The Playing-Card Volume 36, Number 1

ROSS G. R. CALDWELL
Giovanni del Ponte and the dating of the
Rothschild cards in the Louvre:
some further considerations

C
ristina Fiorini’s article “I tarocchi della Collezione Rothschild al Louvre:
nuove proposte di lettura”1 presents, in my view, considerable evidence
for a Florentine provenance of the 8 Rothschild cards and the Bassano del
Grappa Cavalier of Swords. But a Florentine origin for these particular cards is not
the only novel hypothesis set forth by Fiorini’s paper - more startling still is the date
she assigns to them: circa 1420. The basis of this dating is strongly tied to the cards’
attribution to the artist Giovanni del Ponte (c. 1385-1437). The date of 1420 is startling
because, despite the haphazard nature of the historical record, Tarot’s existence at
this early time seems to be very much at odds with the overall pattern of the evidence.
While a Florentine origin for the cards is an extremely plausible proposition, this
article argues against the attribution to Giovanni, and that the game of Triumphs
must have been invented much nearer in time to the earliest documentary evidence,
and not at least 20 years earlier.

Chronological implications of the documentary and material evidence.

Documentary and physical evidence for a triumph game with a special pack of
cards begins to appear in 1442, and continues to accumulate in following years and
decades. The following chart indicates the evidence from 1442 to 14822 . In over 200
years of research, no direct evidence earlier than 1442 has been discovered. In the
133 years since this earliest record was discovered3 , further research has consistently
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1
The Playing Card vol. 35, no. 1 (Sept. 2006) pp. 52-63
2
Most of the references in the chart will be clear to those who have followed the historiography of
tarot games. I would like to thank Thierry Depaulis for pointing out in private communications
several documentary references that are new to the playing-card literature, and for kindly
permitting me to note them here (chronologically): Siena 1452, referred to in Ludovico
Zdekauer, “Sull’organizzazione pubblica del giuoco in Italia nel medio evo,” in Giornale degli
economisti, s. II, V (1892) pp. 40-80, (see p. 75) (reprinted in G. Ortalli, ed. Ludovico Zdekauer: Il
gioco d’azzardo nel medioevo italiano (Firenze, Salembeni, 1993) pp. 93-133 (see p. 128)); for
Ancona 1460, from Jean Colin, Cyriaque d’Ancône : le voyageur, le marchand, l’humaniste, Paris,
1981, quoting, p. 95, the “Constitutiones sive Statuta magnifice civitatis Ancone” [pub. 1513,
but codified in 1460]; the Roman dates of 1474, 1475 and 1478, from documents in Arnold
Esch, “Roman customs registers 1470-1480 : items of interest to historians of art and material
culture”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 58, 1995, p. 72-87; Recanati ca. 1480,
from Monaldo Leopardi, Annali di Recanati, con le leggi e i costumi degli antichi recanatesi, Varese,
1945.
3
The first publication of these notices was by Giuseppe Campori, in Le carte da giuoco dipinte per
gli Estensi nel secolo XV, Atti e memorie delle rr. Deputazioni di storia patria per le province
modenesi e parmesi, VII (1874), pp. 123-132.

37
 discovered evidence subsequent to this date, but never earlier than this date, even
though scholars studying primary sources have in many cases systematically looked
for documentation of playing cards and triumphs.

The accumulated evidence shows a pattern of diffusion of the game at an almost

measurable rate outside of the earliest documented centres in the years and decades
subsequent to 1442. The combined datable evidence unmistakeably shows a
widespread and relatively sudden pattern of diffusion of the game of Triumphs in
northern Italy and Tuscany during the 1440s and 1450s. It seems that the 1440s saw
the beginning of a fad, which in its luxury phase ended by 1480.4 The existence of
this fad and the pattern of diffusion suggests that the invention of the game of triumphs
can not be much earlier than 1441, and 20 or more years’ documentary silence is
implausible. The pattern of the accumulated evidence is clear enough that despite
the haphazard nature of documentary survival, we may be confident that any large
gaps left in the picture are within the pattern formed by the surviving evidence.
For example, although the earliest direct Bolognese evidence is found in 14595 ,
17 years after the earliest Ferrara reference, and 9 years after the earliest Florentine
reference, Bologna is situated on the main road between Ferrara and Florence (see
map below), where the game is recorded in 1442 and 1450 respectively. It is unlikely
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
4
Coincident with the rise of printed texts and art - cfr. Ortalli, The Prince and the Playing Cards,
Ludica 2 (1996), pp. 192ff.
5
Emilio Orioli, “Sulle carte da giuoco a Bologna nel secolo XV”, Il libro e la stampa n.s. II (1908),
109-119; see pp. 112-113

