The most unique single reproduction card in my collection is the Devil card printed by Agnolo Hebreo (Angelo the Jew) shortly after 1500 and now residing in the British Museum. It was undoubtedly part of a complete tarot deck; but no other cards by this individual exist anywhere, and there is no trace of him in the records. This Devil card is the only clue we have that the printer Agnolo Hebreo ever existed.
Satan chomping on sinners was a popular image in the late-medieval/early-renaissance period, usually in the context of a Last Judgment fresco designed to terrify believers into obedience. Here’s a fresco by Taddeo di Bartolo done in 1391 in San Gimignano. This image was lifted from Tarotwheel.net, which has a wonderful page on the history of the Devil card, with lots of gruesome imagery (link below).
A very similar Devil is found on one of the Rothschild sheets, two uncut sheets of twelve trump cards printed about 1500. Many of the Rothschild cards are nearly identical to standard Bolognese cards. But the Bolognese Devil is rather different—in profile and not eating anyone. Lo Scarabeo used the Rothschild Devil in two of their Visconti-Sforza reproductions: Their smallest version which is still in print, and a gold leaf deck printed about twenty years ago.
Most card backs at the time were either plain, checkered, or had the printer’s name with a mythic or symbolic image. This unique card back shows a man scratching his rear end. The motto on the ribbon in modern Italian say “that itches my ass,” meaning “that annoys me.” It’s hard to tell what the jumbled items at the bottom are, but it looks like a large diamond playing card just above his front foot.
Since this is one of the oldest surviving Devil cards, Marco Benedetti used it for his recreated Charles VI deck by inserting the figure into the Charles VI border.
Benedetti printed a special Devil card for me with the edges of the back paper folded over to the front and glued down to make the border, just as they did centuries ago. I gazed at the card for a while and asked, “What can you tell me?” The Devil replied, “I’ll tell you what’s eating you.” So, I designed a spread to give me that information.
The top card is what’s eating me right now. The card on the left tells me about the source of the problem and the card on the right is what I can do about it.
You can tell the Empress has a sweet tooth from the large donut she’s holding. My inability to control my sugar addiction is really eating at me. The cheerful Devil prods me to have just one more donut, it won’t hurt. And of course, I always give in. Justice tells me to weigh my portions and count calories like a rational person to get a handle on my diet.
Sullivan Hisman’s Rosenwald deck is a good choice to pair with this card, since they have similar sepia tones and come from the same time period.
Links TarotWheel is a tarot history website with loads of card images and related art. My review of Marco Benedetti’s Charles VI deck Sullivan Hismans Tarot Sheet Revival site
Here’s a Youtube video of Justin Michael and myself in conversation a few months ago. In the first 30 minutes, I talk about my 50+ years involvement with tarot and how our understanding of tarot history has evolved. This is interspersed with personal experiences that led to my somewhat irrational antipathy toward esoteric and kabbalistic tarot.
In the second half, I show off my deck collection, especially decks by artisans who have revived obscure historic decks, like Yves Reynaud, Marco Benedetti, Sullivan Hismans, Pablo Robledo, Giordano Berti, and Il Meneghello (Osvaldo Menegazzi). In some cases, these decks only existed as printed sheets or photos in magazines.
Be sure to check out the rest of Justin’s channel. He has interviews with tarot luminaries like Robert Place and Rachel Pollock as well as reviews of TdM and other historic decks.
I’ve always been intrigued by the few remnants of fifteenth-century block-printed decks that still exist. They hold tantalizing clues to the early days of tarot, so I’m thrilled that there are three versions of the block-printed Budapest deck on the market. Shown here from left to right are the Fool and Judgment cards by Robert Place, Sullivan Hismans and Marco Benedetti.
This deck is the only example (aside from the Rosenwald deck) of what tarot for the masses looked like in fifteenth-century Italy. Some of the clothing, like the men’s short tunic, tells us the deck is no earlier than 1475. The numbering system, with Temperance as VI and Justice as XX, is a clue that the deck originated in the vicinity of Ferrara. (One of the museums housing examples of this deck is in Budapest, otherwise the deck has no connection to that city).
