Bartolomeo di Paholo Serragli (active 1453-1458)
composed by Lothar Teikemeier, last update 06.12.2012

First recorded Trionfi card activity with Filippo di Marco: 1453-03-10
Last recorded Trionfi card activity with Filippo di Marco: 1458-04-01
Activities with Giovanni di Domenico: in September 1455

Dates of Trionfi card activities
all related to Filippo di Marco
and in 3 cases also to Giovanni di Domenico

  • 1453-03-10 Florence - 1 Trionfi deck "fatogli" (total f. 8)
  • 1453-03-21 Florence - Trionfi deck not mentioned, payment possibly related to production of 1453-31-03 (f. 1, s. 4)
  • 1453-03-31 Florence - 2 Trionfi decks "fatogli" (total f. 5 s. 18 d. 4.)
  • 1455-03-29 Florence - 3 Trionfi decks and 2 card decks (total f. 4)
  • 1455-09-06 Florence - (1? or more?) Trionfi decks (f. 2 )
    related: Giovanni di Domenicho (likely Giovanni di Domenico, Trionfi card painter 1449-1453)
  • 1455-09-20 Florence - (1 ? or more ?) Trionfi decks (f. 1)
    related: Giovanni di Domenicho (likely Giovanni di Domenico, Trionfi card painter 1449-1453)
  • 1455-09-27 Florence - decks are not mentioned (f.2 s.6 d.7.)
    related: Giovanni di Domenicho (likely Giovanni di Domenico, Trionfi card painter 1449-1453)
  • 1455-10-10 Florence - 1 Trionfi deck (f.2 s.6 d.7.)
  • 1455-10-21 Florence - "resto di trionfi auti da lui insino" (f.7 s.- d.8.)
  • 1456-04-17 Florence - "trionfi gli deve fare" (f. 3 s.20 d.6)
  • 1456-04-30 Florence - "per parte di trionfi gl’àne a fare" (f.4 s.26 d.7)
  • 1456-05-15 Florence - "per trionfi che da lui" (f.2 s.9 d.8.)
  • 1458-04-01 Florence - 2 Trionfi decks (total f. 3 s.10 d.6.)






Sources

Sources are mainly taken from Franco Pratesi's new article series written from November 2011 till now, published here at Trionfi.com.

SOURCE 1: Bartolomeo Serragli, active 1453-1458

Quote from Franco Pratesi: "1453-1458 Florentine triumphs by Filippo di Marco", 12.01.2012

Bartolomeo Serragli

First of all, we have to understand the function of Bartolomeo Serragli in this trade, and for this we can directly use the "explanation" provided in the article.

The most striking patron to emerge from this group of documents is the little-known Bartolommeo di Paolo Serragli, who commissions in rapid succession from 1455 through 1457 (Documents 3-22) a fantastic amount of sculpture from Desiderio da Settignano, Andrea della Robbia, and Donatello himself, and paintings from Filippo di Marco and Filippo Lippi, all to the tune of about three hundred florins (including Donatello’s materials but not the final price for the statue), a handsome sum for a family that had just survived ten years of exclusion from public offices and seven years of exile imposed by Cosimo de’ Medici. ... Corti’s new discoveries provide the solution: Bartolommeo Serragli was an art dealer, one of the earliest of whom we have any such exhaustive record.

This dealer was particularly active towards the South of Italy, down to Naples and its royal palace. Some comments can be added now. Interesting enough is that these particular cards were of various qualities and values. Together with rather cheap items, we find pricey ones: remarkable among them is the first pack encountered, in 1453. One could simply conclude that at this rather early time it was still a new and costly kind of production, but also the contrary opinion can easily be supported: the very fact that this pack was indicated as unusually rich may prove that more current ones existed already.

