-Évremond (1613-1703) left a great series of writings, almost short and for occasions: gallant poems and letters, moral or philosophical considerations, dialogues, apologues, novels and comedies. His opinions about literature and theatre make him one of the sharpest critical minds of the century. For this reason he was everywhere mentioned and he was also there, in Westminster, just "a fool in the tarot". 
15 - The expression “of few (short) furnishings" means that Saint-Évremond was (wrongly) considered by the author a scarcely important writer. In figurative sense, actually,  furnishings means the ensemble of the notions that enrich the fundamental culture. The definition of few identifies him as and author who has given a mediocre contribute to knowledge.
16 - Page 329.
17  -  The expression "Tricche tracche" was used to explain the sound of a thing that suddenly broke out or the clamour of clacking hands against the one who was   ridicule. Crusca does not report it, while it was used by Burchiello “every chestnut in shirt and fur/ breaks out for the hot and makes tric tracche”.
18 - Indulgences were communicated by the Pope from the altars.
19 - With a softly meaning is the expression “to count as the king or the spade infantryman”, which is to say to worth nothing.
20 - Since in the game the power of take of the Moon is superior to the one of the Star, but not to the following cards, the girl complains not to be united to Judgement, superior card in relation to the Moon take and that announces itself to the world with trumpets. 
21 - The letter appeared in the volume Unpublished Letters by Torquato Tasso, taken from Manuscripts by Marc’Antonio Foppa conserved by Abbey P. A. Serassi in the Casa Falconieri in Rome (Pisa, 1827).
22 - Cesare Guasti, Dialogues by Tasso, Vol. II, Florence, 1858, page. 3. 
23 - Cachinno: literally “resounding laughing” to indicate a gentle laugh.
24 -  The sentence is in an introduction to readers, defined “Good reader”.
25 - It is necessary to remind the success of the German translation edited by Schopenhauer.
26 - Pavia 1525-1540, ms. 8583, cc. 258-269. Paris, Bibliotèque de l’Arsenal.
27 - The belief that Chess had been invented by Palamede under the walls of Troy was still alive in the XVII century.
28 - Venice, 1534
29 - In Gaspare Sardi, Adversaria…, cod. lat. 228 = ά. W. 2, II. Ferrara, ca.1530-1560. Modena,  Estense Library.
30 - Ms. 3938 / CIII /25. Fund Ubaldo Zanetti, sec. XVIII. Bologna,  Universitary Library.
31 - Ms. 83 / 9 Fund Ubaldo Zanetti. Bologna, sec. XVIII. Bologna,  Universitary Library.