Playing cards were printed in sheets, then color was applied by laying a stencil on top of the sheet and brushing on paint. If there were production flaws, the sheet was not cut up into individual cards; it was recycled and often used as padding in book binding.
The block-printed sheet shown here is an example of what contemporary card restorers work from. The wood blocks were rather worn, so some lines are indistinct with missing or faint sections. The two-color stenciling is crude—odd patches of color that don’t conform to the lines. Images along the left edge and bottom row were sliced off, probably to fit a book cover, and have to be partially re-created.
Here’s an introduction to three contemporary recreations of the Budapest sheets in the order they were first printed. All three decks are the same size as the original cards, approximately 2.25 x 3.75 inches. They are all printed as a full 78-card deck.
I first encountered the Budapest deck in the Los Angeles Folk Art Museum where Robert Place curated a tarot exhibit in 2010. Place’s cards are drawn with smooth heavy lines, then filled in with luminous color. Place took some minor liberties with the original cards, but the clarity of the images is superb. The Chariot was partly sliced off on the original sheet and had to be recreated. Place’s Chariot is unique in having the horses face the same direction with a servant holding the bridle.
Place has a trumps-only deck or a full 78-card deck available on his website printed on cotton paper and hand cut into cards. Read about his restoration and historical background at his website Robertmplace.com.
This meticulous recreation of the original sheets by Sullivan Hismans is the closest I’ve ever come to time-traveling back to the 15th century. The lines and stenciling are extremely faithful to the original cards, allowing one to experience the deck as 15th century card players would have seen it. Hismans did two versions in 2017 and 2020. The later edition uses different coins and cups suits and a few cards are slightly redrawn. His recreation of the Lovers card (at bottom) is witty and unique.
Here’s a review that compares Hismans’ first and second editions and gives historic background.
Marco Benedetti’s recreation of the deck is very faithful to the original woodblocks. His jewel-toned colors and strong lines clarify the shapes and make the deck very readable. You can work with him for a custom printed deck on your choice of paper.
The cardstock of his custom cards is thin and flexible, but sturdy and easy to shuffle. The cards shown here are on smooth, white cardstock. An alternate choice is cotton paper that gives the colors depth and intensity. It’s thicker than the cardstock, with more texture, but still easy to shuffle. This beautiful printing has its own special magic and has become my go-to reading deck.
The Lovers card had to be partially recreated since only the top half of the card remains on the sheet. Sullivan Hismans created a different scenario than the other two cards. The male lover kneels while the seated woman grabs the arrow instead of being pierced by it. Robert Place’s card is on the left and Marco Benedetti’s on the right.
Attention, lovers of the Soprafino tarot. This elegant deck published by Giordano Berti is an essential. I’m completely enchanted by the graceful lines, rich colors, and smooth, sturdy cardstock. The original size (2.0 x 4.25 inches) makes the cards easy to handle.
The Soprafino pattern emerged when the Milanese printer Gumppenberg published a deck engraved by Carlo Della Rocca about 1835. When Gumppenberg died, his employee, Teodoro Dotti, set up his own print shop and issued decks in the style of his former employer, including this Soprafino variant. Seventeen years later, Teodoro’s son Edoardo printed the same deck using his father’s plates, with modifications to make the images politically correct. Notice the Empress’s empty shield in the photo above. By this time, the Hapsburgs were out and Napoleon III was in as ruler of Italy; so the imperial eagle had to be removed from all playing cards.
Let’s see how Dotti’s deck compares with the classic Soprafino style.
Colors are similar to the Soprafino but deeper, while the vegetation is more robust. Dotti stripped off some incidental details, making his deck more elegant and less baroque. For instance, there are no leafy sprouts on the Ace of Batons, and no pink ribbons on the Ace of Swords.
Dotti’s large roman numerals overlap the pip symbols. This made it convenient for card players, but the smaller Soprafino numbers are more balanced and pleasing.