38
 The Playing-Card Volume 36, Number 1
that a game well-known in these two cities at either end of the line would not be
known in the only large and important city in the middle of the line, and that on the
only direct route between them, and thus we can safely conclude that the game of
triumphs was known in Bologna in the 1440s, despite the lack of positive evidence.
It sits squarely in the middle of the pattern of diffusion. The relatively lengthy lacuna
must therefore be due to historical accident, and not to the absence of the game in
Bologna.
By contrast, we cannot say the same of Venice, for example, which is not on the
road between any of the early centres. Moreover, two Venetians who should have
known of the game were apparently impressed by their first acquaintance with it in
the late 1440s, while near Milan. We cannot therefore infer with any security when
the game of triumphs was earliest known in Venice, but it would seem not to have
been in the 1440s.

1. Coincidence of appearance.
Both the chronological contours as well as the content of the evidence argue that
triumphs was a new kind of game in the 1440s.
The three earliest documentary sources and material evidence of the game of
triumphs are coincident within 5 years at the most - 1442-1447. They are coincident
in unrelated sources at some distance from one another (Ferrara and Milan). The
same locations continue to produce evidence of the game from that time on for the
next several decades, at intervals of only a few years at most between them. The
unlikeliness of this coincidence of terminus a quo in two different cities and three
different sources suggests that the game had newly arrived in both places at around
the same time.
These three coincident references are the records of the Este family in Ferrara
(1442, two records), the Visconti di Modrone and Brambilla tarocchi (Milan-Cremona,
1442-14456 ), and the Palazzo Borromeo fresco (Milan, ca. 1445).

2. Indications in the data from the first 10 years (1442-1452).

Some of the documents provide evidence that the game was new to those recording
it.
For instance, in the very earliest record from 10 February, 1442 in Ferrara, the
structure of the pack of triumph cards is described with some significant details, as
“cups and swords and coins and batons, and all the figures”7 . In the records of the
following decades from these documents, with 21 distinct records until 14638, carte
da trionfi are merely mentioned by name, without description; this suggests that it
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
6
This dating is suggested by Sandrina Bandera, I tarocchi:il caso e la fortuna: Bonfacio Bembo e la
cultura cortese tardogotica (Milano, 1999), p. 22.
7
“...le chope e le spade e li dinari e li bastoni e tute le fegure de 4 para de chartexele da trionffy...” For
bibliography and a facsimile of this text, see Ortalli, loc. cit. pp. 184-185.
8
These records can now be consulted in Adriano Franceschini, Artisti a Ferrara in età umanistica e
rinascimentale. Testimonianze archivistiche, vols. I and II (Corbo, Ferrara-Roma, 1993/1995).

