The Museo dei Tarocchi near Bologna, Italy has given us many highly creative art decks. Now they have produced an historically significant bolognese tarocchi based on an original that rests in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

Bologna has its own unique tarot tradition that dates back to the early sixteenth century, and possibly earlier. The order of the trumps is slightly different, and pips two through five of each suit have been removed to make a shortened deck that was very popular for card games back then. Some trump cards have distinct imagery: the Fool as a street musician playing a drum and horn, the Three Magi on the Star card, and a woman with a spindle for the Sun are just a few examples. The Aces are very distinctive as well. In the early 18^th century the deck took its present form when the Empress, Emperor, Papesse and Pope were changed into the four Moors and the trump and court cards became double-headed.

Fine dalla Torre is a transition deck from the 16^th century. It’s a shortened deck, but not yet double-headed. Trumps two through five are the same as the standard Tarot de Marseille, but there’s something odd about the Pope and Popesse. The Pope has a feminine face and holds a book, while the Popesse holds large keys and raises her hand in a blessing.

Bolognese imagery has remained constant through the centuries and persists on small, double-headed decks used for game playing today. Here are two Star cards: the Fine dalla Torre and a modern playing card.

Artists at the Museo touched up the cards to make the images clearer, and did a remarkable job in keeping the look and feel of the original cards. Two missing queens and several swords cards were re-created using other tarocchino decks as examples.  The Museo re-created the lower-numbered pip cards that were never part of the deck in case you want to pretend it’s a Tarot de Marseille. A previous owner evidently did just that, as the deck in the Bibliothèque Nationale has the Tarot de Marseille trump numbers written near the top of each card in small Arabic numbers.

The unique backs are in landscape orientation show two cherubs, one of them shooting at a heart that’s hanging from a tree like fruit.

The cards are 2.7 by 5.9 inches, somewhat smaller than the originals, but retaining the original tall, thin proportions. They are housed in a wooden box with a sliding lid decorated with the World card and a wax seal on the lid. The cards are accompanied by a signed and numbered sheet of paper that describes the deck and the methods used to touch up the images.

The Museo is also offering a deluxe edition with larger cards in a fancier box accompanied by ten postcards and a large print. Only thirty of these are being made.

The Tarocchi Fine dalla Torre in Bologna can be purchased directly from the Museo Internazionale dei Tarocchi at their Mutus Liber bookstore.

North Americans can save some shipping costs by ordering through Arnell Ando on this page.

Read more about Bolognese tarot on this page at TarotWheel.net

See the original cards in the Bibliothèque Nationale at this link.

A collector recently discovered a trove of uncut sheets of tarot and playing cards that have been sitting in Turin’s archives of since the mid-19^th century. Giordano Berti has given new life to one of these forgotten decks by transforming the black and white uncut sheets into the beautifully colored Tarocchi Orientali.

The deck was created by Claudio Foudraz, a lithographer working in Turin in the mid-19^th century. As an all-purpose lithographer he printed business cards, invitations, ads and art prints. Foudraz’s tarot deck was useless for game playing because of mistakes in the numbering, which the current edition corrects, so it probably never reached the market.

The deck is from a time when Europe’s fascination with the exotic east was at its height. Chinoiserie was the rage among 18^th century aristocrats. By the mid-19th century, it had trickled down to the middle class as a fad for Chinese decorative objects and textiles. Chinese-themed playing cards were popular, but this is the only chinoiserie Tarot deck we know of.

The imagery follows the Tarot de Marseille pattern fairly closely, but a few trumps stand out as unique:

• The Emperor wears a dragon robe and stands outside rather than sitting on a throne.
• The Pope and Papesse hold large fans rather than religious symbols
• The Lovers depict a woman standing between two men. What’s going on here? Is she deciding between two lovers? Husband and lover? Or between obeying her father or running off with a lover?
• The Hanged Man is an acrobat balancing on a large hoop.
• The two boys on the Sun card are standing in water up to their knees. A beach scene instead of a garden?

The 18-page illustrated booklet gives the story of Chinoiserie in Europe, how it manifested in Piedmont, and the fad for Chinese tarock decks. Berti has ferreted out the scant information available  on Foudraz.

This edition of 700 is signed and numbered. The cards are smooth, pleasant to hold and shuffle, have rounded corners and a white border. They are the same size as the original, 4.5 x 2.5 inches. Traditionally, expensive decks were taken to an artist to be custom painted. Berti has replicated this experience for us by commissioning an artist to tint the black and white originals with delicate water colors.

Like Berti’s other productions, the deck is housed in a sturdy box designed by the artist Letizia Rivetti. It’s covered with handmade marbled paper flecked with metallic silver and opens like a book tied with a silver ribbon. The cards rest on a red velveteen lining. The deck and its box are a joy to look at and to handle.

See more images and get purchasing information here

https://rinascimentoitalianartenglish.wordpress.com/catalog/

While 15^th-century Italian aristocrats were commissioning gilded and hand-painted tarot cards, aristocrats further north were doing the same with regular playing cards. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is offering a facsimile of the only complete playing card deck from the 15th century in existence. This deck is unique for several reasons: it’s Burgundian, it’s the oldest known deck of its type, and it’s oval-shaped.

The Metropolitan Museum acquired this deck from an auction house in the 1980s and renamed it the Cloisters Playing Cards after the medieval branch of the museum. The cards are the original size, 5.5 by 2.75 inches, making it a rather small deck for its time. Each card has a small round Metropolitan Museum stamp on the center back with the catalog number written in pencil. The deck comes with a bilingual booklet (English and German) written by the museum’s curator of medieval art.

The deck was hand painted with the same precious materials used in illuminated manuscripts: crushed lapis lazuli, azurite and red ocher. Gold leaf details made this a truly luxurious deck. It’s comprised of four suits numbered 1 through 10 with three court cards: King, Queen, and Page. The suit symbols are items necessary for hunting with dogs: horns for signaling, tethers for restraining the dogs, nooses for suspending birds or small game from one’s belt, and extra-wide collars to protect the dog’s throat from the prey he’s bringing down.

The court cards were drawn freehand in pen and ink then hand-painted. It’s possible the cards were commissioned by a wealthy merchant to satirize the extreme fashions of the Burgundian court. Two fashion victims are shown below with the 3 of Collars between them. The King’s floor length drooping sleeves would have been a nuisance to deal with. The long sleeves of the outer robe were usually tied together in the back to keep them out of the way. The Queen is wearing a tall hennin with a long, gauzy veil trailing behind. This headgear often reached ridiculous proportions resembling tall, pointed witch’s hats that made it a challenge to walk through doorways.

This deck was included in the exhibit of medieval playing cards at the Cloisters in early 2016. The catalog for this exhibit, The World in Play, has the same information as the booklet accompanying this deck, as well as large color versions of the tiny, black and white illustrations in the booklet. Guinevere’s Games used to sell this deck, along with two other hand-painted decks from about the same time period; but this deck has been removed from their website. All three decks were printed by Piatnik in the 1970s, so it seems this is a Piatnik reprint.

The box housing the deck and booklet is sturdy, deep red, with embossed gold lettering and two cards pasted to the top.

Advice for the cautious consumer: First, get the World in Play catalog from the Metropolitan Museum. It’s beautiful, loaded with card images, and gives a thorough education in fifteenth-century playing cards. Check out the Courtly Hunting deck on page 26, the Courtly Household deck on page 49, and the Cloisters/Flemish Hunting deck on page 80. If you want an actual deck, purchase the first two from Guinevere’s Games and the last-mentioned from the museum.

All the links you need:

The catalog at the Met Museum store

The Cloisters Hunting deck at the Met Museum store

Guinevere’s Games

My review of the decks offered by Guinevere’s Games

My review of the Metropolitan’s exhibit and catalog

See more images of these cards and links to high resolution images at TarotWheel.net

The Inglewood Hunting Deck created in the style of the 15^th century decks

When I saw this print on the Hyperallergic art blog, I immediately thought it must have been the inspiration for the Soprafino Death card (see below). The artist’s palette caught my eye first. Then I noticed so many other items the two images have in common: gold chains, a medallion, bishop’s hat, armor, a spear point and crown. I think I see the spine of a book near the far right edge of the print. The book isn’t nearly as prominent as on the card, but the stone tablet on the print sits in nearly the same location and tilted at the same angle as the Soprafino book.

The print was recently up for auction at Christie’s as part of a private collection that encompassed 500 years of momento mori and vanitas images. The inscription on the stone tablet, Omnia mihi subdita “everything succumbs to me”, is a good summation of what this type of art is about.

The image was created by Johann Elias Ridinger and engraved by Johann Jacob Ridinger about 1760. According to Wikipedia, Johann Elias (1698 – 1767) was an artist, engraver and publisher, famous for his renderings of animals. In fact he’s so famous, you can trot over to your nearest Walmart and purchase a copy of his Adam Names the Animals.

