Giordano Berti

In the history of card making business, women were exclusively minimized, if they were lucky. Some of them were not so.

Yet, the Tarot molds passed through. The women passed through. And each time, someone's line gets erased.

Conver dies, his widow Daniel holds the business, she's eventually pushed aside, the business sold to strangers. Camoin marries Martin, who already holds shares - her son, proclaimed malade and sent to St Pierre, her line disappears - Antoine takes everything. Antoine's daughter marries Tourrasse - the Camoin blood name survives only by being hyphenated onto someone else's family.

Each transition happens through a woman.

And yet, each time, the woman or her line is erased and then forgotten. And each time, the incoming family claims the heritage of the one before as if it were their own.

The risk is on women. The men write history.

During the next few centuries, women's position got slightly better, now, they were just erased, but at least they stayed alive. Or they become fictional.

In that world, men choose their names, alter-egos, and women get their names assigned.

The subject of this article is, of course, a man, but also his fascio of either imagined, or used women will be, at least, mentioned.

Fermato per accertamenti

There is literally a montagna - (la montagna ha partorito un topolino) of information about Giordano Berti, but a man (of course) has to start from somewhere. Or stop somewhere, like if you decide to go to a little marcio to Bologna, you have to stop at Scaricalasino. And when you come to the big boys game, all cards are already dealt, and you end up with an unmatched card and become asino. But there are always women, who were probably not even allowed to play. If you are fanalino di coda in men's company, why not try to be a Rex in female company, your own piccolo spazio, while spazio Vitali is already occupied. And, at start, you use them as fascio to hold your axe, but as time slowly passes by, your blade gets blunted, and you yourself become one of the rods holding somebody else's axe, a statista. And women always forgive, even if you have a mild coprolalia. But if you mica il tic to somebody who remembers, then you are in alle strette, and you find yourself giving more than you have ever planned while packing for marcio to Bologna.

But, even if you consider yourself a "historian" and smart you can always get smarrimento.

And then, finding yourself lost, in a maze, un labirinto di carte, as Italian would say, you need to choose. But why choose, when, while still being serious, you can take a woman alter-ego and write "seed" instead of "suit" in a Tarot booklet translation[1]. The man produces knowledge, the woman produces superstition and bad translations.

It is said that people could dream only things they saw in their life - and it is probably the same for choosing a name for your alter ego. Sometimes, it can get so tricky, that you end up in a maze, and it is like lotto game that gives you an alter-ego name. There is already a man in history who named his female alter ego Julia Orsini[2] writing booklets, so why invent something instead of changing it a little bit, and make it sound more like your name. So, as God made Eve from Adam's rib, he used his name to create Giulia Orsini[3]. And of course, he chose the name of instrumentalized woman of the Italian Renaissance. Her husband's, Orsino Orsini's family, encouraged the affair between his wife and the Pope, because it made life for their familia much less difficile[4]. Her beauty, her body, her name - all of it was currency for men to trade. Her brother Alessandro became a cardinal and eventually Pope Paul III, essentially laundered through Giulia's sexual labor. Or maybe he wanted to be like his condottiere Andrea, Prince of Foxes, who eventually becomes a signore[5].

There are too many women used to even count, but even when trying to make things better, as much as they could, like edit his Wiki page, which is marked by Wikipedia tricolore style, rarely seen on any page - as relevance of local character having neutrality disputed and insufficient sources[6] - they choose something nice like felice. And Felice Letizia[7] tried to make things better for her maestro as she calls him, as much as she could. She chose something nice as prefix, to at least leave some seed of moral in that deed. He is more gentle to other women, because he has to, so giving them compliments as they are the first one to see the deck, to see the book or just to give them one of his most luxurious decks sold on Etsy with sticker NEW!!!, is sometimes enough for persons to make them feel happy. His Wikipedia article is so much edited and fought for, by, judging by the names, females in his circle, or maybe even himself, that even editors gave up, and he finally graduated and got his diploma there.

Like Pinocchio's degradation on Pleasure Island, it can be seen, how, during the years, things cannot be hidden.

Notes

  1. The Italian word seme means both "seed" and "suit" (as in card suit). In a Tarot booklet translation attributed to "Giulia Orsini," seme was rendered as "seed" - a mistranslation documented by Sherryl E. Smith in 2018, suggesting the translator lacked basic familiarity with card terminology.
  2. Simon-Francois Blocquel (1780-1863), a printer and publisher based in Lille, used the female pseudonym "Julia Orsini" for Le Grand Etteilla, ou l'art de tirer les cartes (Paris, 1838). Blocquel was fond of using pseudonyms, and the name is widely considered a reference to Giulia Farnese, who married into the Orsini family. Blocquel's publishing partners included Castiaux and Delarue. See: Internet Archive - Le Grand Etteilla.
  3. Amazon metadata for the Spanish edition of Tarot Focus magazine (ISBN 9798314574706) lists the translator as "Berti, Giulia" where "Giulia Orsini" was expected - a system-generated slip linking the pseudonym directly to the Berti surname.
  4. Giulia Farnese married Orsino Orsini in 1489. She became the mistress of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, later Pope Alexander VI. Her brother Alessandro Farnese was made cardinal through her influence and later became Pope Paul III.
  5. In Samuel Shellabarger's historical novel Prince of Foxes (1947), an adventurer named Andrea Zoppo assumes the name Andrea Orsini, claiming descent from the famous family, and rises as an agent of Cesare Borgia. See: Wikipedia - Orsini family.
  6. The Italian Wikipedia article for Giordano Berti carries three simultaneous warning banners: encyclopedic relevance disputed ("la rilevanza è al massimo locale"), neutrality disputed ("abbondanti contenuti curricolari e forse promozionali; voce da sfoltire ampiamente in modo da mettere in risalto la rilevanza dello scrittore che, se c'è, è attualmente nascosta da dettagli poco essenziali"), and insufficient sources ("Sarebbe auspicabile inserire recensioni su articoli o riviste o saggi accademici incentrati sulla figura del biografato"). See: it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Berti.
  7. "Feliceletizia" - a Wikipedia account that made three edits to Berti's Italian Wikipedia page in January 2019, adding exhibition details, then disappeared. The username combines felice ("happy") with Letizia, the first name of Letizia Rivetti, Berti's collaborator. The account has no other editing activity on Wikipedia.