39
was the novelty of the pack that inspired the accountant’s addition of these details.
Again, in November 1449, the Venetian provveditore Jacopo Antonio Marcello
recounted how he discovered the game in late 1448 or early 1449 near Milan9 . He
says that he had received a pack of triumph cards as a gift, and showed them to the
Venetian diplomat to France, Scipio Caraffa, upon the latter’s return from the court
of René of Anjou in Provence. Caraffa seemed amazed at seeing them and exclaimed
that Queen Isabelle, René’s wife, would probably be very pleased to have something
like them. In the letter accompanying the cards he sent to Isabelle, Marcello himself
calls triumphs “this new Italian invention”. Marcello and Caraffa were fairly well-
travelled men, acquainted with armies and various courts, and both seem to have
been card-players. Despite their extensive travels and card-playing, it seems that
neither had seen this kind of cards before. Their reactions to the cards seem to indicate
at least that triumphs was not an extremely popular game yet in the late 1440s.
Additional information about the diffusion of the game in this first decade comes
from November 1452, when Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta wrote to the Duchess of
Milan to request some packs of the triumph cards made in Cremona10 . At this time,
Malatesta was a condottiere for Florence, although at some point during the winter
he was forced to encamp outside of Tuscany11 . While I haven’t been able to find out
exactly where he was, wherever it was there were no triumph cards being made, or
at least the luxury kind like those made by Bonifacio Bembo. He must have seen
Sforza’s cards, but did he know of the game from Florence as well? Or, can we infer
that the cards then made in Florence were not of a high enough quality for him?
In any case, the indications are that the cards excited interest in many people
from the first time they saw them. Would this not have been the case in the 1420s as
well? The first instance above, from Ferrara, suggests that the Este, who were
interested in novelty and were well-acquainted with Florentine fashions and
innovations, had just discovered the game at the beginning of 1442. The second
suggests that it was not yet known in Venice and may not have been very popular
generally even by 1449. The third gives us a glimpse of how a rich and powerful
man, who knew Florence well, desired to possess the gilded cards made in Cremona,
as late as 1452. Taken together, they reveal the outlines of a fad for the new game that
was just beginning in the previous decade to become established among the wealthy
classes.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
9
This account is contained in Jacopo’s introductory letter to Isabelle, Bibl. nat. lat. 8745, f. 1r-4r.
See now Ross G. R. Caldwell, “Marziano da Tortona’s Tractatus de deificatione sexdecim heroum”
part II (The Playing Card, vol. 33. no. 2, pp. 111-126).
10
This letter was first published in 1889 by E. Motta, “Documenti per la libreria Sforzesca a
Pavia,” Il Bibliofilio X, pp. 107-108; it is quoted by Daniela Pizzagalli, Tra du dinastie: Bianca
Maria Visconti e il ducato di Milano (Camunia, 1988) pp. 129-130; also cited by Christina Olsen in
her 1994 doctoral dissertation Carte da trionfi: The development of tarot in fifteenth-century Italy
(Ph.D. Diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1994) p.80 and p. 124 n. 2; and Sandrina Bandera op.
cit. p. 19.
11
See Roberto Damiani, www.condottieridiventura.com, no. 0955 (Sigismondo Pandolfo
Malatesta), under the year 1452 (last accessed 30 June, 2007).

40
 The Playing-Card Volume 36, Number 1
3. Popular triumphs.
While Sigismondo Malatesta may have wished for hand-painted and gilded
packs for himself, we also know that less-expensive packs were being made at the
same time, which would have appealed to a broader audience. These latter are indirect
evidence of the game’s diffusion and give insight into the real extent of its popularity
as well.
The first indication of a popular quality of triumph cards comes from the same
year as the first indication of luxury packs - 1442, in Ferrara. Six months after the
Este court artist Jacopo Sagramoro made the first four recorded triumph packs, the
Este bought a single pack from a Bolognese haberdasher in Ferrara, Marchione
Burdochio.12 For this retail purchase, they paid one-eighth of the price that they paid
their own artist Sagramoro for a hand-made pack.13 The destination of these cards is
significant - it was for two boys, aged 9 and 11. This tells us both that the Este found
card-play suitable for children, and also that they preferred that they play with
cheap cards rather than their own expensive products.
The second indication of the existence of a popular type of triumph pack is in the
expression that Jacopo Antonio Marcello uses 7 years later upon the reception of his
first pack of triumph cards. Marcello says he thought that the pack he had received
as a gift “was not worthy of so great majesty” because “only the highest decoration
and ornament ought to be seen by royalty”.14 This may indicate that they were of the
same quality as this pack bought by the Estes from Marchione Burdochio. Marcello’s
expressions suggest that the pack he had first received was not gilded, was perhaps
small, and was probably a kind of cards made for a mass-market (notably, this
“unworthy” pack was nevertheless still enough of a novelty that Marcello sent it to
Isabelle anyway).
A final indication of the coincidence of the diffusion of popular and luxury packs
is the pattern of distribution to the east and south of the country (see map below).
Documentary evidence is first forthcoming from Rome circa 1475 (imported directly
from Florence), Naples in 1473 and 1474, and Fabriano in 1476. It seems that,
predictably, both forms of the game spread much faster in the more densely populated
and richer communities of Tuscany and northern Italy, and more slowly toward the
less densely populated south and east of the country. That the popular game was
produced in still limited locales three decades on is evidenced by the fact that in
1477, the Riminese Roberto di Blanchelli contracted a Bolognese cardmaker Piero
Bonozzi and his son to make dozens of printed packs for him (presumably for resale),
rather than someone closer to Rimini15 .
Thus, there are some indications of relatively popular triumph cards alongside
the luxurious courtly packs, the breadth of whose diffusion in the 1440s and later
matches that of the luxury packs, and whose production remained concentrated in
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
12
Adriano Franceschini, Note d’archivio sulle carte ferraresi, Ludica 2 (1996) p. 170.
13
Ortalli, op. cit. pp. 184-185
14
Sed cum eiusmodi cartas tanta majestate indignas esse ducerem (neque enim pro regio fastigio ornatae &
excultae videbantur) (Bibl. nat. lat. 8745, ff. 1v-2r)
15
Emilio Orioli, op. cit., doc. 2.

