The Visconti Tarot is one example from many in the Cary Colelction of Playing Cards. Cary’s death in 1967, the collection was presented to Yale, along with funds for its maintenance. The papers span most of Gascoynes career from 1945 onward. Cary continued adding judiciously to the assemblage of examples from around the world. The David Gascoyne collection encompasses accessions of single manuscripts and groups of manuscripts pertaining to David Gascoyne acquired by gift or purchase from various sources by the Beinecke Library. They collected together until his death in 1941, after which Mrs. Another of his passions, collecting playing cards, was developed in partnership with his wife, Mary Flagler Cary. Cary, Jr., was, by profession, an importer who indulged his passion for fine printing by establishing and running the Press of the Woolly Whale (the archives of which reside in the Beinecke Library). The great leap forward, the acquisition that gave Yale a prominent place in the study of playing card history, occurred two decades later. The earliest items in this gift were engraved German cards from the fifteenth century. This group of material documented five centuries of the development of the playing card. The first major deposit of playing cards in the Yale Library was in 1945, when Mrs. The unique addition of the female knight and valet may be an indication that this set was intended to be used by a female member of court. The deck includes eleven trump cards, six court cards, including the King, Queen, Male Knight, Female Knight, Male Valet, and Female Valet, as well as the unusual addition of the three Theological Virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity. The cards are attributed to Bonifacio Bembo, an Italian fresco artist who flourished between 1447-1478. Originally commissioned in the 15th century by the Viscontis, a Milanese family that dominated the cultural life of northern Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries, this deck is one of the oldest sets in existence. Perhaps the most beautiful surviving example of this form is the Visconti tarot, sixty-seven particularly extragant handpainted cards with gold, silver, and miniature Renaissance portraiture. The tarot, originally a game of uncertain origin, came to be associated with fortune-telling, or cartomancy, several centuries after its appearance in central Europe in the late fourteenth century. We will also show some recent forgeries acquired to allow historians and scientists to study the techniques forgers employ.Among the unique items in the Cary Collection of Playing Cards are fascinating remnants of early Italian tarot packs. Although several scholars have claimed decipherments of the manuscript, for the most part the text remains an unsolved puzzle. Brumbaugh, The Most Mysterious Manuscript: The Voynich 'Roger Bacon' Cipher Manuscript (Carbondale, Illinois, 1978). We will also demonstrate the work done by the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage at Yale in 2019 to finally prove that the map was a fake. A history of the numerous attempts to decipher the manuscript can be found in a volume edited by R. The infamous Vinland map will be shown, along with the material acquired with it that purported to support its authenticity in 1965. It is the only portolan made on goatskin in our collection and it seems likely an adaptation to a climate that did not produce the larger animals that provided the skins for other portolans. Judah Ben Zara (or Abenzara) was one of a handful of Jewish cartographers in Europe that we know of and his religion had a profound effect on his maps and his life. The Abenzara map is unique for entirely different reasons. For this reason, Beccari’s map is one of the most studied by cartographers. The Beccari portolan chart (1403) is far older than the Aguiar map but contains a crucial cartouche that describes how map makers such as Beccari composed these maps, particularly their reliance on oral knowledge from sailors used to accurately measure the distances between ports. The map shows a very different perspective than the portolans–it is based on the ancient maps composed by Ptolemy, transmitted to Europe by Arab scientists and geographers. The original is in the library’s courtyard level open to registered researchers. One of the largest maps in the collections, it is too large to be displayed along with the portolans, so a facsimile is on display in the public exhibition. The Martellus world map, composed around 1490, is a stunning rare survival of the pre-exploration world. This map is featured in the 2022 book by Alida C. Along with the world map of Henricus Martellus (below), these maps indicate the real dangers Columbus faced and answer fundamental questions about his first voyage. The 1492 Aguiar map, the oldest dated Portuguese portolan chart in existence, dramatically demonstrates the world as Christopher Columbus and his crew would have seen it on their first voyage in 1492. Selected Exhibition Highlights The Aguiar Map from 1492
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