The Soprafino is my favorite version of Death, since its message strongly resonates with me. I’m in dire need of a domestic Grim Reaper to drastically prune back my accumulation of art supplies, books, and assorted clutter. The juxtaposition of the engraving and the card reminds me of how dominant the German print industry was, and that Carlo Dellarocca was commissioned by a German printer working in Italy to engrave one of the most gorgeous decks ever created.

I’ve just acquired the tiniest deck in my historical facsimile collection — a miniature version (1-1/8 x 2-¼ inches) of Il Meneghello’s reproduction of a TdM printed in Bologna in 1780 by Giacomo Zoni. Lo Scarabeo also publishes a facsimile. Shown above is a mini card superimposed on the Lo Scarabeo, which is a bit larger than Il Meneghello’s full-size version.

The Lo Scarabeo deck is lighter and brighter than the Il Meneghello. Mercifully, they’ve omitted the card names in five languages that usually clutter their borders. The border is a soft gray-green which blends well with the deck. I’ve heard they also have version with a blue border decorated with blue dots.
Speaking of dots, this deck is covered with them. The cards look like they have chickenpox. I have assumed this was damage from aging, but in some cards the dots are placed too regularly or symmetrically to be random damage. Also, the dots are too round and similar in size; they don’t resemble the usual splotches and stains you get on these very old decks. Compare the random dots on the Three of Coins to the dots marching up the sword blade.

There’s another Bolognese deck, from 1725, with the same type of dots, the Geographia Tarocchi in Kaplan Volume I page 147. I can’t imagine why someone would put those dots on the cards deliberately. Did they really think they were enhancing the deck? Does anyone have a theory about them?

This deck is historically interesting because it comes from Bologna but is not a Bolognese deck with the four Moors and shortened numerical suits. Since the card titles are in French, it was most likely made for export.

There’s a lot I like about this deck. The faces are lively and intelligent. The rich colors are mostly teal blue, green, antique gold and rust. It comes in the usual Il Meneghello box covered in handmade paper and with a card glued to the top. The dots really put me off, but in the tiny deck they’re less intrusive. I’ve been wanting a very small, light TdM to carry around with me, and this might be the one.

Decks illustrated in this article:

Tarocco di 78 Carte, Bologna Sec. XVIII, Il Meneghello, Milano. The deck does not have the usual enclosed card giving the date and the number of decks printed.

Ancient Tarots of Bologna, Lo Scarabeo, Torino, 2000.

If you want to immerse yourself in the world that gave us the Visconti-Sforza and Sola Busca decks, this book, subtitled Arts, Culture and Politics 1395 to 1530, will deliver.

Nothing was ever the same in Italian politics and society after Gian Galeazzo Visconti purchased the title of Duke from the Holy Roman Emperor in 1395. Other rulers soon followed suit: the Gonzaga of Mantua, Montefeltro of Urbino, d’Este of Ferrara and the rulers of Savoy.

Unlike a French or German aristocrat who could trace his pedigree back to Charlemagne, a newly-minted Italian duke did not have a divine right to rule. These parvenus were acutely aware of their modest origins as merchants or condottieri who had usurped civic power. They felt tremendous pressure to over-compensate by amassing a trophy art collection and building ostentatious palaces that were stage settings for elaborate ceremonies and festivals.

By the end of the 15th century, the largest courts kept hundreds, sometimes thousands of artists, secretaries, workmen and bureaucrats on salary. They comprised a significant percentage of the population and offered unprecedented opportunities for social mobility if you were ambitious and even moderately talented.

Each city-state and its court is featured in its own lavishly illustrated chapter. I was delighted to read about smaller political entities like the Marquisate of Saluzzo in Piedmont that had strong ties to the Parisian International Gothic. Its famous fresco in the Manta Castle of Nine Heroes and Heroines faces a crowd cavorting in their underwear in the Fountain of Youth fresco. Then there’s the Marquisate of Montferrat whose rulers were a minor branch of the Byzantine Palaeologus family and served as condottieri for the Sforzas. These small states were short on natural resources and relied on their armies to bring in the income necessary for their courtly lifestyle.

I was surprised at the extent condottieri economics pervaded Italian culture. Nearly every duke was in the rent-an-army business. Francesco Sforza was the most expensive and the most capable. Federigo da Montefeltro of Urbino was the quintessential warrior-humanist-art patron. An illegitimate son who received an excellent humanist education in Venice and Mantua, he led Urbino’s army, fought as a mercenary for Filippo Maria Visconti, never lost a war, and prided himself on never taking a bribe to change sides. When his half-brother, the Duke, died suddenly and mysteriously, Federigo was perfectly situated to waltz into Urbino with his troops, take command, and set up the most polished and splendid court of mid-century. The Courtier by Baldassar Castiglione celebrates an idealized Urbino court where other dukes sent their sons to finish their training.

The greatest condottieri were honored by the greatest artists of the day. Ucello painted a fresco of John Hawkwood, the paradigm of the courtly warrior in the previous century. Donatello, Verocchio and Leonardo da Vinci did equestrian statues of Gattamelata, Colleoni and Sforza.

Bartolomeo Colleoni was a great friend and military companion of Francesco Sforza. He was a condottiere who never acquired aristocratic rank, but still maintained a princely lifestyle in his hometown of Bergamo. He bought a rundown castle outside of town and turned it into a splendid court where he staged festivals and tournaments for visiting dukes and princes.

A Colleoni descendant owned the Visconti-Sforza deck in the late 19^th century and was responsible for breaking it up. The Colleoni family of Bergamo still own thirteen cards from the deck. Were the cards a gift from Francesco to his old friend and comrade Bartolomeo? Perhaps the Colleoni family acquired the deck from Duke Sforza after the French invaded Milan and his world began crumbling around him.

The book has short chapters on literature, music, triumphal parades, palaces and other arts. The chapter on festivals, spectacles and triumphs gives one example after another of the wretched excess involved in staging these orgies of self-promotion that combined the medieval tournament and the classical triumphal parade.

The longest chapter, enhanced with numerous maps, summarizes the political and military situation in the 15^th century. Surprisingly, this was considered a time of unusual stability. A balance had been established with Milan as the dominant power in the north. The Pope, back from exile, was firmly established in the Papal States; while Alfonso of Aragon ruled the Kingdom of Naples and the southern peninsula. There were only five powers that counted: Milan, Naples, Venice, Florence and the Papal States. All the regional wars and skirmishes of the century were played out in the context of these major powers.

This over-sized book has a 30-page bibliography and illustrations on nearly every page. The book is hefty in both price and actual weight (seven pounds), but I found it online for one-third its retail price of $95.

Courts and Courtly Arts in Renaissance Italy: Culture and Politics, 1395-1530. Marco Folin, editor. Antique Collector’s Club, Suffolk, UK. http://www.antiquecollectorsclub.com.

As far as I know, there are only a few Besançon-style decks on the market. I’ll start my survey with the most affordable and accessible deck, a re-creation by Evalyne Hall. While translating the writings of Antoine Court de Gebelin and the Comte de Mellet (18^th century French authors who were the first to link Tarot and Kaballah), she realized de Mellet used a Besançon deck. Since she didn’t have access to this type of deck, she created her own by lovingly re-drawing historic cards that reside in Paris in the Bibliothèque Nationale.

What is a Besançon deck?  It’s a traditional Tarot de Marseille with Jupiter and Juno substituting for the Papesse and Pope. Besançon was just one of several cities where the deck was manufactured, but this name stuck to the style. The story has been that the religious figures on a pack of playing cards offended Catholics, so card makers were required to put something else on the deck. Actually, the altered deck proliferated in the predominantly Protestant areas of eastern France, southwestern Germany and Switzerland. Evidently Protestants didn’t enjoy looking at iconic Catholic figures while playing cards.

Hall’s deck is based on an original by F. J. Jerger printed in Besançon about 1800. Il Meneghello has produced a deck that’s almost identical to Jerger’s, a facsimile of a deck printed by Benois of Strasbourg. You can see the difference between the decks in the two Jupiter cards shown above and the Lovers.

Since Il Meneghello’s deck is a photo-facsimile, we see the deck in its current condition with faded lines where the woodblock was worn. The original stenciled colors fall outside the lines and sometimes are unevenly applied. The paper is heavy, untreated card stock.

Hall’s deck is printed on smooth playing card stock with crisp lines and rich colors, since it’s a contemporary re-drawing. The faces on both decks are rather odd, ranging from lumpy to badly distorted, with melancholy or sly expressions.

