From 17 April to 2018 July XNUMX, the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan hosts the exhibition presenting the "Tarots of Mantegna" in the collections of the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana.
The exhibition offers 28 sheets from the oldest and most mysterious printed series, made in the mid-400th century in northern Italy, owned by the Milanese institution, which perhaps already arrived in the collection with the nucleus of works by Federico Borromeo. Alongside them will be exhibited the manuscript of the Crater Hermetis by the humanist Ludovico Lazzarelli from the Marches, who used some sequences of the "Tarot" as a source of inspiration to compose a poetic work.
The exhibition, curated by Laura Paola Gnaccolini, offers 28 of the 31 sheets, which arrived in the Ambrosiana perhaps already with the nucleus of works by Federico Borromeo, from the oldest and most famous printed series created in Northern Italy in the second half of the fifteenth century, but also the most mysterious, as regards the possible author, place of production and purpose of realization.
The so-called "Tarots of Mantegna" are made up of 50 burin engraved prints of the highest quality, characterized by a very thin stroke, a great abundance of details, a refined cross-hatch system for the shading, divided into five series of 10 elements each, which together depict man as a microcosm and the universe as a macrocosm.
The fact that these engravings are mostly kept in loose specimens, the format of the print similar to that of playing cards and some subjects, have in the past erroneously led critics to believe that it could be an unusual deck of tarot cards. The specimens conserved in the Ambrosiana are embellished with various details made of gold leaf and by the use of golden highlights, in some cases still appreciable.
The "Tarots of Mantegna" originally appeared bound in books which, due to their success as a collector, were soon dismembered. To allow the visitor to fully appreciate their primitive form, a multimedia station will be installed along the exhibition itinerary where the specimen conserved in the Pinacoteca Malaspina in Pavia will be shown digitally.
Regarding the style, the engravings were initially considered to have a Florentine influence, by virtue of the comparison with the works of Baccio Baldini; at the end of the eighteenth century, with the contribution of Luigi Lanzi (1795-96), we moved towards the Veneto, sometimes even proposing the autograph of Mantegna. This proposal, although later abandoned in favor of a Ferrarese interpretation, closely related to the frescoes in the Salone dei Mesi in Palazzo Schifanoia, remained forever linked to the series.
Recent studies conducted by Laura Paola Gnaccolini lead to an attribution to Lazzaro Bastiani, a Venetian artist of the same age as Bartolomeo Vivarini, also known as an illuminator, who received several notable public commissions, in whose early works we find many points of contact with the engravings, not only in the general elongated proportion of the figures and in the physiognomies, but also in the accurate rendering of the hands, certain disjointed shoulders, the oval heads with broad foreheads, the small round eyes with very marked eyelids.
Some engravings in the series were used by the humanist Ludovico Lazzarelli from the Marches as a starting point for composing De deorum gentilium imaginibus, a didactic-encyclopaedic poem in elegiac couplets – originally intended for the Duke of Ferrara Borso d'Este – where we note a perfect correspondence between the poetic text and the images of the engravings. It is precisely Lazzarelli's attention to the iconographic apparatus of his works that leads us to doubt that he may have used images created by others and to cautiously suggest the hypothesis that he was responsible for the invention of the series. The enduring interest in a profound journey of inner renewal, which leads to the contemplation of God, is documented in the exhibition by the manuscript of his latest work, the Crater Hermetis, a text dedicated to King Ferdinand of Aragon.
The exhibition is accompanied by the volume (Mondadori Electa) THE DIVINE MAN. Ludovico Lazzarelli between the Sola Busca deck and the "Tarots of Mantegna", with a proposal for Lazzaro Bastiani, curated by Laura Paola Gnaccolini, where the personality of this fascinating protagonist of the Italian Renaissance is explored, worthy of standing next to Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola, who has already recently been recognized as responsible for the invention of the Sola Busca Tarot.
