Introduction

Note: this blog is still in process. What is written is done, but there is no conclusion, because not everything that can be examined has been. 

Added November 2023: there is now more information, so I am adding it to what has already been written. 

The first record of what we now call a tarot deck (then naibi a trionfi = triumph playing cards): thus far is of a deck made in Florence in 1440. Shortly after, judging from the reproductions on the Web, there seems to have been the appearance of numerous illuminated manuscripts of Petrarch's Trionfi poems, and also of cassoni, i.e. wedding chests, with sequences of images for each of the six poems similar to some of the special cards of the game. Is there a connection between the two events, such that one prompted the other?  It looks like that, from our cursory examination of manuscripts and cassoni, but lack of evidence to the contrary is not very persuasive if we do not do a thorough examination in the obvious places before drawing conclusions. One obvious place is the series of books that were published in the 1960s and 70s with detailed descriptions of known Petrarch manuscripts in a given country. There is a list of them on p. 2 of J. B. Trapp's Studies of Petrarch and his Influence, 2004, which I reproduce below:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2577vHFvBIc/U ... Trapp2.jpg

In what follows I will be reporting on what these books have to say, also integrating with it information that has come to light since the time these books were written.