Old 10, Aug. 8, 2015: 1595 Florence - Special cards from Venice

This is a translation of Franco's "1595: Fierenze - Carte speciali da Venezia," https://naibi.net/A/415-BOSISO-Z.pdf, dated August 8, 2015. This is the 15th note of 2015.

The present essay explores the ambiguity of the word "carta" in the late 16th- early 17th century, not only between paper and card, but in the type of material this "carta" consists of. Comments in brackets are mine, in consultation with Franco, for clarification purposes.


1595: Florence – Special cards from Venice

Introduction and foreword

Usually, it is recommended for any writing to limit the first-person intervention as much as possible; in this note, the two parts, subjective and objective, are both present, indeed the first-person contribution is more extensive than usual, although it can be kept quite separate from the objective data, here constituted simply by a letter from the end of the sixteenth century, with an accompanying sheet [foglio].

It is necessary to begin with some background, which could be connected to the objective data only through the transfer of information. A short time ago, I submitted a question of mine to the judgment of Gustavo Bertoli, a scholar of history and archives who for many years has put up with my intermittent requests for opinions and assistance. My question was formulated as follows: why did playing cards keep the foreign name of naibi when they arrived in Florence and were not immediately called carte [cards]? My first attempt at an answer was that they could not yet be called cards, because they were not made of paper [carta], something that only later became customary. It can be recalled in this regard that we have news of imports of naibi together with bundles of skins (for example in Rome in 1428). [note 1]

Here the problem concerns parchment [pergamena] above all. It seems plausible to maintain that the first naibi were made of parchment and not paper, but it is probable that a thin sheet of parchment could also be called… paper [carta]; not for nothing was parchment normally called parchment paper [cartapecora, literally sheep-paper]; for the term paper [carta] not to be applicable, one would have to assume sheets of thicker skin, if not even leather. Of course, playing cards similar to shoe insoles would have been too thick to be handled properly, but there can be intermediate thicknesses, as were most likely those of orpelli and argenpelli [skins beaten thin and coated with gold- and silver-colored paint]. [note 2]
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1. http://trionfi.com/evx-oldest-known-nai ... rt-to-rome
2. F. Pratesi, The Playing-Card, 26 No. 2 (1997) 38-45.

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As expected, Gustavo Bertoli reacted to my bizarre hypothesis by pointing out its low plausibility.

What does the above premise have to do with the content of this note? The fact is that the document presented and briefly discussed here was found by Bertoli himself, a few days after the exchange of ideas mentioned above. It was precisely as a result of this [exchange] that the author of the discovery wanted immediately to point out the new document to me, with the more than reasonable warning that there is a distance of two centuries between the two cases and therefore relating them is very risky. Let us then keep the two cases separate: let us leave in the world of fantasy the cards [carte] not of paper [carta], and perhaps not even of thin parchment, of the last quarter of the fourteenth century, and let us enter the real world with real objects, even if documented only at the end of the sixteenth century.


The Medici of the Principality [Mediceo del Principato] collection

The archive collection involved is not just any of the more than 600 present in the ASFi [State Archives of Florence]; this collection represents a part of the archive of the Medici, at the time already Grand Dukes of Tuscany; therefore any document present here, even of a private nature, ends up assuming a public value, usable for the history of the Grand Duchy itself.

The volume under examination [note 3] is part of a series of similar books containing letters and requests addressed to the Grand Duke through his secretary Lorenzo Usimbardi (Colle Val d'Elsa, 1547 - Florence, 1636). The same secretary kept all this correspondence of his office in good order, and therefore we find many letters of various types bound together. The one that interests us here is a letter sent to Usimbardi on 9 December 1595 by Giovanni Uguccioni, from Venice.

The Uguccioni family was a rather important family in Florence and had the family palace right in the Piazza della Signoria (see Fig. 1); at the time, Giovanni Uguccioni must have had some public functions in the grand ducal administration. The grand duke then was
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3. ASFi, Mediceo del Principato, 1250.


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Ferdinando I de' Medici (Florence, 1549-1609), a person who held several important roles: cardinal of the Holy Roman Church from the age of thirteen, he later became grand duke of Tuscany from 1587 until his death; in 1589 he married Cristina di Lorena, after having, understandably, laid down the purple. Already in the first years of his stay in Rome, the cardinal had begun to collect art objects, and in Florence also, he was noted for his patronage and support of artists, musicians in particular. It seems that the objects we will encounter later could also be included among the artifacts of that high-quality craftsmanship that was particularly appreciated.
 

Figure 1 – Florence: Piazza della Signoria. Uguccioni Palace.

The letter

Examining, at f. 356 of the book indicated, the letter addressed by Uguccioni to Usimbardi, one finds something that has almost the opposite character compared to the usual pleas present in the bundle of letters

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sent to the secretary of the Grand Duke and collected together with this one. It almost seems in this specific case that it was the Grand Duke himself who was pleading for something. It appears, in fact, that Uguccioni had been urged in two recent letters, dated November 24 and December 2, to get in touch with Paulo Bosiso, to convince him to return to Florence. It is easy to deduce that this return to Florence of the interlocutor was an action strongly desired by the Grand Duke himself.

Giovanni Uguccioni then reports that he had been interested in the matter several times, and even on the very day he wrote the letter he had spoken at length with Bosiso to illustrate all the positive aspects connected with his return to Florence. The task of convincing him was proving to be very arduous, so much so that the person solicited had decided to write down a series of requests to be forwarded directly to the Grand Duke. Only the acceptance by the Grand Duke himself of the “conditions that he wants to be guaranteed without reductions” could have made Bosiso decide to return to Florence. Thus, together with Uguccioni's letter, we find, at f. 357, an attached sheet with the document containing the requests to be submitted to the attention of the Grand Duke.