I’m not happy with Dotti’s changes to my favorite Soprafino trumps. I call Soprafino Death the “Declutter” card. Death’s scythe sweeps away books and art supplies, reminding me to get control of my overflowing shelves. My all-time favorite Devil wrestles with his own green monsters. Dotti’s TdM-ish cards seem tame and devoid of energy.
Dotti’s court cards stay close to their Soprafino originals; but these two Pages have somewhat different personalities. The Soprafino Page of Swords wears fancy clothes and ridiculously huge feathers. He’s a young courtier who’s supposed to be spying on a rival; but he’s distracted, posing in his finery and acutely aware of the impression he’s making. Dotti’s Page is an assassin determined to carry out his job. I’ve always seen the Soprafino Page of Cups, with his garland, long curls, and silk scarf as a sensitive poet. Dotti’s sturdier Page, with his simple beret, seems more like a cup bearer. I’ve never liked the pink cheeks on every Soprafino figure, trumps included – just a personal quirk. Dotti loses the pink, and his court figures seem much more dimensional and life-like.
A 58-page booklet accompanies the deck. There are color illustrations throughout, including eight pages of Milanese decks. The text gives the story of playing card manufacture in Milan from the 17th through 19th centuries, with special emphasis on Gumppenberg and his successors. I was especially delighted to read the section on Tarot in Milanese popular culture.
The deck and book are housed in a sturdy, velvet-lined box covered with marbled paper. As with all of Berti’s publications, the packaging adds to the magic of this beautiful deck.
Decks discussed in this article: Tarocchi Edoardo Dotti 1862. Rinascimento Italian Art. Giordano Berti, 2021. Tarocco Italiano, Teodoro Dotti 1845. Il Meneghello, 1985. Soprafino Tarot, Gumppenberg, 1835. Il Meneghello, 1992.
Celebrating my website’s tenth anniversary: 174 blog articles and 42 website pages on tarot history, reading with non-scenic pips, and decks of historic significance. Throughout the summer, I’m going to group the most useful articles by topic and send out links in a series of blog posts.
The Piedmont region has one of the oldest tarot traditions in Italy. Its geographic location made it the crossroads where the playing card traditions of Italy and eastern France mingled. Below are articles on the Piedmont tradition and reviews of individual decks.
Avondo Brothers Addendum tells about one of the largest card printers in Piedmont. Their soprafino knock-off is still being produced by Lo Scarabeo as The Ancient Italian Tarot. It’s one of my favorite reading decks.
Celebrating my website’s tenth anniversary: 174 blog articles and 42 website pages on tarot history, reading with non-scenic pips, and decks of historic significance. Throughout the summer, I’m going to group the most useful articles by topic and send out links in a series of blog posts.
Today I’m listing everything I’ve written about the soprafino style. Originating in Milan in the 1830s, it has been reproduced by many publishers down to Lo Scarabeo’s current mass market version. Printers have borrowed random details from the style, especially in Piedmont. See reviews of those decks listed in last week’s blog post on Piedmont decks.
The Soprafino Deck of Carlo Dellarocca gives everything you want to know about the printer Gumppenberg, the engraver Dellarocca, and the birth of the soprafino style. It also lists the unique features that make a deck a soprafino, and gives a roundup of soprafino publishers.
The Three Soprafinos compares decks by Il Solleone, Il Meneghello and Lo Scarabeo.
Teodoro Dotti was an employee of Gumppenberg who created his own soprafino. His son Edoardo carried on the tradition. Edoardo Dotti Tarot reviews this elegant soprafino variant published by Giordano Berti. An accompanying booklet gives historical details of Milanese tarot and the printer Gumppenberg.
Illustration: Sun card from Tarocco Soprafino di Gumppenberg 1835. Published by Il Meneghello 1992.
Celebrating my website’s tenth anniversary: 174 blog articles and 42 website pages on tarot history, reading with non-scenic pips, and decks of historic significance. Throughout the summer, I’m going to group the most useful articles by topic and send out links in a series of blog posts.
If fifteenth-century aristocrats hadn’t tried to impress their friends with hand painted, golden tarot decks, and if those decks hadn’t been preserved in museums, our knowledge of tarot’s origins would be very limited. The most complete deck of this type, the Visconti-Sforza Tarot, is one of the most frequently published historic decks. We can’t overestimate its importance. Below are links to deck and book reviews as well as articles on historic background related to this deck.