Another deck of this type on the market is US Games Swiss 1JJ which launched Stuart Kaplan as a tarot entrepreneur. It’s based on a style made popular by J. G. Rauch in Switzerland in the mid 1800s, one of the predecessors of the AGMuller company. This deck strays from TdM imagery and is obviously meant to be decorative rather than traditional.

Decks mentioned and illustrated in this article:

Tarot de Besançon deck of J. Jerger. Evalyne’s Garden Gate, 2016. Deck available from GameCrafters and Amazon – links on EvalynesGardenGate 

Tarocco di Besançon. Il Meneghello, Milan, 2000. Edition of 1,000.

Tarot 1JJ. AGMuller, 1974.

This magazine just keeps getting better. The latest issue has several articles that especially intrigued me.

In the Tarot Art section, Monica Bodirsky’s Lucky Lenormand deck caught my eye. Its swirling, free form watercolor background appeals to me since I adore abstract art. Bodirsky appears twice more. Bonnie Cehovet reviewed her deck, then Bodirsky contributed an article on cartomancy, the proliferation of Lenormand decks, and the role imagery plays in a reading.

Andrew McGregor’s 90-Question deck, featured in the Tarot Art section, supplies very thoughtful questions enhanced by evocative black and white images. I like using these cards with black and white decks.

In the past two issues, Eric K. Lerner discussed the historical background to switching the Justice and Strength cards from the Tarot de Marseille to the Waite Smith order. In his third article, he explains how this switch can affect your readings, especially when using numerology-based techniques, like computing the soul card from the birth date.

Cherry Gilchrist, author of Tarot Triumphs, cites documentary evidence showing that the Hanged Man could be an acrobat or rope dancer rather than a traitor hung in effigy. This very exciting because in some ways the Hanged Man does not look like a traditional medieval shame painting.

Ste McCabe loves Tarot de Marseille and Waite Smith decks equally. He shows the same two-card reading with both decks, talks about their differences, then suggests we use both decks in the same spread!

Christiana Gaudet’s article on feminist tarot flashed me back to the 1980s when, along with Christiana, I discovered radical feminism and the Motherpeace and Daughters of the Moon decks. Since then we’ve evolved from replacing the patriarchy with a matriarchy, to decks that are more balanced and inclusive. Gaudet gives many deck examples.

My contributions: a review of Saleire’s modern take-off on the Visconti-Sforza deck; and an homage to Etteilla who invented modern tarot reading practices nearly 250 years ago.

Get digital or print copies at thecartomancer.com

Are you ready for immersion in the electrifying atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Paris? Etteilla, Cagliostro and de Gebelin flourished in this era of scientific marvels, crackpot inventions and magnetic healing. Pseudo-science, alchemy, astrology, and fantasies of the Golden Age swirled about uncritically in the public mind. In this atmosphere, stories of golden tablets under the pyramids inscribed with ancient wisdom didn’t seem the least bit implausible.

The book shows us this world through the eyes of a literate Parisian in the 1780s, just before the Revolution. The author, respected historian Robert Darnton, chose mesmerism as the lens through which to view the times. Mesmerism infused the popular culture from cartoons to cabaret shows to Mozart’s Cosí Fan Tutti. The hottest ticket in town was for an afternoon in Mesmer’s purple-draped salon as part of a human chain around a tub filled with water and iron filings. A mild electric current guaranteed getting a tingle from the experience; and the supercharged atmosphere often produced swooning, catatonia, and visionary trance states.

Mesmerism touched all the hot button issues and deepest longings of the times. It provided:

• Direct experience of the universal substance that underlay all scientific phenomena and was the primary energy source of our distant ancestors in the Golden Age.
• Titillating entertainment, where mixed groups of men and women wearing loose robes joined hands around a tub of water while enjoying an electric tingle.
• A scientific explanation for various mysterious phenomena, from invisible gases to spontaneous healing to romantic love.
• The promise of healing by harnessing the body’s vital energies while bypassing the medical establishment.
• A home for doctors and scientists who were dismissed as quacks by the Establishment.
• A meeting place for anyone with a grudge against elites and a hatred of the establishment. (Most of the political radicals of the Revolutionary period like Robespierre and Lafayette were mesmerists).
• A Masonic-style ceremonial lodge for those with a taste for robes and rituals.

Anton Mesmer arrived in Paris in 1778 after closing his magnetic healing clinic in Vienna. With his charismatic personality and friendship with luminaries like Mozart, he quickly acquired a following of middle- and upper-class Parisians hoping to cure their ailments by unblocking their vital fluids. Since Mesmer never learned French, he depended on his followers to spread his teachings. One of his closest associates was the former clergyman Antoine Court de Gebelin.

De Gebelin was obsessed with using linguistic analysis to uncover the truth about the primal human civilization of the Golden Age. His magnum opus, the multi-volume Le Monde Primitif, had over 1,000 subscribers. He was a success on the lecture circuit, and was considered a serious philosopher and historian. His story about ancient Egyptian magi inscribing their wisdom pictorially on twenty-two tablets under the pyramids fed into the popular longing to revert to the simpler, more natural times of the ancient world.

De Gebelin’s association with Mesmer led to his untimely end in 1784 when he was electrocuted during a healing session. The Bodleian Library has a copy of Le Monde Primitif where a previous, rather irreverent owner inscribed the following ditty on the flyleaf:

Ci-gît ce pauvre Gebelin
Qui parloit Grec, Hebreu, Latin;
Admirez tous son héroisme:
It fut martyr du magnétisme.

Here lies poor Gebelin / Who spoke Greek, Hebrew and Latin / Everyone, admire his heroism / He was a martyr to magnetism.

This slender, scholarly book is a quick and entertaining read. Professor Darnton proposes that mesmerism was the last gasp of the French Enlightenment and a bridge to the romanticism of the following century. He continues the story by showing mesmerist influence on utopian communities, a fascination with the occult, and the novels of Balzac and Victor Hugo which were rife with magnetic rays, invisible fluids and unseen spirits.

Darnton, Robert. Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France. Harvard University Press, 1968.

Additional information on de Gebelin from:

Decker, Ronald, Thierry DePaulis, Michael Dummett. A Wicked Pack of Cards. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1996.

I already have three full-sized facsimiles of the Visconti-Sforza deck. So when I came across yet another version, published by Il Meneghello in 1996, I wrestled with temptation for a couple of weeks before succumbing. I’m very glad temptation won out because this deck is the best of the lot.

I compared this deck with my other three: Dal Negro, USGames 1984 and USGames 2015 (with portraits of Francesco and Bianca Sforza on extra cards).

The first thing I checked out was the gold background on the Trump cards. When I hold the Il Meneghello cards up to the light, the gold seems to glow from within. With the other three decks, the light bounces off the surface. The USGames 2015 actually has a brighter yellow-gold background. But the entire deck has a yellowish cast which mutes the foreground colors and makes the gray beards on the Hermit and Emperor a somewhat off-putting yellow. In the USGames 1984 deck all the gold is rendered as dark bronze. If you want glittering gold you’ll have to get Lo Scarabeo’s gold foil version. But no deck begins to approach the magical aura of the original cards.

The foreground colors on the Il Meneghello deck are deeper and richer than any of the other decks, making for more contrast and better detail. But some of the more delicate details, like the sunburst on the gold coins, are very sketchy on this deck and much more defined in the USGames 2015 deck.

The white background on the pip cards has been cleaned up and brightened slightly. Not to the extent that it looks artificial; just enough so the floral decoration pops out and comes alive. On other decks, especially the Dal Negro, the background can be a bit dingy.

The sword blades were done in silver leaf which has tarnished and darkened over the centuries. The swords in this deck are dark gray, with hilts that are a pleasant shiny gold. In both USGames decks the blades appear blue; while in the Dal Negro the blades are dark gray and the hilts are a deep antique gold.

The most important consideration for me is the state of the Tower and Devil replacement cards. How anachronistic and modeled on the Tarot de Marseille are they? Do they blend with the late Gothic style of the rest of the deck?

The Il Meneghello deck wins out on this score, with replacement cards designed by Giovanni Scarsato that establish a balance between historical correctness and giving consumers the cards they’re used to seeing. The closest models for these cards that I could find are the uncut sheets of trump cards in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City dating from about 1500.

In all four decks, the Tower is a straight brick building whose top is being blasted off by fire or lightning bolts coming from the upper right corner of the card. The other three decks have two falling figures in the style of Tarot de Marseille. The Il Meneghello has just one falling figure that looks very much like the Knight of Coins, which is also a replacement card. Bricks are falling from the tower, but, contrary to custom, the top is still in place.

The other three decks have anachronistic Devil cards with two people chained at his feet as in the Tarot de Marseille. Il Meneghello gives us a more medieval Devil. Both US Games decks have the same over-the-top, psychedelic replacement cards that pretty much ruin the deck artistically.

