Trionfi (cards)

The Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, once owned by the ducal House of Este, contains many murals depicting these floats.

[1] 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.

[2] He recorded a transaction where he transferred two expensive personalized decks to Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta.

[3] 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.

The forty-four plain-suited cards used birds as suit signs ("of virtues, the Eagle; of riches, the Phoenix; of continence, the Turtledove; of pleasure, the Dove") and the trumps presented sixteen Roman or Greek gods (in ascending order): Jove, Juno, Pallas, Venus, Apollo, Neptune, Diana, Bacchus, Mercury, Mars, Vesta the Virgin, Ceres, Hercules, Aeolus, Daphne, and Cupid).

[6][8] 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.

The first attestation of a deck with 78 cards was in a poem by Matteo Maria Boiardo of Ferrara written between 1461–1494.

In December 1505, "Taraux" decks are mentioned as being produced in the papal enclave of Avignon in France.