After Spirito: Fortune-Telling Books by Fanti and Marcolini

Last week we highlighted the first fortune-telling book ever printed, the Libro de la Ventura by the Perugian poet Lorenzo Gualtieri, better known as Lorenzo Spirito (ca. 1425-1496), published in Perugia in 1482. This week’s post considers the two fortune-telling books that followed: the Triompho di fortuna (Triumph of Fortune) of 1527 by Sigismondo Fanti and Francesco Marcolini’s Le Sorti. Intitolate Giardino dei Pensieri of 1540—respectively the second and third fortune-telling books ever printed—as well as an 18th-century edition of Marcolini’s Sorti in what is likely the first numeroté book in Italian, one of only thirty-six copies published.

The first printed fortune-telling book: Lorenzo Spirito’s Libro de la Ventura [Bologna, Caligola de Bazaleriis, 1498-1500].

See the full description of this copy here.

Sigismondo Fanti (active 1510-1530 in Ferrara).

Triompho di fortuna di S. Fanti Ferrarese. Venice, Agostino Zano for Giacomo Giunta, January 1527.

By the time Fanti’s Triumph of Fortune appeared in Venice in 1527, Spirito’s Libro had gone through several editions. Enthusiasts were ready for more, and Fanti offered them a divinatory adventure that complicated Spirito’s comparatively simpler (if still convoluted) game. It also introduced a different kind of subject matter: while Spirito’s questions are of a more private nature (pertaining, for example, to love and marriage), Fanti’s deal especially with the social or socio-cosmic organization and include such themes as religion, war, and trade.

Fanti, Sigismondo (active 1510-1530 in Ferrara). Triompho di fortuna di S. Fanti Ferrarese. Venice, Agostino Zano for Giacomo Giunta, January 1527.

See the full description of this copy here.

As with Spirito’s game, Fanti’s requires the reader-player to begin by asking a question (from an array of 72 choices), the answer to which is revealed by following clues and moving through the book’s five sections: figures of Fortune, Houses, Wheels, Spheres, and finally the ancient and modern Astrologers and Sibyls who reveal their answers via quatrains at the end of the book. Movement is based on both rolls of dice and the time of day at which the book is consulted. For example, at the level of Wheels, pictured above, the top Wheel is referenced by rolling two dice while the bottom is referenced according to the hour.

 The book is abundantly illustrated with thousands of woodcuts ranging from minimal and simplistic, as in many of the blocks used for illustrating the questions, to highly sophisticated renderings in the manner of pen-and-ink drawings.

An early representation of Michelangelo in Fanti’s Triompho di fortuna di S. Fanti Ferrarese.

The range of content is even more impressive, with an assortment of figures from mythology, antiquity, and the contemporary culture. For example, the twelve “Houses” are drawn from amongst Italy’s most famous noble families the early sixteenth century: Orsini, Colonna, Medici, Aragona, Gonzaga, Este, Baglioni, Vitelli, Sforza, Feltre, Gritti, and Bentivoglio. From there the reader-player moves to the “Wheel” section which references both the “natural” and the “artificial” world (animals, plants, technologies, mythological figures, the seven capital vices with Bacchus and Eros, the seven arts of the Trivium and Quadrivium, the seven cardinal and theological virtues, the Fortune). Among the celebrated characters we find here Dante, Raphael and Michelangelo, the latter being depicted in the act of carving a block of marble (this may also be one of the earliest iconographical representations of the artist). Next are the 36 “Spheres,” placed in decreasing order from Heaven, to the Seven Skies, to the 12 Zodiac Signs, to the 11 constellations, to the 4 Elements as far as Hell. These pages include a large central wheel with the representation of the Sphere, with portraits of famous artists and scientists in the upper portion of the page and scenes pertaining to culture and war in the lower part.