Start your reading with these pages from the website’s History section that puts this deck in context: Before Tarot discusses the preconditions for the emergence of playing cards in the 14th century. Early Tarot 1420-1475 focuses on painted and gilded luxury decks. Italian Tarot in the 15th Centurydiscusses block printed cards and one-of-a-kind decks like the Sola Busca and Boiardo.
Francesco Sforza left us the first nearly complete tarot deck we know of, plus two letters mentioning tarot, that fill in gaps in our knowledge. Besides being a card player, Sforza was one of the military giants of his time. Happy Birthday Francesco Sforza recounts his biography and shows how family lore is embedded in his tarot cards.
When deciding which of the many available versions of the deck to purchase, the most important consideration is the style of the replacement Devil and Tower cards. Every publisher hires an artist to create these two cards plus two other missing cards. The results range from horrendous to satisfactory. In Comparing Visconti-Sforza Replacement Cards: The Devil’s in the Details, I critique and rank the replacement cards from several decks. Spoiler alert: Il Meneghello comes out on top.
The Visconti Sforza Tarotby Cristina Dorsini – review of a book written by an art historian, published by Il Meneghello.
The Journey Through Trumps section of this website gives a detailed history of each of the 22 trump cards, with an emphasis on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Illustration: Visconti-Sforza Tarot published by Lo Scarabeo, with the printed borders inked out
Winding down my website’s tenth anniversary summer celebration. Even here in sunny Santa Barbara, where weather rarely happens, I can feel a subtle shift in the air as we head toward autumn. To finish up the series, here’s a grab bag of articles that don’t fit into any category.
The Grande Dame of tarot history, Gertrude Moakley, was praised by Dummett for her scholarship. She appeared on popular radio shows and hung out with Eden Gray. She was the first to alert the tarot world that the deck has a medieval/renaissance origin. Wish I could have known her.
I love the pip cards, although I realize they can be a stumbling block for beginners. Here’s a sample reading using one of my favorite techniques for laying out suit cards with one trump: Reading the Tarot de Marseille Suit Cards.
The Triadic Tarot is a radical revisioning of the TdM that deserves to be better known. The book gives a solid a range of meanings for each card, and a well thought-out system for interpreting the pips. The cards themselves are meant to be turned in several directions and lend themselves to intuitive reading. It’s so innovative it’s hard to describe, but I’ve tried with sample readings in this article.
Here’s a page with links to Franco Pratesi’s collected articles. Pratesi, an Italian playing card historian, has added greatly to our knowledge of tarot’s earliest history with his awesome collection of 300+ articles. A complete list of his articles is online as well as a collection of translations by Michael S. Howard.
Haibun is a Japanese literary form that combines a short prose paragraph with haiku. This piece by Alexis Rotella references a tarot card and gives me a chance to talk about dysfunctional court cards.
The Rouen-Brussels pattern is getting more attention these days. Here’s the rundown on the Spanish Captain who substitutes for the Popess. This was a fun article to research.
Nuns Behaving Badlyis a fun look at life in Renaissance convents with a surprising amount of information on divination techniques.
The Bones You Have Cast Down is a novel by Jean Huets who collaborated on Stuart Kaplan’s Encyclopedias. She knows her tarot history and has written a novel that time travels between the worlds of Bianca Sforza in 1448 and Sister Maifreda in 1298, who was a possible model for the Visconti-Sforza Papessa card.
The story behind one of my favorite Devils by the printer calling himself Agnolo Hebreo. With a spread and sample reading based on this card.
The Visconti-Sforza deck is a hybrid mash-up of sixty-eight original cards painted by Bonifacio Bembo about 1450, six cards that were created by a different artist around 1475, and four cards that are still missing and have to be recreated by a contemporary artist whenever the deck is republished. Marco Benedetti has never been happy with the ten replacement cards, and dreamt for years of creating his own version of these cards that would enhance the deck rather than detract from it. This deck brings his personal vision into fruition. By drawing on other works by Bembo for most of the replacement cards, he has revived the deck’s original spirit.