All the court cards of one suit have the same pattern on their robes. It should be a no-brainer to give the Knight of Coins the same clothing as the other three court figures, but only USGames managed to do it.

Il Meneghello did a smaller version of this deck in 2002 with identical replacement cards. But there’s nothing like seeing the deck in its full-size 7″x 3.5″ glory to really appreciate the presence these cards have. The cards are very thick and sturdy, making the deck stand one-third again higher than the others.

Tarocchi Visconti Sforza. Il Meneghello, Milano, 1996. Edition of 1000.

If you bought the first edition of the Pierre Madenié deck produced by Yves Reynaud in 2013, do you need to get the second edition as well? Yes, you probably do.

Even though it’s my number one reading deck, I initially felt a second copy was an unnecessary indulgence. Besides, I was afraid the newer, cleaned-up version might be too pristine. I prefer historical facsimiles that preserve the original intact; so I shudder at the thought of someone touching up historic cards to conform to their arbitrary criteria of perfection. But a fellow collector convinced me the second edition was even more beautiful than the first, so I succumbed to temptation. I’m very glad I did.

Right off the top, you can see Reynaud’s methods by comparing the two Fool cards. In the first edition, the Fool’s hair, collar and bells are dark mustard. In the second edition they are lighter yellow. The colors throughout the second edition are slightly brighter, making the black lines more visible. In comparison, the colors in the earlier deck seem heavy and muddy.

In the first edition, the green on the back of the Fool’s tunic is a stenciled rectangle that covers the gold bells and the edge of his collar. This has been corrected in the second edition. The blobs of red ink along the outside of the walking stick have been removed. But I’m happy to see that his red shoe still overlaps the card border.

A ghost image of the Lover’s card can be seen in the background of the first edition Fool. This is the “kiss” that happens when a ghostly image is transferred to another card during production. I happen to enjoy seeing these artifacts of the printing process. But if you think they’re a flaw, you’ll be happy to know they have all been removed in the second edition. The backgrounds are cleaner and are a very pleasant soft white.

Ink has been removed from places where it obviously doesn’t belong, like the lovers’ foreheads, and around the Grim Reaper and the Devil’s minions. Since the cups and coins are lighter gold, the ink that spills outside the figures is not as noticeable. For the most part, the cards have been left intact and have retained their original look and feel.

Overall, this deck has acquired freshness and clarity without losing any of its historical value. The backs and the card stock are identical to the first edition, and the differences between the two are very subtle. If you missed out on the first edition, don’t hesitate to get this one. Only 1500 have been printed, so it won’t be available for long.

Here’s my 2013 review of the original deck.

Things have certainly changed since I began reading with the TdM around the turn of the millennium. Back then there were no books in English on the subject; so I spent a fortune on shipping for a small collection of books in French. Since then there have been almost no other basic TdM books in English. I recently found three books that show the tide is turning.

Tarot Triumphs: Using the Marseilles Tarot Trumps for Divination and Inspiration. Cherry Gilchrist. Weiser Books, 2016. 290 pages.

I’ll start with the best of the lot, a solid beginner’s book with everything you need to get started. Gilchrist runs through the trumps three times. At the very start of the book she pulls us into a 15^th-century street scene where the trumps roll past as larger-than-life allegorical figures on theatrical floats. I experienced a bit of vertigo standing on a 15^th-century Italian street, seeing 18^th-century French Tarot de Marseille figures, and hearing one trump referred to by its 19^th century occultist name, High Priestess. Although Gilchrist is very aware of early tarot history and refers to it often, her book is based on the Grimaud TdM, the most widely used deck in France. All illustrations are black and white line drawings of this deck.

The second run-through of the trumps gives a quick description and a few keywords to get you started with divination. The third time is a longer description discussing each card as allegory and myth with a good grounding in history.

She organizes the trumps into a pattern of three sets of seven cards, as do many authors. Her take on the meaning of the sets: Trumps 1 through 7 are actual people, roles we play, or parts of one’s personality. Trumps 8 to 14 are ways of responding to the environment and handling situations. Trumps 15 to 21 are energies from a transpersonal realm.

I’ve never been fond of large spreads, especially with the TdM. I rarely pull more than two or three cards at a time. But Gilchrist makes an interesting point. The entire trump suit is a pattern, just as the entire night sky is a complete pattern. You wouldn’t cast a horoscope and only use three planets, or one little slice of the sky; so why would you lay out a spread using only three cards out of the entire deck? She gives a rather elaborate spread using all 22 trumps that inspires me to research how other authors have treated this technique.

The Authentic Tarot: Discovering Your Inner Self. Thomas Saunders. Watkins Media, 2007. 170 pages.

This book is illustrated with the Grimaud deck in black and white. There’s an insert with the 22 trumps, court cards and a few pip cards in color, about three-quarter size, as well as a color insert with the trumps arranged in three rows of 7 cards each.

The history chapter starts with tarot’s mysterious origins and goes downhill from there. In just seven pages it crams in Gypsies, Cathars, Knights Templar, the 1392 Gringonneur deck, Great Mother worship, the church’s supposed persecution of tarot, and Eliphas Levi. He refers to Barbara Walker, De Gebelin and Many P. Hall as tarot scholars. The likes of Dummett, Vitali, and De Paulis don’t make the cut. Do yourself a favor and skip this chapter.

In his favor, he rejects occultist attempts to create a grand unified theory of everything by attributing sounds, scents, colors, astrology, numerology, letters of the alphabet, stations on the Tree of Life, and the kitchen sink to the cards.

Saunders organizes the trumps into three sets of seven and overlays them with Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. We’re given a quick run-through of the hero’s journey, a choice of several numerological systems, and a dictionary of symbols. The personality profiles for each court card are very helpful if you’re having a hard time relating to these figures. His 21-card spread is laid out in three rows of seven and read from the center like a Lenormand grand tableau.

If you’re just getting started with the Tarot de Marseille and feel intimidated by Jodorowsky and other masters, both of these books are good places to start.

Tarot By The Slice: A Look at Features, Elements, Numbers, Suits, Sex and Archetypes. Karen S. and T. Magus Miller. Self-published, San Bernardino, CA 2017. 137 pages.

The authors quote liberally from their main influences: Jodorowsky, Ben-Dov and Enriquez. The book is illustrated with Yoav Ben-Dov’s CBD Tarot and the Burdel facsimile produced by Yves Reynaud, both in black and white.

Each “slice” is a topic: suit, number, element, gender, the story in the trumps. The book’s strong point is its treatment of the suits. If you want to study the pips by combining suit and number, this is a good place to start.

Something I’ve not seen in any other book: pages with spaces where you lay cards of different suits on the page next to diagrams of overlapping circles and keywords that show how the two suits interact to form a third entity.

Trumps are discussed as the story of the Fool’s journey to integration and authenticity. Their paradigms for this journey are Pinocchio, The Velveteen Rabbit, and the Wizard of Oz. The book ends with sample readings using several different spreads including one they invented using two overlapping drum hoops to indicate spread positions. The descriptions are sketchy and baffling.

This 135-page book is good for beginners who want a taste of the TdM without investing a lot of time. You will learn enough to decide if you want to continue your studies.

Waves of shock and grief are rolling through a large segment of the tarot community in reaction to the announcement that www.tarotforum.net will be shut down as of July 14, 2017.  Since 2002, Tarotforum has been one of the largest and best-moderated communities on the internet. When Tarot_L on Yahoo shut down over a decade ago, Tarotforum became my go-to place for tarot history. I’m greatly relieved to learn that the forum will still exist in read-only form, so we won’t be losing its huge storehouse of information.Two subgroups of the forum were my home base: Tarot History and Development, and Marseille and Other Early Decks. These are a wonderful resource for people interested in the fine points of tarot history, collecting historical decks, comparing details on different decks, and learning to interpret and read with the TdM and other historic decks.

On its hundreds of pages of discussion, you’ll find contributions by many luminaries of the tarot community: Jean-Michel David, Ross G. Caldwell, Mary Greer (Teheuti), Adam McLean, Enrique Enriquez, and Yves Le Marseillais (Yves Reynaud). I always stopped to read the thoughtful contributions by three people who chose not to reveal their names: Kwaw, Huck and Le Pendu. You can find many posts by two who left us in the past year: Yoav Ben-Dov and Michael J. Hurst.

Where to now? Many members who consider the forum their extended family are talking about either moving en masse to an existing forum, or setting up a new one of their own. Who knows how long the forum will be available, so check it out while you can.

What’s out there for the amateur tarot historian and those learning to read with the TdM and similar decks?  I was amused that many people on Tarotforum said they would never, ever join “fartbook”. Actually, I backed away from tarotforum a few years ago and shifted my focus to facebook after having my hand soundly slapped and being threatened with banishment a few times because I put a link to my web pages when I thought it would contribute important information to a discussion. Self-promotion was totally forbidden on the forum, yet certain deck creators were allowed to blatantly advertise. I could never figure out their arbitrary criteria, so I took myself to a platform where I could link to this blog at will.