One of the most striking woodcuts is the elaborate frontispiece which offers an allegorical overview of what is “at play” in the book: the central figure is Atlas whose shoulders bear the weight of a celestial sphere being turned by an angel (Virtus) on one side and a demon (Voluptas) on the other—as each tries to gain control by turning the sphere in opposite directions, Atlas holds the handles tightly, but his stance suggests his might may not hold. Above the sphere is a pope (presumably Clement VII, the book’s dedicatee) with personifications of Virtus and Voluptas at either side. The presence of the pope in the woodcut and the dedication to Clement VII is significant given the date of publication: Fanti’s Triumph of Fortune appeared only a few months before the Sack of Rome by French and Spanish troops, and one of the prophecies included in the text predicts the city’s downfall.

Frontispiece for Fanti’s Triompho di fortuna di S. Fanti Ferrarese (Venice, Agostino Zano for Giacomo Giunta, January 1527).

The book’s divinatory system is organized by reference to astrology and astronomy (the two being largely the same at this time) and by chance: astrology is represented in the frontispiece by a series of zodiac signs belted round the celestial sphere, while at the left a naked man with a large die references chance and alludes to the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus’ aphorism that 'time [Aion] is a boy playing dice'.

In the foreground an astronomer is perched holding an astrolabe and a compass. This figure is interpreted as the author, Fanti, the writer, architect, astrologer, and mathematician from Ferrara. The initials of the block-cutter, either I.M. or T.M., are framed on a tablet in the lower right-hand corner, although the identity of this figure is as yet unknown.

The Triumph of Fortune was likely not reprinted, although the first edition is known in two issues, both published in January 1527. The difference between the two issues is in the colophon—the first issue states the year as M.D.XXVI while the second issue provides it as M.D.XXVII, as in the present copy.  

Marcolini, Francesco (ca. 1500-1559).

Le Sorti. Intitolate Giardino dei Pensieri. Venice, Marcolini, 1540).

Inspired by Spirito’s Libro de la Ventura and Fanti’s Triompho di fortuna, Marcolini’s “game” was the third fortune-telling book printed and transitions to the use of playing cards to learn one’s fortune, rather than the dice used in the earlier works.

Compared to its predecessors, which made use of the recto-verso tradition of each leaf, Marcolini—one of the most important publishers of the 16th century—created an elaborate network of conceptual and iconographical associations by conceiving a double page structure with an intricate system of catchwords explained to the player at the opening of the volume.

A copy of Marcolini’s Sorti of 1540 bound in early 17th-century dark red full morocco, panels with gilt decoration ‘à la Du Seuil’.

See the full description here.

Marcolini, Francesco (ca. 1500-1559). Le Sorti. Intitolate Giardino dei Pensieri. Venice, Marcolini, 1540).

The book is played with 36 cards only, without ranks 3 to 6. The set of prescribed questions are presented on pp. VI-VII and are divided into those applicable only to men (13), those applicable only to women (13), and those applicable to both sexes (24). After selecting a question and drawing a card from the deck, players are guided through their “personalized” mazes with their paths being composed of words and images. Amidst an endless repertory of symbols and figurative models, their pursuit follows the two main parts of the book. The first contains 50 allegorical woodcuts, printed in the upper part of each leaf recto and depicting various vices and virtues. These are surrounded by playing cards, which are arranged in the form of a cross on the verso. In the second part, the upper left-hand corner of each leaf verso bears a woodcut of an ancient philosopher (50 total), surrounded by other cards and answers. Ultimately the answers are delivered by some of the most celebrated philosophers of Antiquity via terza rima text written by the well-known poet Lodovico Dolce, one of Marcolini’s close friends.

Frontispiece for Marcolini’s Le Sorti. Intitolate Giardino dei Pensieri. Venice, Marcolini, 1540).