Oddly enough, the only project to vie with the Donatello statue in expense in this entire series of entries is the so-far completely baffling set of "trionfi" for which Filippo di Marco is paid very nearly fifty florins at intervals from March 10, 1452/3 to April 1, 1458 (Documents 3, 5, 6, 13, 15, 17, 22). At this moment Filippo di Marco is a personality of the utmost obscurity. We know nothing of him beyond his matriculation in the Arte dei Medici e Speziali in 1447 (Thieme-Becker, "Allgemeines Lexicon…", XI, 1915, p. 564.) and none of the triumphs can be identified with any certainty; for the moment I will not try. From the documents it is not even possible to count them, although one cannot help noting that they generally seem to turn up in pairs. [This author clearly did not know the denotation of paio as a card pack. FP] There may have been as many as eight of these pairs, one pair is listed as "richi" (Document 3) and another as "operati" (Document 15). The phrases suggest scene-painting or designs for masques or parades rather than pictures, but in the absence of any evidence speculation had best stop at that point. Perhaps they were paintings after all, and if they can same day be identified among the various homeless Quattrocento panels representing such subjects, we will be the richer by one more minor master.

Rather astounding may be the fact that just in one case can "simple" playing cards be found as manufactured and acquired. We had rather expected the contrary situation, in which ordinary cards were the rule and triumphs the exception. Apparently, triumphs were precisely the kind of playing cards most looked for, at the time, in this particular kind of trade.
Somewhat surprising is also the fact that all these different packs were produced by one and the same cardmaker, Filippo di Marco. We can imagine him as a kind of "Florentine Sagramoro", but evident dissimilarities appear, to begin with the actual customers, not a Duke of the Este family, but just an art dealer, who could sell further these cards practically anywhere.








Repeated Note:

When Ross Caldwell and me in 2003 started to collect Trionfi notes between 1442-1463, we had about 27/28 entries (which I nowadays would count as 31). The major part were the documents of Ferrara, which were collected by Gherardo Ortalli and Adriano Franceschini in the "Prince and the Playing Cards" (1996), after the base laying works of Michael Dummett and Stuart Kaplan around 1980. This collection included 2 notes about Trionfi cards in Florence, found by Franco Pratesi in his earlier work (allowances of the Trionfi game in 1450 and 1463). A graphical representation of this time (with 27 entries) shows the dominance of Ferrarese documents (in black) with a few notes only from other locations (in red; see picture to the right)

In the period 2004 till October 2011 it was possible to add 4 further notes (Siena 1452, Padova 1455, Ancona c. 1460 and Valerio Marcello c. 1460), mainly thanks to information given by Thierry Depaulis.

Franco Pratesi started his new article series in November 2011. Since then the list has gotten 67 new documents till September 2012 (65 of them found by Franco Pratesi, one, now the oldest of September 1440, by Thierry Depaulis, and another one by Veber Gulinelli, who controlled the earlier work of Franceschini and found an overlooked document) and nearly all are related to Florence or its surrounding.

A small book (118 pages) was published around Christmas 2012, Franco Pratesi: "Playing Card Trade in 15th Century Florence" as IPCS Paper No. 7 (ISSN 0305-2133). It contains some of the articles, which before had appeared at this website, those, which treat the early time of 15th century. Thierry Depaulis commented in his foreword: "This book is a landmark in the history of early playing cards in Italy".

Well, maybe not the book, but the research is clearly a landmark in various interests. For the collection of early Trionfi notes it somehow means, that we have within the year 2012 about 200 % more data for the period 1440-1462 than mankind had collected in the 200 years before.

Added later:

In August 2013 the new report of Arnold und Doris Esch: "Aus der Frühgeschichte der Spielkarte. Der Import von carte da giocare und trionfi nach Rom." in Gutenberg Jahrbuch 2013, 88. Jahrgang, p. 41-53, arrived in our redaction. It contains 106 new references to Trionfi decks, which all were found in the customs registers of the city Rome for the period 1453-1465. With this the number of all earlier Trionfi cards records has been doubled and should have reached then c. 210 (from which a few are only considered to be "Trionfi card notes" and don't contain the word "Trionfi" or something similar).

***********

I'd started to sort the new Trionfi card documents overview in October 2012. Articles will be possibly changed according improvements in research.

Old Overview about Trionfi Card documents in 2003

Overview about Trionfi Card documents in 2013

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Persons in Trionfi Card Documents 1440-1462
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