Here are some facebook groups I belong to:

• Tarot History
• Tarosophy de Marseille – for people who read with the TdM

Two Facebook groups for collectors of playing cards of all types, including tarot and historic decks:

• Cartagiocofilia – a multi-lingual, global community
• Playing Card Collectors Club – it’s owner, Gejus van Diggele, is the chairman of the International Playing-Card Society

Separate forums where you can find serious, in-depth discussions:

http://www.forum.tarothistory.com/ – I believe Ross G. Caldwell and the late Michael J. Hurst are the guiding spirits behind this one. I haven’t spent enough time with this wonderful resource – it’s going to be my summer reading.

http://www.traditiontarot.com/ – entirely in French. Notable contributors include several people mentioned above, plus Alain Bougearel and Bertrand Saint-Guillain.

I haven’t found an actual Italian forum yet. But Andrea Vitali’s site  http://www.letarot.it/ is a goldmine of in-depth articles, and has a news section with the kind of intriguing updates you would find on a forum.

I’ll see you somewhere in cyberspace.

Sigismondo Malatesta, bad boy of the Renaissance, gave us our first documented evidence for tarot. Researcher Franco Pratesi discovered a note in a Florentine account book dated September 16, 1440 saying a deck of naibi a trionfi had been sent to Malatesta that was beautiful, expensive and decorated with his arms. In 1452 he surfaced again in connection with tarot. Bianca, the Duchess of Milan, sent a note to her husband Francesco saying Malatesta was asking for the trionfi cards that were made in Cremona.

I read this biography hoping to learn what Malatesta was doing when he purchased his decks, why he purchased them, and for what occasion. Instead of a detailed biography, the book immersed me in the humanist culture of fifteenth-century northern Italy. Malatesta was one of a small elite of successful professional soldiers (condottiere) who presided over luxurious courts in the city-states of northern Italy. These soldiers had an excellent humanist education and were connoisseurs of antiquities and classical literature.

Sigismondo’s court in Rimini was a center for the revival of Greek classicism. He commissioned Latin translations of many Greek texts to give as gifts. The Tempio Malatestiana, designed by Leon Battista Alberti, is a pagan fantasy stuffed with images of the muses, planets, and Olympian gods, all carved in marble by Agostino di Duccio. Although the Tempio is wrapped around a Christian church and serves as the final resting place for Sigismondo, his third wife and his favorite humanists, there is not a bit of Christian imagery in it.

The book examines Malatesta’s life and deeds through the lens of two book-length poems written by his resident humanists, Hesperis and Isottaea. The poet Basinio saw himself as a new Homer, and Sigismondo fancied himself a Homeric hero who embodied the classic virtues, so their collaboration was blessed by the gods. The poems depict Sigismondo sacrificing bulls to Mars, praying to Jupiter, being given supernatural powers, shining in splendor like Apollo, and summoning the Olympian gods to protect Italy. He went further than anyone in assuming the persona of a classic hero, without an ounce of Christian guilt holding him back.

There’s no doubt that Malatesta was a larger-than-life personality. By all accounts he was a formidable soldier and military strategist who began his career at age 13 fighting under the command of Francesco Sforza, the greatest condottiere of the time. He was known for his immense vitality, strong libido and monstrous rages when thwarted.

Pope Pius had a personal, vitriolic loathing for Malatesta. In 1462 he gave Sigismondo the honor of being the only person to ever receive “reverse canonization” from a Pope, condemning him to the torments of hell while still alive. In a 17-page unhinged rant, the Pope accuses Malatesta of rape, murder, adultery, murdering his wife, being more animal than human, and of various perversions that probably say more about the Pope’s fantasy life than they do about Sigismondo’s deeds. Then the Pope takes gleeful and sadistic pleasure in describing the lurid torments Sigismondo will experience. Perhaps the Pope was on to something, because after this, Sigismondo seems to have lost his mojo. Except for some modest victories against the Turks, the rest of his life was a downhill slide until his death in 1468.

The book is a fascinating exploration of how lords of Italian city-states used classical imagery in poetry and sculpture to shape their public personas; and how they adopted the heroic virtues of classical antiquity as guides to conduct, even though these virtues were the antithesis of how a good Christian should behave.

Back to tarot: What can Sigismondo’s deck purchases tell us about tarot’s place in this world? Let’s start with a reality check. So much has been lost from that century, that the few decks and references we have probably loom larger than their actual importance at the time. Sigismondo may have purchased dozens of tarot decks, so there was nothing special about the two we know of. But it’s all we have to work with.

A beautiful and expensive deck was sent to Sigismondo on September 16, 1440. I’m guessing the deck was ordered three or four months earlier around May, 1440. His wife died in October, probably of the plague or childbirth. Did he order a deck of cards to keep his wife amused during her confinement, or as a gift when the baby was born? We can only speculate.

Throughout the early 1440s we have scattered references to purchases of both expensive and cheap tarot decks in Milan, Ferrara and Florence. By 1440, tarot was an easily obtained commodity and aristocrats were beginning to commission luxury versions. Sigismondo spent a lot of time in Florence in the late 1430s, as Cosimo de’Medici was a close friend. Did he first see tarot there, so he naturally turned to a Florentine middle-man when he wanted to obtain a custom deck? Milan and Cremona have always been credited as the center for luxury deck production because we know of three decks created in workshops in Cremona for the Viscontis and Sforzas of Milan. Perhaps there were many more Malatesta decks from Florence, but they haven’t survived, so tarot history has been skewed toward Milan.

In the 1430s, Malatesta fought in the Papal army under the command of Francesco Sforza, and Sforza probably mentored the young, promising condottiere. By the early 1400s, Malatesta and Sforza usually fought on opposite sides. But they had family bonds, since Malatesta married Francesco’s daughter Polisenna in 1441.

By 1452, Malatesta was at the peak of his fortunes and reputation. Alberti and Duccio were at work on his grandiose Tempio, while humanist poets were polishing his reputation as a classical hero favored by the gods. Polisenna was dead, leaving him free to live openly with the great love of his life, Isotta degli Atti, who became this third wife a few years later. In 1451 he signed a friendship pact with Francesco Sforza.

In 1452 he sent a note to Bianca Sforza asking her help in acquiring a tarot deck like the ones she was getting from Cremona. She passed the message on to Francesco. This might indicate that Cremona was known for a certain style of luxury tarot deck that was becoming popular. Cremona was part of Bianca’s dowry and she had many contacts there. Why didn’t she handle the request herself instead of asking her husband? Perhaps because all art products, even the most mundane, were tools for propaganda and for asserting a public persona. Maybe Bianca thought the Duke should be aware that another condottiere was using their favored style of deck for these purposes.

A biography of Bianca Sforza that gives a detailed account of the Sforza’s travels and visitors does not mention Malatesta. But it’s entirely possible he paid a social call at the castle and was shown the family’s golden decks. Or just as likely, he wanted to get in on a fad for Cremonese decks.

If the naibi a trionfi Malatesta purchased in 1440 looked anything like the luxury decks created by the Bembo workshop for the Duke of Milan, then they strike an odd note in a court saturated with classical imagery. Decks like the gilded Visconti-Sforza, with their International Gothic look, seem to come from a different world. I believe the original tarot deck came from a different social strata, and expressed a different world view, than what you would find in a humanist court. What tarot looked like before it was taken up by the wealthy lords of Italy as a gilded status symbol is one of the great mysteries of tarot history.

D’Elia, Anthony F. Pagan Virtue in a Christian World: Sigismondo Malatesta and the Italian Renaissance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016.

Illustrations

Book Cover: Agostino di Duccio, Triumphal Portrait of Sigismondo Malatesta, marble relief, interior of Tempio Malatestiana, @1455.

Tempio Malatestiana, Rimini, Italy. Exterior by Leon Battista Alberti, interior marble carvings by Agostino di Duccio, frescos by Piero della Francesca. Seven archways on the left mark the tombs of seven humanists, including the Byzantine Platonist Plethon. Sigismondo was such a fan, he dug up the philosopher’s bones and transferred them to Rimini. The Tempio was supposed to have a dome based on Brunelleschi’s design, but Sigismondo ran out of money and luck before it could be constructed.

Piero della Francesca, portrait of Sigismondo Malatesta, oil and tempera on panel, @1452. Now in the Louvre.