Personal Visconti Complete Set of Trump Cards
Benedetti has had a long and intense relationship with the Visconti-Sforza, dating from 1975 when he purchased his first deck. In 1996, he created his elegant and minimalist homage to the Visconti-Sforza in tempera on gold leaf for an art exhibit. He currently prints this deck on demand in gold and silver foil. The Personal Visconti deck described here is a beautiful testament to his life-long love for the Visconti-Sforza deck.
Here are the details on Benedetti’s twelve replacement cards.
The original Temperance card is one of three cards painted about 1475 that show a woman standing in a blue gown sprinkled with gold stars holding a symbolic item. This card has been replaced by the Temperance card from the Ercole d’Este deck that was hand painted in mid fifteenth-century Florence or Ferrara (now located in Yale University). I’m very happy to see the original Strength card, showing a man who seems to be clubbing a lion, replaced by the woman and lion from the Visconti di Modrone (Cary Yale) deck, painted by the Bembo workshop about 1442.
The Star, Moon, Sun series from 1475 includes two more standing female figures in blue gowns, plus the Sun card as the mask of Helios held by a putto skateboarding across the sky. Benedetti wanted to associate this series with Venus, Diana and Apollo, so he surveyed art history looking for appropriate examples. The Star card is from the painting A Nymph at her Bath by Charles-Andre Van Loo in the first half of the 18th century, while the Sun is from Apollo and Hermes by Pierre Narcise Guerin in the early 19th century. The Moon figure is taken from a wall fresco in Pompeii and the background is collaged from the Moon card in the Visconti di Modrone deck.
Three more Modrone cards are used as substitutes for the Death, Judgment and World cards. The fist two cards were in the original 1450 deck, but Benedetti prefers the Modrone cards as he feels they are more attractive and make more of an impact than the original cards.
Currently Missing Cards
The Tower and Devil are currently missing from the deck, so it’s anyone’s guess what the originals looked like. Benedetti created these cards from Bonifacio Bembo’s illustrations for La Tavola Ritonda a book of Arthurian romance illustrated with 289 pen and ink sketches in the International Gothic style. (Codice Palatino 556, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Firenze).
This rendition of the Tower is true to the spirit of Tower cards in previous centuries. In many early decks, this card was called the Thunderbolt and illustrated a sudden catastrophe, not necessarily a falling tower. The Devil was inspired by a similar illustration derived from Bembo and posted online several years ago by Mario Mendez Filesi.
The missing Knight of Coins was created using the horse from the Knight of Coins in the Brambilla-Brera deck (painted by the Bembo workshop about 1442 and located in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan). The Page of Coins from the Visconti-Sforza deck sits on the horse, making this one of the few decks where the knight matches the other court cards in the suit. The Three of Swords has the correct vertical orientation, which is inverted in some decks.
When you purchase this deck, you get 86 cards, the original 74 Visconti-Sforza cards plus the 12 cards described above. The cards are facsimiles that have not been touched up, so the uneven ageing and wear on the cards is visible. The cards are 3.5 by 7.0 inches, about same size as the originals. The card stock is smooth, sturdy and flexible. The backs are plain red. The cards are housed in a custom-made wooden box with a card printed on the cover and a personalized inscription on the inside.
To order a deck, contact Marco Benedetti at tarot @ marcobenedetti.it
See Benedetti’s entire line of decks on his facebook page:
Announcing a Fiorentine Minchiate deck produced by Marco Cesare Benedetti of Rome, Italy. The strong lines, rich colors and expressive faces make this limited edition deck very readable. Before I get into specifics of Benedetti’s deck, let’s get clear on what a Minchiate deck is and how it differs from tarot.
What’s a Minchiate?
It’s one of largest playing card decks ever created — a tarot deck expanded from 78 to 97 cards by adding the four elements, twelve zodiac signs, plus the four virtues that were omitted from the tarot deck. Shown at left are Taurus, Pisces, Water, and Prudence.