41
the same areas for several decades after 1442. In the first decade, this kind of cards is
found not only in the same records as the luxury packs, which may be ascribed to
coincidence (since the Este records are an exceptional source)16 , but also in a
completely unrelated source 6 to 7 years distant. Like the same source’s references to
luxury packs, this indicates that luxury and cheap packs had spread in the same
paths, at roughly the same time.
The chronology in general indicates a rapid spread in the first decade, ca. 1440-
1450; plotting the evidence on the map allows us to see a geographical diffusion in
operation. All of the cities with documentary evidence only in the 1450s and 1460s
are close to the geographical range of this diffusion. Thus, in the two decades 1450 to
ca. 1470, the pattern of diffusion simply becomes richer in the same area as the first
decade. It therefore seems that the game of triumphs may have been more or less
restricted to this geographical area for around 20 years, and during this time probably
developed its regional distinctions. The years after 1460 see a diffusion to the south
and east of the country, from Tuscany, and possibly in one instance to the costal
Romagna (Rimini) from Bologna.

Dark grey - the diffusion of the game of triumphs in Italy, 1442-1452

Light grey - the diffusion of the game of triumphs in Italy, up to 1475.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
16
For instance, we have no correspondingly detailed accounts for Visconti commissions of carte
da trionfi in the 1440s because the ducal archives in the castle of Porta Giovia were destroyed in
the looting that occurred immediately following Filippo Maria Visconti’s death on August 13,
1447. See L. Beltrami, Il Castello di Milano durante il dominio dei Visconti e degli Sforza... (Milan,
1894), pp. 46-55. See also Elisabeth Pellegrin, La bibliothèque des Visconti et des Sforza, ducs de
Milan, au XVe siècle (Paris, CNRS, 1955), pp. 54-55.

42
 The Playing-Card Volume 36, Number 1
Could there be at least a 20 year lacuna between the first physical evidence and the first
documentary evidence? (not only in the same location, but in diverse locations?)
We have seen that there is an extremely close chronological coincidence in three
unrelated sources of the earliest documentary and physical evidence, of both the
luxury and the cheaper, probably printed, cards. Accidental coincidence in three
unrelated sources seems unlikely. We have also seen that when introduced to the
luxury version of the game, wealthy people desired immediately to have some copies.
In the light of this, the question that poses itself is that if the game was already
established in Florence in the early 1420s, enough to be considered worthy of being
a wedding gift for one of the sensational marriages of that time (Fiorini’s suggestion),
why did it take so long for it to catch on in other wealthy circles? Also, more precisely,
if the evidence for luxury packs and cheaper packs is so unlikely coincident, both in
documentary and physical evidence (the packs and depictions of players), why is
there so huge an absence of any form of evidence in the two decades separating the
proposed date of the earliest pack and the first record of the existence of its type? Can
it really be because researchers have not been thorough enough, or that all types of
documents and art that might have contained it during those two decades really
could have been lost?
We can only know if the chronological record is misleading by examining Fiorini’s
arguments for this precocious dating, and placing it against the implications of the
documentary chronology and the Rothschild cards’ similarity to the Charles VI and
Catania cards, which are unanimously dated to at least 30 years later.