Matteo de’ Pasti, bronze portrait medallion of Isotta degli Atti. De’ Pasti did two medallions of Isotta. This earlier one shows her with long hair and looking girlish. The other shows a mature Isotta with an elaborate headdress. Many copies were struck, as Sigismondo liked to bury portrait medallions in the walls and foundations of his buildings. 1446 is the date the two lovers commemorated as the start of their relationship. Inscriptions that were more public often say 1450 to avoid flaunting their adultery, since Sigismondo’s second wife didn’t die until 1449.

Visconti Sforza tarot card, the Wheel of Fortune, @1451. Probably by Bonifacio Bembo, although the Zavattari brothers still have their champions.

If you can only own one or two Visconti Sforza decks, before purchasing you need to familiarize yourself with the replacement cards – Tower, Devil and Knight of Coins. (The Three of Swords is also replaced, but it’s hard to mess that one up.)

There are at least eleven versions of the Pierpont Morgan Bergamo Visconti Sforza Tarocchi (to use its official name) by six different publishers. It comes in two basic flavors: a photo-reproduction of the cards as they exist now with chipped paint, flaking gold and nail holes top center; or a restored version that’s been touched up to look like new. Some decks are the original size (3.5 x 7 inches), while some are smaller. The images in all decks are identical except the four lost cards. Every publisher hires an artist to create replacements, which vary greatly and can make or break a deck.

I want to see replacement cards that look like they belong in an International Gothic deck from about 1450. I don’t want to see a Devil and Tower patterned on the Tarot de Marseille which emerged over 200 years later. There is no precedent in early Italian decks for a devil on a dais with two minions, or people falling from a tower. The four court figures in each suit wear robes with the same fabric. The clothing in the suit of Coins has interlocking six-sided rings forming a dark blue honeycomb on a gray-blue background. There’s no excuse for a Knight of Coins dressed differently than the others in his suit; yet only two decks manage to come close to getting it right.

I’ve scanned the Devil and Tower from six decks in my collection and arranged them in order from my most to least favorite. I’ll discuss them in that order, and give a critique of the Knight of Coins.

Il Meneghello produced an original size deck in 1996 and an identical smaller deck (2.25 x 4.5 inches) in 2002. The replacement cards by Giovanni Scarsato look like they belong in a late medieval deck. The Devil has an extra set of ass’s ears, bat wings and a furry skirt, all common attributes of a medieval devil. The Tower resembles other early cards except for the anachronistic falling person. The Knight of Coins is dressed in plain blue fabric, and unique to this deck, he’s wearing armor. Extra points for having the best horse of any deck.

Lo Scarabeo has produced more versions of this deck than any other publisher. The best is their gold foil deck from 1995 that measures 2.3 x 4.5 inches and is printed with foil incised to resemble the original embossing. Atanas A. Atanassov did the restoration and the replacement cards. These cards glitter and shine like the originals, but unfortunately the scans come out dark bronze. The Devil and Tower were modeled on the Rothschild sheet, one of the earliest examples of Italian decks, so it gets high marks for historical accuracy. Inexplicably, the Knight of Coins is dressed in the same gold fabric as the cups court cards. Lo Scarabeo produces a mini deck (1.75 x 3.25 inches) with the same replacement cards but without the gold foil.

Around 2002 Lo Scarabeo printed another version without the gold foil and with different replacement cards which I believe closely resemble the Tarot de Marseille (I don’t have the deck in front of me to be certain).

The third set of illustrations is another Lo Scarabeo gold foil deck. The 22 Grand Trumps is 3.0 x 5.5 inches, not quite as large as the original. There’s no indication who the artist is, but it might be Atanassov. The replacement cards are modeled on the Tarot de Marseille, and although the artist has attempted to give them a medieval look, it just doesn’t come off.

In 1975 both Dal Negro and US Games/Grafica Gutenberg printed identical photo-reproduction decks in their original size. The Devil and Tower blend nicely with the rest of the deck but unfortunately are closely modeled on the Tarot de Marseille. The Knight of Coins was created by flipping the Knight of Cups so he faces the other direction, then substituting a coin for the cup, so the Knight is dressed like the cups suit rather than the suit he belongs to.

The Golden Tarot published by Race Point, with a book written by Mary Packard, is slightly smaller than original (3.25 x 6.5 inches) and is restored. Both replacement cards are heavy on the red-orange, patterned on the Tarot de Marseille, and look totally out of place in a medieval deck. The Knight’s cloak has the interlocking ring pattern, but the background is gold instead of blue-gray.

US Games/AG Muller reprinted the 1975 photo-reproduction deck in 1984, 2007 and 2015. All three printings have this same lurid, cringe-worthy replacement cards by Luigi Scapini. But the Knight of Coins is the most historically correct since his cloak has the correct pattern and colors, although a bit too bright.

Two decks not shown here:

Monumenta Longobardia printed the earliest reproduction in 1974. The replacement cards are line drawings based closely on the Tarot de Marseille. Only 500 copies were printed.

In 2012, Alice Cooper expressed her love for this deck by painting a faithful copy with replacement cards based on the Tarot de Marseille. She printed 200 copies that sell on Etsy.

Here’s my opinion in a nutshell:

• Best Devil: Il Meneghello with the Lo Scarabeo 1995 gold a close runner up.
• Best Tower: a tie between the same two decks as above. They both have drawbacks.
• Best Knight of Coins: US Games 1984/2007/2015.
• Best overall: Il Meneghello.

Links to other articles on the Visconti Sforza deck:

• Background History on the deck and its times
• Review of Race Point Golden Tarot
• Review of Alice Cooper’s hand painted deck
• Review of US Games 2015 deck
• Review of Il Meneghello
• A personal visit with the VS deck in New York
• The deck’s fate after it left Sforza hands

Yves Reynaud, who has given new life to historically important TdMs like the Burdel, Payen and Madenié, just issued his restoration of the 1760 Conver deck in a limited edition of 1500. A decade ago, the only historically correct version of this deck on the market was a photo-facsimile of a deck housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, published by Heron around 1980. Reynaud has based his restoration on this deck.

About fifteen years ago when I started collecting historic decks, the 1760 Conver, printed in Marseille, was the touchstone TdM. It was considered the first, and the ultimate Tarot de Marseille. We know a lot more about tarot history now, and we have learned the Conver is a relative late-comer based on the Chosson deck printed in Marseille in 1736. There’s an even earlier TdM, the Pierre Madenié, printed in Dijon in 1709. I’m sure the pattern predates this by several decades. Reynaud has published limited editions of both Chosson and Madenié.

The Conver deck was printed many times in the 19^th century. It became established as the standard TdM in 1930 when Paul Marteau inherited the B. P. Grimaud publishing company and printed the Grimaud Ancien Tarot de Marseille, the prototype for most subsequent French decks. This deck also solidified the Tarot de Marseille designation. In the 19^th century, occultists used Tarot de Marseille as the designation for any Italian-suited deck printed in France. Presumably this would include variants like the Besancon and Piemontese decks. Playing card historians like Sylvia Mann and Michael Dummett used the term the same way. But the meaning has drifted, and many people now insist that the only decks deserving the Tarot de Marseille designation are decks close to the Conver pattern.

Until recently I was an historical purist and a bit of a snob. I only wanted to collect facsimile decks, and turned up my nose at restorations. I found most restorations to be too nice, too clean, and the colors too bright. But recently we’ve seen some wonderfully restored decks that have a special magic and beauty because of their creator’s loving attention to detail. Pablo Robledo’s TdM is one example, as well as the second edition of Reynaud’s Madenié deck, and the work being done by Sullivan Hismans on decks from the late 15^th century. This Conver restoration belongs in this group.

Reynaud’s restoration is much more readable than the Heron facsimile while retaining its historic look and feel. The colors are strong and pure, and the lines are clean and distinct. One jarring note: Where the Heron version has a flesh or warm beige color, this deck is often very pink, resulting in oddities like pink hair and pink horses. See the Page of Swords from both decks shown here.

I’ve read with dozens of historic decks, and I find that one of the most important factors in a deck’s readability are the eyes. They must be bright, distinct and focused. I give this deck high marks for readability. Facial expressions give each deck  a predominant mood —some are grumpy or sad, the Madenié is cheerful. Most of the faces in the Conver deck seemed perplexed, worried or slightly quizzical.

The cards are the same size and the same quality card stock as Reynaud’s other decks. They are sturdy without being too thick, and with a smooth finish that’s not too shiny or laminated. Instead of the historically correct sharp corners, this deck has very subtly rounded corners that make it easier to shuffle. This detail is so subtle, I didn’t notice the corners until I saw it mentioned on the website’s video. The deck is housed in a very sturdy box and comes with informational cards in French and English with the copy number.

Here’s your chance to obtain an elegantly restored iconic deck.