On the title page is a large woodcut signed by the artist Giuseppe Porta (ca. 1520–ca. 1575), who hailed from the Garfagnana region of northern Tuscany and who later took the name Salviati in honor of his teacher, the painter Francesco Salviati. The illustration shows a group of men and women conversing and playing with Marcolini’s book in a garden. In the centre are three women likely intended as the three Parcae or Fates, a highly apt inclusion for the opening of a publication entitled Le Sorti (‘The Fates’). According to ancient mythology, the Fates were responsible for spinning, measuring, and cutting the thread of human life. The composition is, however, not original to Porta; rather, it was copied from a design by Francesco Salviati engraved by Marco Dente, a student of Marcantonio Raimondi. Whereas in the original version of the engraving the open book shows an image of stars and planets, here the two pages are those of Marcolini’s Sorti. With the further addition of a deck of playing cards, what was once a grouping of scientists has effectively transformed into a gathering of fortune “readers.”

Woodcut portrait of Marcolini attributed to Titian.

Included in Marcolini’s Le Sorti. Intitolate Giardino dei Pensieri. (Venice, Marcolini, 1540).

Title page of Sebastiano Serlio’s Regole generali di architettura... sopra le cinque maniere de gli edifici, cioe, thoscano, dorico, ionico, corinthio, e composito, con gli essempi de l’antiquita, che per la maggior parte concordano con la dottrina di Vitruvio. Venice, Francesco Marcolini, February 1540. (bound with:)

Serlio. Il terzo libro... nel qual si figurano, e descrivono le antiquità di Roma, e le altre che sono in Italia, e fuori d’Italia. Venice, Francesco Marcolini, February 1540.

See the full description of this copy here.

On the verso of the title page is a portrait of the author attributed to Titian (Servolini, Marcolini, p. 20; Mauroner, Incisione di Tiziano, 42) and set within the same architectural border Marcolini had used a few years earlier for his editions of Serlio and Aretino (and again for his blue-paper presentation copies of Serlio’s Regole generali di architettura printed in 1540). Marcolini and Titian were indeed friends, and such an instance of great artistic collaboration would hardly have been surprising. Marcolini was a leading member of the informal association of artists and writers known as the Accademia dei Pellegrini which existed at least as of 1549 and counted among its members such figures as Titian, Francesco Salviati, and Lodovico Dolce, along with Doni, Vico, and others. Even before that, though, Marcolini was friends with such prominent artists and authors and had cultivated his printing house as a popular meeting place for eccentric and transgressive writers and poets of the cinquecento. He also became well known for having been the publisher of another of his famous friends, the suspected and later forbidden Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), whose Life of the Virgin he published in 1539 with another woodcut design from Salviati. Meanwhile, Aretino’s Stanze, which Marcolini published in 1537, contains a frontispiece that is usually also attributed to Titian.

The subtitle “the garden of thoughts” points to just such fruitful collaboration. Although it follows the tradition of referring to poetry anthologies as gardens, it is also a reference to Marcolini’s own garden in Giudecca, Venice. This latter provided the setting for Aretino’s Ragionamenti delle corti of 1538, in which the garden is describe by one of the interlocutors in the text, none other than Lodovico Dolce: “We could call this little garden of Marcolino the fan of the summer, such that the breath of its wind, the shade of its greenery, the softness of its flowers, and the song of its Petrarchan birds refresh, cover, please, and encourage sleep, and much more enjoyable is the walk now since the heat of August boils less the ninth hour of today than that of yesterday.” As Jodi Cranston observes, “Marcolini’s garden existed, but in Aretino’s text it became a place made for, and generated by, language and sustained by its inhabitants, which, in this case, were the lively publishing and editorial community in cinquecento Venice.” (J. Cranston, Green Worlds of Renaissance Venice, p. 31)

Le Sorti was printed in different stages: the frame was probably printed first, then the woodcut illustrations and eventually the text, as was common practice for the printing of music books (Marcolini had apprenticed with Petrucci, the famous printer of music books, and published several music books over the course of his career).

The work is, overall, an extraordinary example of a book that becomes an object to be read, played and handled. In general, Marcolini’s editions were and are highly regarded for the quality of their types and for the variety and beauty of the woodcut illustrations, and the Sorti exemplifies his mastery and achievements.