Were the Rothschild cards painted by Giovanni dal Ponte (1385-1437)?

Visual comparison of the cards with some of the known works of Giovanni del
Ponte forms the main component of Fiorini’s argument for the dating, if not the
provenance, of the Rothschild cards. Although she was unable to provide
illustrations of these works or the details of these works that she refers to, the internet
provides many examples of these and others.
On looking at these works, I do not see the same hand at work in Giovanni del
Ponte’s known works, and the Rothschild cards. Not only is the quality of the
draughtsmanship, the execution of the lines, completely different, but the
compositional style, while identifiable broadly as International Gothic, can certainly
only date the cards to within several decades.
For the argument of Florentine provenance, in the part of her article intitled “The
Florentineness of the Series” (pp. 57-61), Fiorini appeals first to general stylistic
considerations. She notes similarities with Florentine sculpture of the second decade
of the 15th century, the floral motifs which recall a general 15th century Florentine
exuberance, and the manner of depicting the beards and hair which she says are
particular in Florence at the end of the teens of the 15th century. Unfortuately no
exact comparative illustrations are provided, and I have no way of judging the
persuasiveness of these arguments.
Fiorini says that such characteristics are easily found in the early 15th century in
Florence, and are particularly represented in the Tuscano-Florentine cassoni
43
(decorated chests) of the 15th and 16th centuries. Even if this were true, it would help
only in establishing a provenance in the broadest sense.
Following upon this with Luciano Bellosi’s suggestion in 1985 that there were
stylistic similarities between Giovanni del Ponte’s works and the Rothschild cards17,
Fiorini makes three particular comparisons. She first notes that del Ponte was known
to paint cassoni of which two definitely assigned to him survive - one of the seven
virtues, and another of the Triumph of Fame (p. 58, note 28). Fiorini does not say
when these particular cassoni were painted, although she notes later (p. 62) that
Giovanni was commissioned to make two forzieri (medium-sized chests) for a
wedding in 1422. The implications of the subjects of the surviving cassoni and their
relationship to the imagery of carte da trionfi is evident, and Fiorini sees a similarity
between the Emperor of the Rosenwald sheet (Florentine) and del Ponte’s figure of
Fama.
The second comparison is between del Ponte’s 1421 painting “The Mystic
Marriage of St. Catherine”, at the Fine Arts University of Budapest.18 Fiorini comments
that “The same thick lines which constitute the figures, the lively sense of the colours
and the skillful use of lighting which volumetrically models the drapery, as well as
the manner of portraying the beards and hair, are only some of the points which the
cards share with the style of Giovanni.”
Personally, I cannot see in the image of the work displayed on the website of the
Fine Arts University of Budapest how Giovanni’s work here is distinguished enough
from other works of the same period and style to compare it directly to the Rothschild
cards.
The third comparison Fiorini makes is the one made famous by Bellosi, that of
Giovanni’s panel “St. George on horseback (slaying the dragon)”, part of a triptych
entitled “Virgin with Child Enthroned” in the Kress collection at the Columbia
Museum of Art, South Carolina19, and dating from 1434. The two figures share a
striking similarity in that St. George is turned backwards. But in the manner of
execution and compositional details, it is seems evident even in the image as
displayed on the internet that it is not the same draughtsman. Also, it can surely be
argued that the narrow format of both the cards and the triptych caused their respective
artists to economize space in this way.
Since the attribution to Giovanni del Ponte is crucial to Fiorini’s dating, I tried to
look at more specific details in comparing the style of the faces on the Rothschild
cards and Giovanni’s some of Giovanni’s works.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
17
Bellosi, Su alcuni disegni italiani tra la fine del Due e la metà del Quattrocento, Bollettino d’Arte,
LXX, marzo-apr. 1985, pp. 1-42; see no. 11, pp. 27-35; republished in Come un prato fiorito: studi
sull’arte tardogotica (Milano, 2000), pp. 200-201 and ill. pp. 266-272.
18
For an image of this painting, see the University’s website at http://
www2.szepmuveszeti.hu/ita7.htm (last accessed July 11, 2007) or http://
www2.szepmuveszeti.hu/gyujt_eng.htm , >Old Masters, >Italian painters, then the menu bar
above, >Giovanni del Ponte (no. 7)
1
Samuel H. Kress Foundation collection, 1954.23. See e.g. http://www.colmusart.org/html/
s03collection02.shtml at the Museum’s website.