See all of Yves Reynaud’s decks and purchase them at this website:

http://www.tarot-de-marseille-heritage.com/

Sullivan Hismans, at Tarot Sheet Revival, has worked tarot magic again by creating an actual deck from sheets of tarot cards printed @1500 and housed in the Rosenwald collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

We have no tarot decks from the 15^th and early16^th centuries, since they were used up and thrown away. Instead we have printed sheets of cards with flaws that made them unusable. They were never cut into individual cards, but were recycled and often used by book binders. Occasionally a researcher will take a book apart and find random sheets of playing cards and discarded book pages in the binding.  The age of the book tells us the last date the cards could have been printed.

I’ve been fascinated by these remnants of tarot’s earliest history since first seeing them in Kaplan’s Encyclopedia of Tarot. I never dreamed I would actually hold a deck of these ancient cards in my hands. But Sullivan Hismans has made that miracle happen twice, with the Budapest deck released earlier this year, and now the Rosenwald deck.

The Rosenwald collection has three block printed tarocchi sheets. One sheet has all the trumps except the Fool, plus three queens. The other two sheets, with most of the suit cards, are from a different deck that was probably printed the same time as the trump sheet. A German playing card museum has an identical sheet of trumps printed in mirror image from a different but nearly identical wood block.

Hismans had to recreate the nearly obliterated Wheel of Fortune, a non-existent Fool and the missing Queen of Batons and tens of each suit. These are done so skillfully it’s impossible to tell they are not part of the original sheet of prints.

The deck has two sets of queens: the three queens on the trump sheet along with a re-created Queen of Batons, and a set of queens created by Hismans to replace the missing queens on the suit card sheets. These queens hold suit symbols that look like the pips on the sheets, and are the cards you will probably want to use if you read with the deck.

The original sheet has only twenty-one trump cards since the Fool and Bagatto are combined as a street magician with ass’s ears (illustration at the top). Hismans made this a twenty-two-card deck by creating a Fool with imagery from several fifteenth-century cards.

The cards are the original size, 2 x 3.5 inches, printed on sturdy card stock with a silky, smooth finish. The backs and the background of the face of each card are a photo of the paper as it exists now. If you were to discover a 500-year-old deck in a trunk, it would probably look like this deck.

The envelopes are one of the delights of Hismans’ decks. In previous centuries cards came wrapped in envelopes with the printer’s name and address and a logo that made them mini art works. Hismans taught himself block carving so he could print an envelope using authentic techniques on heavy textured paper.

Only 400 decks were printed. If you already have the set of trumps he published earlier this year, you can purchase just the suit cards. But if you get the entire deck, you get a newly-designed envelope. If you value tarot history, this deck is an indispensable addition to your collection.

When and where was this deck created?

The trump sheet that resides in a German playing card museum is accompanied by two identical book pages. The printer was evidently not satisfied with the quality of these two pages so they were recycled. If we know the date the book was printed, then we know the approximate date of the sheet of cards.

Playing card historian Franco Pratesi did an enormous amount of meticulous research to discover the title of the book and its publishing history. His original Italian article was translated by Michael Howard and posted to the Tarot History Forum (links at bottom).

The pages are from a legal book written in Latin by a member of a prominent Perugian family, and printed in many editions throughout the 16^th century. Pratesi ascertained that the loose pages came from an edition printed in 1501 in Perugia. The Rosenwald cards were undoubtedly printed at the same time and place, since scrap paper would not have been kept for long and would not have traveled very far. Both the book pages and the uncut tarot sheets somehow ended up being kept together over the centuries.

There’s one problem with a Perugian origin for the cards: In 1486, the city forbade the manufacture of dice and cards and confiscated everything needed for their manufacture, including wood blocks for card printing. Did they rescind this decision, were there clandestine card printers, or did a discarded sheet of cards somehow make its way from elsewhere (possibly Florence) to Perugia?

Was the deck designed in 1501, or is the imagery a holdover from a previous era? An unusual feature of this deck is how the Fool and the Juggler are conflated (see image at the top). The late Michael J. Hurst found a nearly identical image dating from 1465. This is hardly solid proof that the deck was designed around that year; but the simple, graceful lines of the figures go back to the earliest days of block printing on paper.

First Phase of Block Printing

Art historians divide fifteenth-century block printing into three phases. Tarot was invented during the first phase when printers produced both playing cards and religious images on single sheets of paper. The first, International Gothic, phase of block printing is characterized by graceful, heavy black lines, hairpin curves rather than sharp hooks to denote drapery, no shading or cross-hatching, and almost no background or context for the main image. Here is a typical example, Christ Before Herod, a French print from @1400, and the Rosenwald Hermit card for comparison. The Rosenwald cards seem to be a throw-back to the earlier era. Could the block carver have copied old, worn-out blocks, preserving a style that was archaic in 1501?

Florentine Connection

Perugia is an important cultural center half-way between Rome and Florence. Throughout the middle ages and Renaissance, the city managed to keep its political independence, but most likely had strong cultural connections with Florence. Several details on the Rosenwald cards connect them to Florentine cards: The Virtues’ scalloped halos, centaurs for knights, maids instead of pages in the suits of coins and cups, and Judgment placed after the World.

There’s an intriguing stylistic similarity between the first phase of block printing discussed above, the Rosenwald cards, and a book printed in Florence in 1491, Fior di Virtu. This book of moral instruction for children, written before 1325, was reprinted numerous times in several languages, often with wood cuts. Nearly every school child read it; and it was one of the blockbuster best-sellers of the late middle ages. Arthur Hind lists the book as missing, but a copy was discovered in Barcelona in 1950 with Florence 1491 inscribed on the title page.

Florence got into block printed books rather late. Engraving dominated the book trade, possibly because engravers belonged to the influential goldsmiths’ guild and monopolized the market. According to Lessing Rosenwald, between 1490 and 1510 the city enjoyed a very brief flowering of block printed books in a distinct style — mostly fiction and religious texts printed on cheap paper that rarely survives for long. Few books remain as they were meant for the mass market, not for aristocrats, who still disdained vulgar printed books. Fior di Virtu was one of the first books of its type in Florence and probably a prototype for subsequent books. It was written in the Tuscan dialect and was never intended for export. The block prints in these books shared such a distinct, minimalist style that art historians speculate one artist designed them all, or they were all engraved by one or two workshops.

Shown here is the Virtue of Constancy from I Fior de Virtu. The thick, graceful black lines, minimal background, and almost no hatching in the folds of the clothing take us back to block printing in the first quarter of the 15^th century. When this version of Fior was printed, Botticelli had already engraved Dante’s Divine Comedy and Albrecht Durer was to do his Apocalypse wood cuts in the late 1490s. Taste and technology had changed radically over the century. These illustrations seem to hark back to an earlier, simpler era.

I think it’s quite likely the Rosenwald deck was created under the influence of Florentine block printing. Could it have been printed in Florence, perhaps by a book printer who also produced cards? If so, how did a discarded sheet of cards printed in Florence get together with discarded book pages printed in Perugia? Was the deck designed and printed in Perugia by someone familiar with the popular books coming out of Florence; or even by a Florentine printer who set up shop in Perugia? We need to know more about the book and paper trade at this time to be able to speculate intelligently.

This deck is extremely significant. Various card images link it to Minchiate and to Bolognese decks, as well as the Florentine connection already mentioned. The pips are precursors to the French Tarot de Marseille. We owe Sullivan Hismans a huge debt of gratitude for making it possible to hold this deck in our hands and experience it as those tarocchi players did a half-millennium ago.

References and Links:

• Tarot Sheet Revival Sullivan Hismans web page where you can see all his work, read background information and purchase his deck. Links to the pages mentioned below are on his Rosenwald page.
• Tarot History Forum, Michael Howard’s translation of Pratesi’s article with some followup discussion
• Pratesi’s original Italian article
• Michael Howard’s website with his English translations of many Pratesi articles
• Hind, Arthur M. An Introduction to Woodcut. Dover replication, 1963. Originally published by Houghton Mifflin, 1935. Christ before Herod, Vol I, p. 115. On printing in Florence, Vol II, p. 527-532.
• I Fior di Virtu. Translated by Nicolas Fersin. Library of Congress, 1953 with facsimiles of the original woodcuts and an introduction by Lessing Rosenwald.

I just did my first reading with my new Rosenwald deck. This deck reads like a dream. The fluid lines bring the images to life, and the pips are enough like the TdM so little adjustment is required.

Since my question was “should I or shouldn’t I” do something, I used the Cross Spread. (There’s a link below to a blog post I did a few years ago on the details of this spread).

The cards on the left and right are attorneys arguing for and against what I propose to do. The card at the top is the judge synthesizing both arguments and taking an objective viewpoint. The bottom card is the judge’s pronouncement on what I should do.