Marcolini, Francesco (1550-1559).

Giardino dei Pensieri composta da Francesco Marcolini da Forli L’Anno mdl. Ristampata nel MDCCLXXXIV. [Venice, Santini], 1784.

This extremely rare, privately printed eighteenth-century Venetian edition of Marcolini's Sorti is modeled on the more complete, and revised second edition of 1550. This edition features a different arrangement of the figures and a simpler system of consultation and play, with the responses inserted immediately after each single question section. The woodcuts were reprinted from the previous edition apart from Marcolini’s portrait, which is after the woodcut portrait of the 1550 edition, signed by Giuseppe Daniotto (1741-1789) and presents Marcolini looking curiously aged. Seven new woodcuts in the section of philosophers were also added, these being made up of repetitions in the 1540 edition.

Marcolini’s portrait after the woodcut of the 1550 edition, signed by Giuseppe Daniotto (1741-1789).

Marcolini, Giardino dei Pensieri composta da Francesco Marcolini da Forli L’Anno mdl. Ristampata nel MDCCLXXXIV. [Venice, Santini], 1784.

See the full description of this copy here.

The volume is especially interesting from an art-historical point of view, as it shows how the gusto of eighteenth-century Venetian engraving 'translated' the illustrations of sixteenth-century woodcuts. This generally demonstrates higher definition of the image owing to the medium when the original was more suggestive and perhaps refined, with a greater degree of realism.

Remarkably, the Giardino dei Pensieri of 1784 is also one of the first books to be printed in a limited and numbered press run, with only thirty-six copies, of which the present copy is numbered fourteen.

As stated in the title page, this edition is a larger-format reprint of the 1550 edition, with the exception of the lovely rococo title page showing a receding formal garden, and the verso of the final leaf, in which a poem in terza rima allows us to identify the printer (Santini), localize the place of publication (Venice), and infer that the book's illustrator, Giuseppe Daniotto (who signs the portrait of Marcolini), is also responsible for the vignettes. The same verses claim that after the printing of thirty-six copies, the plates perished in a proverbial fire, thus limiting production to an exclusive number. Casali credits the financing of the publication to the Venetian patrician Francesco Savorgnan of Campareggio, a noted bibliophile.

While the fashion for fortune-telling books began to wane in the seventeenth century, this precious and exceedingly rare volume—OCLC records a single copy, held at the University of Chicago—is a testament to the ongoing intrigue with such fascinating game books, which continue to be treasured for the unique insight they offer into cultural frameworks for chance, fate and play.

References

S. Casali, Gli annali della tipografia veneziana di Francesco Marcolini, Bologna, 1953, 54; Prince d’Essling, Les livres à figure vénitiens, Florence-Paris, 1908, 670; M. Sander, Le livre à figures italien, Milan, 1942, no. 4231; R. Mortimer, Italian 16th-Century Books in the Harvard College Library, Cambridge MA, 1974, no. 279; Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte e d’antichità posseduti dal Conte Cicognara, Pisa, 1821, no. 1701; L. Nardin, Carte da gioco e letteratura fra Quattrocento e Ottocento, Lucca, 1997, pp. 35-37; E. Casali, Libri di ventura e divinazione nel Cinquecento, in: “Un giardino per le arti: Francesco Marcolino da Forlì, la vita, l’opera, il catalogo, Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi Forlì, 11-13 ottobre 2007”, P. Procaccioli, P. Temeroli & V. Tesei, eds., Bologna, 2009, p. 315f; Philobiblon, One Thousand Years of Bibliophily, no. 247; J. Cranston, Green Worlds of Renaissance Venice, University Park PA, 2019.

How to cite this information

Julia Stimac and Margherita Palumbo, “After Spirito: Fortune-Telling Books by Fanti and Marcolini” PRPH Books, 6 May 2020, https://www.prphbooks.com/blog/fanti-marcolini. Accessed [date].

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