The original trionfi deck from the 1430s must have seemed musty and medieval to a new generation of game players; so in mid-1400s Florence someone updated the imagery and made the game more exciting by adding nineteen trump cards. The deck and game spread quickly from the center of Minchiate production in Tuscany to the major cities of Italy, as well as Sicily, where it influenced the unique Sicilian-style tarot deck. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Minchiate decks were exported to France, Germany and London. By the nineteenth century the game was fading in popularity and eventually was played only in its original Tuscan homeland.
Minchiate decks come in two styles: the original wood block Fiorentine, and the finely engraved Etruria which appeared in the early 18th century. You can quickly determine a deck’s style by looking at the distinctive Fool and Bagatto cards. The Fiorentine style is on top and the Etrurian on the bottom.
Aside from the added cards, Minchiate deviates from tarot by reducing the Pope/Papesse and Emperor/Empress pairs to three figures. In the Etrurian style, these cards are designated the Grand Duke and the Eastern and Western Emperor, and are obviously masculine. In the older Fiorentine style they are called the Three Papi, where some seem rather androgynous or even feminine.
How Else Does Minchiate Differ From Tarot?
The Knights are either centaurs or a hybrid man/monster. In the suits of Cups and Coins the Page is a female Maid. The Swords are straight, and there are little animals on many pip cards. The highest trump cards from numbers 33 to 40 are called the Arie and have distinctive red backgrounds, like Fame at the top of this page and the Sun to the left. The red in Benedetti’s deck is not too bright, not orangish (a color I can’t stand), and not dark and heavy. It’s a just-right Goldilocks color that sets off the rich golds and blues beautifully.
The faces on Benedetti’s court cards are expressive and individual, making the deck very readable. The court cards in each suit are easy to identify by the distinctive colors of their clothing.
The cards are 2.25 x 4.0 inches, printed by Ludocards in a limited edition of 50, on smooth, flexible 350 gpm card stock. The deck is very pleasant to handle and easy to shuffle.
Get your signed and numbered deck by emailing: Benedetti @ MarcoBenedetti.it.
Decks used to illustrate this article Minchiate Fiorentine. Carte Fine Benedetti, 2022. An 18th century black and white wood block print restored and colored. Minchiate (Fiorentine). Arabako, 2004. Facsimile of a wood block deck in the Fournier Museum, Spain. Minchiate (Etrurian). Lo Scarabeo, 2011. Facsimile of a hand painted, engraved deck in a private collection in Torino.
This is turning out to be Minchiate Month! Marco Benedetti just published a restored and recolored Fiorentine Minchiate which I reviewed here last week. A few recent videos feature this deck. Links to everything are at the bottom.
What if you want to read with this expanded tarot deck? What resources will help with card interpretations, especially those unfamiliar cards like Charity, Prudence, or the Eastern Emperor? Two books by the late art historian Brian Williams are indispensable for studying the iconography of both Tarot and Minchiate.
In 1999, Williams created a Minchiate deck, faithful to the original, in his restrained classical style. The book that accompanies his deck is invaluable for understanding both the Minchiate and traditional tarot. All forty trump cards receive an in-depth discussion laced with quotes from the Bible, Dante, Shakespeare, Ovid and others. Illustrations of classical and renaissance art, as well as historic tarot and minchiate cards, are rendered in Williams’ meticulous line drawings. Every illustration is accompanied by detailed notes on its symbolism. The divinatory meanings for each card are practical and useful.
Williams’ Renaissance Tarot deck is accompanied by a book with the same format as the Minchiate. The Renaissance book emphasizes classical myth as interpreted by Renaissance artists and poets which underlies much of tarot imagery. Having numerous examples of each trump card reproduced in line drawings on one page makes this an excellent general reference for cards from the 15th and 16th centuries.
I highly recommend both of these books. I refer to them constantly when I’m researching early Italian decks. Both book and deck sets are available online at a reasonable price.
