Trionfi are 15th-century Italian playing cards with allegorical content related to those used in tarocchi games. The general English expression "trump card" and the German "trumpfen" have developed from the Italian "Trionfi". Most cards feature the personification of a place or abstraction.
History
Many of the motifs found in trionfi are found in trionfo, theatrical processions that were popular in the Italian Renaissance. The Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, once owned by the ducalHouse of Este, contains many murals depicting these floats. Petrarch wrote a poem called I Trionfi which may have served as inspiration. The earliest known use of the name "Trionfi" in relation to cards can be dated to 16 September 1440 in the records of a Florentine notary, Giusto Giusti. He recorded a transaction where he transferred two expensive personalized decks to Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta. In a letter from 11 November 1449, Antonio Jacopo Marcello used the expression triumphorum genus for a deck that was produced sometime between 1418 and 1425. It was commissioned by the duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti, painted by Michelino da Besozzo and described in an accompanying text by Martiano da Tortona. The deck itself is lost, but Marcello provided a copy of da Tortona's description which offers details about the deck and a cursory explanation of how it is played. It likely had a total of 60 cards. The forty-four plain-suited cards used birds as suit signs and the trumps presented sixteen Roman gods. In two suits, the pip cards are in reverse order as in many of the oldest card games. Two decks from June 1457 seem to relate to a visit at Ferrara of the young Milanese heir of the dukedom Galeazzo Maria Sforza in July/August 1457. Each deck consisted of 70 cards — the modern Tarot deck typically has 78. The first attestation of a deck with 78 cards was in a poem by Matteo Maria Boiardo of Ferrara written between 1461–1494. The deck was structured like modern tarots, but the motifs and suits signs of the Boiardo deck are totally different. He used classical figures for the face cards and trumps. Pier Antonio Viti of Urbino, brother of Timoteo Viti, provided a commentary of Boiardo's poem as well as rules. He likely commissioned the production of these decks of which two incomplete packs have survived. Both the rules and the deck were likely conscious departures from common trionfi decks. The order of the trumps varied by region, perhaps as early as the 1440s. Michael Dummett placed them into three categories. In Bologna and Florence, the highest trump is the Angel, followed by the World. This group spread mainly southward through the Papal States, the Kingdom of Naples, and finally down to the Kingdom of Sicily but was also known in the Savoyard states. In Ferrara, the World was the highest, followed by Justice and the Angel. This group spread mainly to the northeast to Venice and Trento where it was only a passing fad. By the end of the 16th century, this order became extinct. In Milan, the World was the highest, followed by the Angel. This spread to Switzerland and France during the Italian Wars, becoming famous as the "Tarot of Marseilles". The earliest known appearance of the word "Tarocho" as the new name for the game is in Brescia around 1502. "Tarochi" was used in June 1505 in Ferrara. In December 1505, "Taraux" decks are mentioned as being produced in the papal enclave of Avignon in France. Around this time, the word Trionfi seems to modify its character in a playing card context; it appears as a game of its own and seems no longer connected to the specific allegorical cards. This is most likely due to the popularity of Trionfa which usurped the old name. The word taroch was used as a synonym for foolishness in the same period.
Surviving decks
Expensive hand-painted, and usually gilded, decks custom-made for powerful clients have been preserved in greater numbers than mass-produced decks. More cards from the 15th and early 16th centuries have survived than those from the late 16th or 17th centuries.
