The following research was done by Ross Gregory Caldwell:
Polismagna is known to playing-card history because of his translation of chapter LXI of Decembrio's "Vita Philippi Mariae Vicecomitis", which concerns the games Filippo enjoyed playing.
The passage was first noted by Giuseppe Campori in his 1874 essay "Le Carte da giuoco dipinte per gli Estensi nel secolo XV" (Polismagna's translation of the entire Vita was first noted in modern times by Muratori in the preface to his edition in the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. XX, (1731) col. 984). Campori notes an Italian "translation (of Decembrio's Life of Filippo Maria Visconti) made by a pseudonymous contemporary called Polismagna, Ferrarese, which is conserved in the Biblioteca Estense." The same passage was included by Dummett in his discussion of early occurences of the phrase "carte da trionfi." In Polismagna's Italian, the text contains an interesting departure from Decembrio's original Latin, where instead of "eo ludi genere, qui ex imaginibus depictis fit" (that kind of game which is made from painted images) Polismagna writes "zugava a le carte de triumphi" – he played at triumph cards.
The entire passage, as quoted by Campori, runs thus:
"Alcuna volta zugava a le carte de triumphi. Et di questo giocho molto si delectoe per modo che comparoe uno paro di carte da triumphi compite mille et cinque cento ducati. Di questo maximamente auctore et casone Martinno da Terdona suo secretario, il quale cum meraviglioso inzegno et soma industria compite questo giocho de carte cum le figure et imagine de li dei et cum le figure de li animali et de li ocelli che gli sum sottoposti."
(Sometimes he played at triumph cards. And in this game he took so much delight that he paid for one finished pack of triumph cards one thousand and five hundred ducats. Of this the foremost author and "casone" was Marziano da Tortona his secretary, who with marvellous ingenuity and greatest industry finished this deck of cards with the figures and images of the gods and with the figures of animals and birds which he placed under them.) [Campori 1874:5 note (1); cf. Dummett 1980:82, and footnote 48]
As noted by Dummett, the significance of Polismagna's version lies in his use of phrase "carte da triumphi." In the Italian translation, Polismagna calls the deck of cards authored by Martinno da Terdona "carte da triumphi". Dummett, in "Game of Tarot", cites Campori's note, and suggests that Polismagna "like others after him, was puzzled by the passage (in Decembrio), and assumed that (the pack of cards made by Marziano) must refer to some kind of Tarot pack." (GoT p. 82)
I find Dummett's attempt to dismiss this use as confusion on Polismagna's part rather weak. Polismagna, it turns out, was an important figure in the Ferrara court, and very close to Borso. He is roughly contemporary with the earliest extant trionfi decks, and is an intimate of the court from which the earliest and the majority of occurences of the phrase "carte da trionfi" come. Thus, when he says "carte da triumphi", his witness is important; it is one of the few occurences of the term, and it is telling us something about how Polismagna's contemporaries understood what that title designated.
"Polismagna" is clearly a pseudonym. Who was Polismagna?
Art dictionaries cite the name as a pseudonym of Carlo di San Giorgio, or Vanuccio, a Bolognese miniaturist, translator, and librarian, who spent his entire career at the Este court in Ferrara.
For instance, in Benezit's "Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs" (Paris, Gründ, 1999), the entry for Vanuccio reads (vol. 14, p. 45) - "VANUCCIO or VANUZO, pseudonym of Carlo di S. Giorgio, called Polismagna. Born in Bologna. Died before 1479. XVth century. Active in Ferrara. Italian. Illuminator. He worked for the court of Ferrara."
An older dictionary is Vollmer, Hans (ed.), "Allgemeines Lexikon Der Bildenden Künstler" (Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1940) –
"Vanuccio (Vanuzo) Carlo di S. Giorgio, gen. Polismagna, miniaturist in Ferrara, born Bologna, died around 1479. Had oversight of the library of Borso d'Este, and directed the manuscript copies; signed 1461 with the pseudonym "Polismagna" a copy of Michele Savonarola's "Confessionale" (formerly Bibl. Modena n. 117). He improved the figures in Candido de' Bontempi's poem. Also noted as translaor, for instance of Leon Bruni's "De Nobilitate".
Borso found a translator necessary, because although Leonello had been able to read Decembrio's Vita Philippi Mariae Vicecomitis, and countless other texts, in the original Latin, Borso himself could not. While he read voraciously in Italian and French, Borso d'Este did not read Latin. In order to plumb the riches of Latin texts, both the classical authors and those composed more recently, he commissioned many translations. One of the most prolific of these translators was one of Borso's own chamberlains, Carlo di San Giorgio.
Carlo di San Giorgio's earliest recorded commission, in 1461, is a transcription of the Italian romance Guerin Meschino. Written by the Florentine Andrea da Barberino in 1409, Guerin Meschino concerned the adventures of a questing knight, Guerin. Book 4 of Guerin Meschino narrates Guerin's journey to a fabulous city, Polismagna. It is noteworthy that Carlo di San Giorgio uses the pseudonym "Polismagna" in many of his translations for Borso – we may suspect he took the name from Guerin Meschino.
Polismagna was familiar with the milieu of Borso's Ferrara; as an intimate of Borso he may have witnessed the triumphs for Borso staged in 1452 and 1471; he translated classical works with references to the triumphs of Caesar and Augustus; he must have been aware of the "triumphs" of the gods planned for the Hall of the Months in the Este palace of Schifanoia, begun around 1465; and, most significantly, in this court of Este which has the richest store of references to various kinds of triumph cards, he must have seen and perhaps played "carte da triumphi"; he surely knew what the phrase "carte da triumphi" would have meant to Borso d'Este. His use of the term in this context therefore shows that "triumph cards" was something broad enough to include images of gods with suits of birds, and was not, therefore, limited to the series of images of the later tarocchi set, which is not distinguished by gods or birds.