Brian Williams was a specialist in Renaissance art who created four tarot decks, led tours of Italy for tarot enthusiasts, and was a shining light in the international tarot community. He produced his Tarot and Minchiate decks in the 1990s, at a time when the Waite Smith bubble had isolated most Americans from historic European tarot. His first deck was the edgy and contemporary PoMo Tarot, based on 19th and 20th century art. The Ship of Fools Tarot draws on Sebastian Brant’s woodcuts in the book of the same name from 1494.
I never met Brian Williams, but I can feel the void created by his death in 2002 at age 43. He had so much more to contribute; but his name will live on in the decks and books he left us.
The Gerard Bodet Tarot restored by Sullivan Hismans (Tarot Sheet Revival) may be the oldest complete Rouen-Brussels deck we have. Around the year 1500, tarot migrated from Italy to France and entered a new phase of development. Milanese tarot swept across Europe, becoming the standard gaming deck and evolving into the Tarot de Marseille pattern. An alternate style migrated from Florence and Ferrara, then lurked underground until surfacing in Paris in the mid-seventeenth century as the Jacques Vieville deck, a hybrid of the Tarot de Marseille and Rouen-Brussels patterns. Let’s look at what’s distinctive about this style and where Bodet’s deck fits in with its development. (All cards in this article are Gerard Bodet unless stated otherwise.)
The Rouen-Brussels Pattern
Several Rouen-Brussels trump cards deviate from the standard Tarot de Marseille pattern. The Spanish Captain and Bacus replace the Papesse and Pope. The Devil (top of page) closely resembles the distinctive Bolognese devil. The Hanged Man stands upright. His fingers stick up from behind his shoulders as in Tarot de Marseille Type I cards. The Tower is called La Foudre (Thunderbolt) and depicts a shepherd sheltering under a tree. The Chariot (not shown) is in profile and pulled by one horse. Temperance (not shown) has a banner inscribed with the words Fama Sol, which could be translated as “Only Fame”, or “Fame Alone.” This may be a nod to Petrarch’s poem I Trionfi, where Fame triumphs over Death; while in the trump sequence, Temperance ranks higher than Death. Trumps XVII to XXI in the Rouen-Brussels pattern are influenced by Florentine precedents.
The Italian Connection
The so-called Charles VI Tarot, painted for a wealthy patron in mid-fifteenth century Florence, was acquired by a tutor in the court of King Louis XIV of France. The tutor died very early in the eighteenth century and left the deck to what is now the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. These distinctive cards could have influenced Parisian artists and deck creators.
The Astronomers with their calipers in the Italian deck inspired the seated astronomer in the Rouen-Brussels Star card. The standing woman with a spindle on the Charles VI Sun card becomes a seated woman with a spindle on The Rouen-Brussels Moon card. Florentine Judgment and World cards (not illustrated) influenced some of the details in Rouen-Brussels cards.
Four Rouen-Brussels Tarot Decks
Four decks in this pattern have been restored and are available today. I’ll compare the four in my collection, using the Lovers card to highlight the differences.
The oldest deck is by Jacques Vieville (upper left) whose mid-seventeenth century print shop was in the same Parisian neighborhood as Jean Noblet and the printer of the Anonymous Tarot de Paris. This deck is a hybrid of the Rouen-Brussels and Tarot de Marseille patterns. It has the traditional Pope and Papesse, as well as Chariot and World cards that conform to the Tarot de Marseille. Trumps XIV through XX are in the Rouen-Brussels style.
The Gerard Bodet Tarot (upper right) is the oldest complete deck of this style, and the only complete deck from the 17th century. Only one copy exists in a Belgian museum. Bodet was known to be active in Liège in the 1690s. The lines and general drawing style are very similar to the Vieville. Compare the placement of the hands, especially the oddly placed left arm of the central figure, and the angle of his legs. It seems that Bodet copied a Vieville deck, or they are both derived from a common ancestor.
The de Hautot (bottom left) family of card makers was active in Rouen for several generations. There were at least three card makers named Adam de Hautot, but the probable printer of this deck was active from 1723 to 1748. The deck has several unusual features. The Emperor and Empress have switched places. The Hanged Man has a rope sticking out of the top of his head. In the Judgment card, several people, including a skeleton, pop out of their graves. The Fool is numbered XXII. This deck is considered a bridge between the hybrid Vieville and later standard decks of this pattern like the Vandenborre.
