OS TAROCCHI DE PARISINA MALATESTA VII-A CARROCA

VII-A Carroca

triunfo sobre a adversidade, ultrapassagem de obstaculos, ambicao, vitorias merecidas e alcancadas com esforco, um periodo de conflitos e provas que termina, auto-controlo, preserveranca,usar as suas capacidades e talentos para alcancar grandes sucessos na esfera social
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Em Abril de 1418 o cortejo nupcial de Parisina Malatesta deixou Ravena em direccao a Ferrara, onde foi recebido em triunfo. A noiva tinha 14 anos e o noivo, o marquez Niccolo d'Este, 35.

The Marchesana Parisina bore her husband one son, who lived only for a few weeks and two twin daughters, Ginevra and Lucia. The documents still preserved in the Carchivio di Stato at Modena show her to have been an ideal great lady of the Middle Ages. We find her a diligent housewife, keeping strict account of the linen, taking care that the attendants are properly attired. She was exceedingly generous to the poor, bountiful to the churches and convents. To her donzelle, her maids-in-waiting, she was particularly kind and generous, finding them suitable husbands, providing each on her marriage with a dowry, with her corredo or trousseau, and with these richly decorated cofani or wedding chests that formed such a feature in the bride’s equipment in Italy and of which the panels are among the treasures of our museums and picture-galleries to-day. A certain Pellegrina, daughter of a trusted servant of the Marquis, one Giacomo Rubino known as Zoese, appears to have been specially favoured by her and treated with the utmost generiousity on the occasion of her marriage at the beginning of 1423.

Parisina was a lover of horses and had a notable stable; she sent them to race for palio at Verona, Modena, Bologna, Milan and Mantua; and especially in 1422 and 1423 her favourite jockey, Giovanni da Rimini, wearing her colours of red and white, carried off victory after victory. Also she took pleasure in hunting and hawking. We find her sending to foreign cities for choice perfumes, for rich embroideries and personal ornaments, for rare birds in cages. But of her moral qualities and mental endowments we know next to nothing. She loved music, especially the harp, upon which she had her little daughters taught to play. We read of Fra Maginardo, her chaplain, buying a psaltery for her, and of a cartalaro Bartommeo selling her an office book of the Madonna covered with black velvet. If she read at all in books of a lighter character, the literary fashion of her husband’s court would have led her to dwell upon the passion of Guenevere and Lancelot, the guilty loves of Tristam and Iseult. *

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Parisina gostava muito de jogar cartas e sabe-se que comprou varios tarocchi para si e para as suas filhas em 1423 e 1424. Esta Carroca, provavelmente muito semelhante as que e encontrariamos nos tarocchi da marquesa d'Este, pertence a um dos muitos baralhos que a familia Visconti de Milao foi adquirindo ao longo do seculo XV.

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Fonte *: Dukes and Poets of Ferarra, Edmund Gardner