Trionfi (cards) - Name

Name

The first known use of the name Trionfi was in February 1442, in the account books of D'Este court of Ferrara, when the painter Sagramoro received money for the production of four playing card decks, which contained a series of trumps and the common four Italian suits (le chope e le spade e li dinari e li bastoni e tutte le figure). In the following years the name appears variously in playing card contexts, with the major part of the documents coming from the Ferrarese court. Parallel to this development extant, early cards are known mainly from Milan (the so-called "Visconti-Sforza Tarocchi"), identified as forerunners of the later Tarot cards. The earliest cards of this type of deck, unfortunately not all complete, are the Brera-Brambilla Tarocchi, the Cary-Yale deck and the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo Tarocchi.

Likely, the name Trionfi was used in the early times not only for decks produced at the opportunity of a triumphal occasion like a marriage, military victory or a peace treaty, as a small part of the much more voluminous festivities, which also were called "Trionfi", a type of celebration which became excessively popular in Italy around 1440-1450.

A letter from November 1449 by the Venetian Antonio Jacopo Marcello used the expression for a deck, which was produced 1425 or earlier. It was commissioned by the duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti, painted by Michelino da Besozzo and described in an accompanying text by Martiano da Tortona. The deck itself is lost, but the description of Martiano da Tortona offers details about the deck. It had likely totally 60 cards (four kings, forty number cards and sixteen trumps). The forty-four-suit cards used birds as suit signs and the trumps presented sixteen Roman gods.

The names Taraux and Tarocchi appear according current Tarot research for the first time in the year 1505 parallel in Avignon (France) and Ferrara. Around this time, the name Trionfi seems to modify its character in playing card context, it appears as a game of its own (Rabelais knows a Taraux and a Trionfi game) and seems no longer connected to the specific allegorical cards. The general English expression "trump" and the German "trumpfen" (in card games) have developed from the Italian "Trionfi".