The attached document

Together with the letter of Giovanni Uguccioni, we can read Bosiso's written autograph, which is the main subject and reason for this note. Given its importance in the context under consideration, it seems useful to transcribe it in its entirety before submitting it to a brief discussion. {Here the first few words of each new point, most beginning with "and," extend to the left of the rest. I have used a line separation instead.]

Praise God

To go I paulo bosiso to Florence to make my own carte [cards, paper] for the service of said     and his state, which is to make carte [cards, paper] from wool and silk, and it is a very necessary art for those countries and I, desirous of serving you, expose myself to leave my country and relatives and friends and very good profit, but with this

That I be paid here and before I leave for my expenses, and damages I have had going to    Florence twice with two workers and craftsmen to make carti [paper, cards] and other goods and expenses that I have to undertake going to Florence with goods and furnishings, and

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          my family, including my wife and two children, 200 scudi.

and for my provision practicing this art in said that I be given 12 scudi per month, and 30 scudi for the house and that upon my arrival from there I be accounted a provision of 6 months, to accommodate me to my business.

and said provision will last for 20 years to me and my heirs, and to others who are with me while I practice this art in Florence, with the proviso that no one may, during the years mentioned above, come to make papers or have them made in Florence or in the state, only my person and my heirs after me.

and that it is possible to export [trar=trarre=estrarre] the carti [cards, paper] of Florence to all its state and outside of the state while the city of Florence with its state does not suffer that I will always be obliged to make that it is served both to maintain it for its needs and to make beautiful and good stuff, on par with any other.

and to have good leather for making carti [cards, paper], it will be necessary for HSH [His Serene Highness, SAS in original] to give me permission to buy leather from cowhides and to have them prepared in my own way, so that it is needed that HSH makes it done by his command from those who tan [consan=concian] leather and from those who are not good at making carti (because it cannot be that all of them will succeed), so that I can sell them [cards or sheets of paper] to whomever I can and that I moreover will be given for bringing workers an additional 5 scudi for each one.

As is evident, the spelling and grammar are not the best, so much so that both the Italian and Venetian languages appear in the text in a considerably distorted form; however, despite the many inaccuracies that can be observed, it does not appear necessary to add a "translation" of the text into current Italian.

Discussion and comments

The writer of the document in question is Paulo Bosiso, at least that is how he personally writes his name (even if it would sound a little more familiar to us if it were written Paolo Bosisio instead). Only from this document can we learn his profession and the precise reason for which his return to Florence could have been welcomed. Rather surprisingly, we thus learn that Bosiso was a simple manufacturer of carte [cards or paper] and that precisely as such was his return to Florence desired, after his first stay in Florence had not been given the welcome he could have hoped for based on the assurances he had received.

Were they actually playing cards? This is the most important of the various problems that arise when reading this document,

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ultimately the only one that would require a clear positive answer, so that this discussion can return to the theme of the history of playing cards. In the Florentine territory, there had been a flourishing paper production in Colle Val d'Elsa for centuries, while in the city there were several manufacturers of playing cards; so in this case, it must have been an extraordinary production.

If we could conclude that these were special sheets of paper, to be used for any purpose, there would be practically nothing left of interest for the history of playing cards. Let us then try to continue the examination by accepting the hypothesis that our Bosiso was, in fact, a manufacturer of playing cards; in this case, the information provided on the workmanship becomes very important and significant, which evidently corresponds to unusual objects and of a quality much higher than average. We find practically nothing of what we could have expected: even the paper [carta] of the playing cards [carte da gioco] is missing!

Three materials are mentioned, each one stranger than the last in this context. Starting from the last one, we find leather [or skin, pelle]. Now, finding playing cards made of parchment is not entirely extraordinary, because that is exactly what the first playing cards we know of must have been like. But more than two centuries had passed since then, and the use of parchment had long been reserved for completely extraordinary cases, while cards were made of common paper and had long been called (playing) cards. The parchment itself is not “normal”: here we are talking about leather and cowhide, and however thin that leather could become due to the way in which the tanning was carried out (so special that only Bosiso knew it), imagining it reduced to a very thin sheet is not easy.

If the leather leaves open some doubts, perhaps at least as many remain regarding the other two materials indicated, wool and silk. The very fact that paper is not mentioned among the materials is in turn so enigmatic that it suggests the use of wool and silk precisely to produce a special type of carta [card, paper], instead of using the usual rags made of fabrics of vegetable fibers. In the end, the alternative hypothesis, that here we are dealing with exclusive methods for the production of sheets of paper and parchment, which had been left outside the door, we find returned through the window.

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Conclusion

The document presented, thanks to its being reported by Gustavo Bertoli, makes it clear that the Venetian craftsman Paulo Bosiso was willing to move to Florence for his work as a manufacturer of high-quality carte [cards, paper] which would seem to have been previously appreciated by Grand Duke Ferdinand I. After an initial stay in Florence that had not been successful, the craftsman now asks that precise conditions be respected, also going into detail about the payments required for his transfer to Florence with his family and some workers. The materials mentioned for the production of these special cards [or, this special paper] are only wool, silk, and leather. It seems possible, but far from certain, that they were playing cards; in this case, the materials used, and the leather in particular, recall those probably used in the production of the first naibi, more than two centuries earlier.

Franco Pratesi − 08.08.2015