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 Tarot History Search started September 2004       

Franco Pratesi

Franco Pratesi is an Italian game researcher who contributed in remarkable way to the research of the history of various games, Chess, Checker, Playing Cards generally, Tarot and Go. In 1989 he published about his researches to the Michelino deck, in which turned out, that the Decembrio note and the letter of Marcello from 1449 refer with some security to the same object. Franco had visited the original documents in Paris and his earlier work caused the rather excessive Trionfi.com research on the Michelino deck, first as an own object with translations to the Latin texts by Ross Caldwell, later in its relations to later Trionfi card productions and then to earlier playing card productions and other productions in 14th century. A lot of things wouldn't have found their later development, if the research of the Michelino deck would have been missing.
Other of his researches researches brought some light to the early playing card situation in Florence, especially it turned out, that the Minchiate could be dated probably already at 1466 and with security in 1471 (earlier it was believed, that it developed around 1530).

In our early research we got support from Franco, which made an easy access of his earlier studies possible. Especially he manifested some confidence in the importance of his home town Florence, which in the begin of our research had the value "without any known card productions during 15th century": Meanwhile it is considered by us and others, that the Charles VI Tarot, the Alessandro Sforza Tarot, the Rosenwald Tarocchi and the Rothschild cards might have been from Florence or were made under Florentine influence.

Recently (2011) we started together a project about Playing and Triunfi cards to Rome in the period 1445 - 1484, based on the earlier researches of Arnold Esch. Again Florence will play a greater role, cause most of the relevant imports seem to have come from Florence. This project, though it got in its direction, has already considerable dimensions with some new and rather revolutionary findings (Stand March 2012):

Publishing Diary: New Articles


Old Articles

Older own Links

Especially me has to thank for a lot of interesting discussions and practical advice in many matters.










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