44
 The Playing-Card Volume 36, Number 1
The attached collage20 shows a comparison, as clear as possible given the pixel
limitations but usually clear enough, of the faces of the Rothschild cards with a
selection of 14 of Giovanni’s faces from paintings done, variously, between 1410-
1420, and two others which the museum sources either date unhelpfully (1410-
1435) and not at all. But they are a span, at least, and show remarkably persistent
features.
Given the pixelation of images taken from the internet, I anticipate that this image
will not print well, so I have put it up in full size on a webpage with links to the
images used at
http://www.geocities.com/anytarot/rothschildgiovanni.html.
The images there are much larger and can be seen far more clearly. I urge readers
who would like to compare the
images to look there.
The top nine images are the
Rothschild and Bassano del
Grappa cards, and Giovanni’s
figures can be labelled with the
following numbers:
1—2—3—4
—————7
5—6———8
9——10—11
—12—13—14
The sources of Giovanni’s
images are - 1 and 9: Two
evangelists, Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, SK-A-3979 and 3980
(35x14cm), dated 1410-1435; 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7 and 8: Ascension of St. John
the Evangelist, National Gallery,
London, NG580 (triptych,
207x250 cm), dated 1410-1420; 10,
11, 12, 13, 14: Coronation of the
Virgin, Galleria dell’Accademia,
Firenze (I couldn’t find the
catalogue number or size, and no
date found).
Giovanni’s facial proportions
and style remains consistent from
large to small works, and across
time. Comparing Giovanni’s faces
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
20
This was kindly done by my friend Michael J. Hurst.

45
and heads with those of the cards, it doesn’t seem to be the same style. Particularly
noteworthy are the presence of well-formed ears in Giovanni’s paintings, whereas
in the cards there are few and they are little more than circles. Also, the faces are
squat, and the noses are not long in the cards, whereas all of Giovanni’s faces have
very long noses. The particular way of indicating the curls of the beards and hair
isn’t so similar between the two in this side-by-side comparison.
When we consider that Giovanni was already an accomplished miniaturist (from
what I understand) already since a teenager, and that the smaller Evangelists of the
Rijksmuseum, not quite double the size of the cards, show the same traits and detail
as the larger works, I am not under the impression that it is the same artist.
Comparing Bembo’s larger works with his cards21 , it is apparent that little of the
style and subtlety is lost despite the diminution of size and the other constraints of
the medium. Both larger and smaller works are immediately recognizable as the
same artist, particularly in the faces. The card-artist’s and Giovanni’s personal styles
seem to me to be self-consistent and completely different from one another.
It is noteworthy that Fiorini herself does not seem entirely convinced of the
attribution to Giovanni del Ponte. She closes her series of examples with the statement
that “Whether the series can be definitively attributed to Giovanni or not, what
counts, for the moment, is to have circumscribed with great exactitude the probable
area of the cards’ provenance. Other indications seem to lead back to a Florentine
context.” This is true, and these subsequent arguments are more forceful in my
opinion. There are three of them.

1. Emperor’s coin. The most impressive and convincing evidence is the large gold
florin held by the Emperor. The significance of this feature has been overlooked in all
previous discussion of the cards that I am aware of.
2. Fiorini also notes a second significant detail, previously overlooked - the double-
domed shield on the Knight of Swords. She notes its rarity in Italy - there are plenty
of Spanish examples of the type, but apparently only one Italian example, from the
artist Gherardo Starnina (c. 1360-1413), who studied in Valencia, and who also
happens to have been Giovanni’s principal teacher. This seems a strong argument
for Florentine provenance, and, given the date of Starnina’s death, for an early dating
as well. Despite this, the weight of the evidence given above leaves me convinced
that, if there is Spanish-Moorish design influence on this pack, some other explanation
than Starnina’s direct influence on Giovanni del Ponte is to be sought.
3. Finally, Fiorini compares the Rothschild cards to the printed cards of the
Rosenwald Sheet (pp. 59-61). She argues that the common aspect of the some of the
figures, and perhaps more impressively, the trefoil tracery in the corners of many of
the trumps, as in all of the Rothschild cards, point to a common tradition and area of
origin for these playing-card designs.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
21
For instance, in Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, vol. II, pp. 132 and following

