Introduction

This blog is based on my posts on Tarot History Forum (THF) in the thread "Giovanni dal Ponte and the Rothschild", which I initiated at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1005 in February 2014. Readers are warned that this is a rather specialized essay that doesn't reach a clear conclusion. So unless you have a special interest in these cards, it might be a good essay of mine to skip in favor of others.

Modified Jan. 2016: I made a couple of changes to parts 1 and 2 based on input from Franco Pratesi. 

Modified Feb. 2017: This was to reflect images, documentation, and ideas found in  the catalog of a dal Ponte exhibition at the Accademia Gallery in Florence, as well as a discussion on the Tarot History Forum at the above link, starting p. 3 of the thread, that resumed after an almost 2 year hiatus and spilled over onto other threads, of which the most important is that on "Ser Ristoro (playing cards to 1434 Ferrara", http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1163. These modifications to my original piece are at various places throughout.

Christina Fiorini wrote an essay on the Rothschild-Bergamo cards ("I tarocchi della Collezione Rothschild al Louvre: nuove proposte di lettura [The Tarot Cards of the Rothschild Collection in the Louvre: New Hypotheses], The Playing-Card 35:1 (Sept. 2006), pp. 52-63, to which Ross Caldwell wrote a  reply in the same journal exactly one year later (36:1, pp. 51-62). It seems to me that the issues Fiorini's essay raises are worth pursuing further, in a format that (unlike the journal) allows us to look at the artwork and documents in as much detail as we need.

For anyone who would like to read her article first, in either Italian or my unprofessional English, see the last section of this blog. My presentation, however, does not depend on reading her article.

I do not want to put in question the Florentine origin of the cards. In that regard Ross was in full agreement with her points, and so am I. Also, I want to make it clear that I do not wish to defend either Ross or Fiorini, but rather to pursue that elusive quarry, the Truth.

Here are the issues I want to discuss.

1. Are these cards really part of a tarot deck, or perhaps for some other game, notably Emperors? Since this question involves looking at documentary records, I will also include a related question: what documentation is there suggesting that dal Ponte actually did produce painted cards?

2. How do the cards compare with the dal Ponte cassoni paintings of which we have record?

3. How does the Rothschild Knight of Batons relate to the dal Ponte "St. George" of a similar design? This is a point of dispute between Fiorini and Ross.

4. How do the faces in dal Ponte paintings compare with the faces in the cards? This is another issue raised by Ross.

5. Can the style of the cards be dated specifically to the 1420s as opposed to the 1450s-1460s? Fiorini tries to deal with this issue first, but without actual images it is difficult to discuss. I put it last because by then we will have seen at least some of his works.