The center card (the theme of the reading) is derived by adding up the numbers of the four surrounding cards and using the trump card that corresponds to the sum. The French tradition uses only trump cards for the entire spread. I put my own twist on this by using only suit cards for the spread with a trump card in the center. In this case the four cards of the spread add up to 18 – the Moon (in my system Kings = 5).

My question: “should I buy the expensive deck I’m considering.” I saw an opportunity to purchase a handmade deck that exists in only a few copies. This is an existential question for me because it will push my deck buying into another category. I usually only purchase decks if I think I’ll read with them or if I need them for research and study. This pays off when I write an article and I can illustrate it with scans from my own collection rather than having to scrounge around online hoping to find the card I want in a clear enough image.

Purchasing this deck will mean acquiring a precious object for its own sake with no other use but the joy of owning it. Since I’m retired on a fixed income, this means dipping into my savings even more than I already do to support by deck-buying habit.

Here’s the Rosenwald deck’s answer:

The argument against purchasing the deck is the Nine of Coins on the left. It’s literally saying “too much money”. The center coin seems to vacillate between the two groups of four, bouncing back and forth so one group becomes five then the other group. “Balancing the budget” pops into my mind.

The argument for purchasing the deck is the Two of Cups. I want it — it’s an object of beauty that will enhance my life. Why shouldn’t I indulge myself?

The King of Coins at the top is hanging onto his money and looking at the other coins. The judgments seems pretty clear, “you can’t afford to go down this road; be sensible and don’t even think about it.”

What action is the Two of Coins prescribing?  This card is very different from the standard TdM card.  Please resist the temptation to read the Rosenwald card with the familiar and comfortable TdM meanings.  This card is rather enigmatic and I may need everyone’s help in interpreting it. We have two coins, or two material objects, that are separated by quite a distance. They don’t interact at all, as in the TdM. I see these two coins as my money and the deck I desire. I’ve got to keep them separate.

The Moon as the theme of the reading is telling me there’s an element of fantasy or delusion in all this. I don’t want to look at my finances realistically. Maybe the deck will turn out not to be as thrilling as I thought it would be.

One could add another layer by reading the three horizontal cards as a story. It pretty much comes out to the same thing – money, desire and delusion.

I would love to hear if anyone has an alternate interpretation.

Get the Rosenwald deck at Tarot Sheet Revival where you can also find the Budapest deck, a near contemporary of the Rosenwald, but with a very different look and feel.

 Rosenwald deck review

Cross Spread instructions

The Tarocchino Bolognese engraved by Giuseppe Mitelli is a unique treasure. Just as the Visconti-Sforza deck was a luxury item commissioned by an aristocrat from a prominent artist in Cremona, this exceptionally beautiful deck was commissioned around 1660 by Count Bentivoglio of Bologna from a prolific Bolognese artist.

Giordano Berti’s version of the deck is a facsimile of a deck published by Trombeta in the 18^th century and found in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. Mitelli’s copper plates were retained by the Bentivoglio family, but in subsequent centuries printers made copies of the cards on their own copper plates or wood blocks, attesting to the deck’s popularity.

These cards are 2.5 x 5 inches, with a smooth finish. The backs show the original Trombeta insignia. The cards are wrapped in a metallic gold pouch housed in a sturdy handcrafted box lined with red felt. The green and gold box imitates the color scheme of a deck in the British Museum that was bound into a green leather book.

The accompanying 117-page booklet is stuffed with historical detail and instructions for Bolognese-style cartomancy. I discuss the booklet in detail at the end of this article.

Who was Mitelli? Giuseppe Mitelli (1634-1718) was a charismatic personality who excelled at painting, engraving and sculpture. He was also an outdoorsman, sportsman, actor, and inventor of games and amusements for all levels of society. At least 600 of his engravings exist, including many etchings based on paintings by famous artists of his day. Later in life he focused on etchings with a moral lesson accompanied by explanatory text.

Il Meneghello reproduced Proverbi Figurati (Illustrated Proverbs) a set of 48 etchings by Mitelli. The proverb above the image is explained with rhymed triplets at the bottom. The one shown here is about henpecked husbands. The quote at the top says “Sad is that house where the hen sings while the cock stays silent.”

What’s a Tarocchino? Bologna has a distinct and very old tarot tradition featuring the tarocchino, a shortened 62-card tarot deck with cards two through five removed from the four suits. There is documentation of tarot in Bologna as early as 1441, shortly after Tarot’s invention, and Tarocchino is documented by 1550. The trump cards are the same as a standard tarot with a few variations: the three virtues appear together after the Chariot; the Hermit and Wheel of Fortune switch places; the Angel (Judgment) card is the highest; and the suits of cups and coins have female Pages. The Papesse, Empress, Emperor and Pope are replaced by the Four Moors.

Mitelli’s Tarocchino: Count Bentivoglio received six sheets of paper with ten or eleven copper engravings to a page. Back then, the purchaser was expected to arrange for the engravings to be cut into individual pieces and pasted to a cardboard backing. A few uncut sheets exist in museums today, along with a few sets of cards that have been bound into books. Evidently no cards that were actually used in game playing have survived.

The trump cards of this deck are playful, fanciful and baroque. The imagery emphasizes classical myth—the Sun and Moon are Apollo and Artemis, and the Lovers card is Cupid. In a major departure from the traditional tarot deck, the Papesse and Empress have been replaced by a second Emperor and Pope. This was done at least 60 years before the card makers of Bologna were ordered to replace these trumps with the four Moors, so we can only speculate about Mitelli’s motivation. The figures are rendered in pleasing, soft colors, mostly ecru, coral and teal blue. Bentivoglio heraldic symbols appear throughout, and Mitelli put his self-portrait on the Ace of Coins.

The accompanying booklet by Giordano Berti

The 117-page booklet, printed on sturdy paper, is generously illustrated in color and black and white with Mitelli’s engravings and cards from related decks. The book presents Mitelli’s detailed biography, facts about Bologna’s unique tarot traditions, details about how the game was played in Bologna, and illustrations of various editions of this deck through the centuries. Berti debunks in great detail the urban legend that Prince Fibbia invented Tarot in Bologna before his death in 1419. Then we’re told the story of the political uproar in 1725 that led to four trump cards being replaced by four Moors.

The divination chapter, written by a traditional Bolognese card reader, contains exciting new material. Every card is reproduced with a color thumbnail and accompanied by divinatory meanings based on tradition and the author’s extensive experience. We’re also given a list of the trump cards with their traditional meanings as indicators of time. For instance, the Sun card tells you something is going to happen during the day or in one year, while the Death card means something will happen suddenly. We’re given a five-card spread with positions modified to address questions about situations or relationships.

Bologna has the oldest documented tradition of divination with tarot. Playing card researcher Franco Pratesi discovered a sheet of paper from the 1750s giving divinatory meanings for 35 cards, which are reproduced in this book. The list maker didn’t forget the rest of the deck. Card readers in Bologna reduced the 62-card Tarocchino even further to 35, 45, 50 or 55 cards. The number five seem to be very significant in Bolognese cartomancy, so cards were read in sets of five.

Only 900 copies of this deck were produced. If you love beautiful cards, and if you are fascinated by tarot history, this deck and book set are indispensable.

Contact Berti for purchasing information through the Rinascimento Italian Style Art facebook page

Read an illustrated article on Bolognese tarot at TarotWheel.net

With this latest issue The Cartomancer is transitioning to its new owner/editor Arwen Lynch-Poe. I’m very happy to see that the magazine is just as beautiful as ever, stuffed full with tarot art printed in luscious colors. The articles are on a wide range of topics, so there’s something for everyone. Here are a few of my favorites:

As one of the privileged few who owns the very first limited edition of The Tarot of the Crone by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince, I was excited to read an interview where she talks about the genesis of the deck.

An exciting new feature is “Experts Roundtable.” In each issue, several prominent members of the tarot community will give their insights into a topic. This time several tarot professionals, including Mary Greer and Benebell Wen, talk about how they approach learning a brand new deck.

This non-artist has always fantasized about creating her own deck. S. Johanna Hill gives step-by-step instructions, which even a klutz like me can follow, for creating your own deck out of postcards.

Wayne Limberger discovered tarot the same year I did – 1972; his first deck was the same as mine—the Aquarian Tarot by Palladini; and we’re at the same stage in life—retired curmudgeons.  After bemoaning how superficial and commercial the tarot scene has become in recent decades, he cautions wannabe readers that it’s nearly impossible to make a living with the cards. If you’ve been wondering what to charge for a reading, he’s asked around and gives his feeling for the going rate these days.

Other articles in this issue cover various approaches to tarot such as counseling, pathworking, and storytelling.

Last but not least, there’s an article from the resident history nerd (me) on how Major Arcana II and V have changed over the centuries.

The Cartomancer is essential reading if you want to keep up with the latest in the tarot scene.

Get it here at TheCartomancer.com