46
 The Playing-Card Volume 36, Number 1
A final implication: can other packs be attributed to Florence?
In the penultimate paragraph of her paper (p. 63), Fiorini raises the intriguing
issue of certain similarities among the Rothschild, Charles VI (Paris), Castello Ursino
(Catania) and Este (New Haven) painted tarots, already noted by Dummett in 1993:22
these are the clear lines and the tendency of the image to project outside the frame of
the card. Besides these, I might add that the borders of the Rothschild, Catania and
Charles VI packs are exactly the same spiral pattern. While the Rothschild and the
other two packs are clearly not by the same artist, it is immediately apparent that
they come from the same school of card-painters. This means that if the Rothschild
cards are Florentine, the other two sets and possibly the Este New Haven cards are
also from Florentine artists. We may investigate this hypothesis in other ways - by
the numbering of the Charles VI and Catania cards and, as Fiorini has done for the
Rothschild cards, by a comparison with the Rosenwald sheet.
For Charles VI and Catania, the first argument is to note that the cards are
numbered at all. While the numbering is of the A or Southern type, and the numbering
has been considered to be Bolognese, numbering itself would be a very un-Bolognese
practice. Moreover, the Emperor and Pope are numbered, along with the Moon, Sun,
World and Angel cards - this again has never been done in Bologna. Admittedly, it
isn’t Florentine to number the last 5 cards either; but the first ones are in both the
Rosenwald sheet and the Minchiate. So it appears they are more Florentine than
Bolognese.
The second argument is the number of the Chariot. In the Charles VI the number
is “X”, which corresponds exactly with the numbering of the Catania pack, where
Arabic numbers are used instead. The sequence Chariot 10 Hermit 11 is Florentine
and is never attested as a Bolognese variation, where the Chariot invariably follows
Love.
I should add that I realize that the numbering on the cards is not positive evidence
of where they were made. But it is clear that whoever numbered them, was using the
Florentine numbering. Whoever numbered the Catania cards also was.

Summary
While the documentary and material record is not without obscurities and
lacunae, the earliest two references to the game (1442) were already found 133 years
ago, and during all of the following time subsequent research has failed to cross this
terminus a quo threshold, despite finding plenty of additional evidence for the years
following 1442. 133 years is a long time to stay in first place in a busy field of
historical research, namely that of northern Italy during the early Quattrocento. In
spite of the ambiguities and accidental selectivity of the documentary record, this
argument from silence, combined with all the positive evidence in the decades
following 1442, where only a few years at most separate one visual or documentary
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

22
Michael Dummett, Il Mondo e l’Angelo (Napoli, Bibliopolis, 1993), p. 85. Note that the
Rothschild Emperor card on page 88 is mislabelled “Re di Denari.”

47
reference from another in the total chronology, strongly suggests that the game of
triumphs did not exist for very long before this date. Certainly not for twenty or more
years.
But although I find Fiorini’s dating and artistic attribution of the Rothschild
cards extremely problematic, her argumentation for the Florentine provenance of the
cards, and the placing of Florence in its rightful place in the early diffusion of the
game, remains persuasive. Moreover, the stylistic similarities and particular details
that these cards share with the Charles VI and Catania cards, makes a Florentine
provenance for them likely as well. For those who have followed the historical study
of early tarot games from 1980 (and previously) to the present, this is a monumental
development. But a date of 1420 seems unwarranted both by the implications of the
chronological evidence, and the uncertainty of the attribution of the work to Giovanni
dal Ponte. If the virtually identical Emperor’s crown and sceptre between the Charles
VI and Rothschild Emperors indicate that they drew from the same immediate stock
of images, then it seems more likely that the Rothschild cards were done by a different
artist at around the same time as the Charles VI cards, and fit well within the pattern
of the documentary evidence, instead of standing conspicuously outside of it.

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