The Vandenborre deck, printed in Brussels in 1762, is the most recent and most polished deck of this style. Cartes de Suisses printed on the Ace of Coins possibly indicates this deck was made for export. Several Belgian printers, like Dupont, Jar and Galler, made decks very similar to Vandenborre in the mid-eighteenth century. These are illustrated in Kaplan’s Encyclopedias.
Unique Features of the Bodet Tarot
Pages and Knights are called Valet and Chevalier in all suits except Cups where they are labeled Varlet and Vale. The Ace of Cups looks more like the Tarot de Marseille than the globular Rouen-Brussels cup. The Two of Cups has the same inscription found in other decks of this type, reminding game players that the lower numbered Cups and Coins rank higher than the high numbers. The Swords pip cards have elaborate central details.
About the Deck
The deck was printed in a limited edition of 400. The cards are 2.75 x 5.0 inches (12.4 x 7.0 cm) with printed checkered borders that imitate the folded borders of Italian decks. The smooth, lightly coated card stock is a delight to shuffle. The deck is packaged in a sturdy envelope stenciled with original art by Hismans. The Tarot Sheet Revival website linked below will take you to more images of the cards and their packaging, along with technical details.
Decks Illustrated in this Article Gerard Bodet Tarot. Liège, Belgium, c. 1693. Restored by Sullivan Hismans, Tarot Sheet Revival, 2022. Jacques Vievil Tarot. Paris c. 1650. Restored and hand painted by Sullivan Hismans, Tarot Sheet Revival, 2019. Adam de Hautot Tarot. Rouen, early 18th century. Restored by Sullivan Hismans, Tarot Sheet Revival, 2020. Vandenborre Tarot Flamand. Brussels, 1762. Restored by Pablo Robledo, 2018. Charles VI Tarot. Florence, mid-15th century. Restored by Marco Cesare Benedetti, 2019.
For over four centuries, every Italian playing card was handcrafted with rivoltini borders. These are created by gluing backing paper onto the card, folding the four sides over to the front, then gluing the borders down. Now, for the first time in over a century, we can obtain a tarot deck made with this labor-intensive, traditional method.
For this production, Marco Benedetti has reprinted his Dalla Torre Tarocco Bolognese, which was published in 2020. He added hand-crafted rivoltini borders, and packaged the deck in his signature custom-made wooden box. This deck is a partially restored facsimile of a nearly complete 17th-century Tarocchini in the Bibliothèque Nationale Française.
The museum owns a single card, the King of Swords, from another Dalla Tore deck. This card is the source for the backs of Benedetti’s cards, and it has clarified the correct name of the deck. The backs of the nearly complete deck of 57 cards are oriented horizontally and have a rather unbalanced design of two cupids and a tree. Benedetti prefers the elegant Artemis with bow and arrow on the back of the King of Swords. This image is oriented vertically, which you expect in a playing card.
The deck has been mistakenly called the Dalla Torre tarot. It has also been referred to as Alla Torre and Alla Tore in various books and catalogs, probably because of the confusing museum listing. The card maker clearly gives us his name on the Ten of Coins. The name on the back of the King of Swords is partly obliterated, but the missing letters can easily be filled in with Dalla Tore.
Bolognese tarot has an unbroken lineage of trump cards that has remained unchanged for five centuries. One exception is the four Papi: The Emperor, Empress, Popess and Pope. In 1725, the Church ordered the card makers of Bologna to replace these figures with four Moors. Then a few decades later, all Bolognese cards became double-headed. The Dalla Tore is the only existing deck that predates 1725 and shows us what these four cards looked like before the change. The Emperor and Empress are easy to recognize; but the Pope and Popess both seem quite feminine and there is some debate about which one is the Pope.
Many Bolognese trump cards differ significantly from Tarot de Marseille imagery. This isn’t surprising, since the TdM is believed to derive from Milanese tarot, which is a different tradition. The order of the cards is slightly different as well. The three virtues are grouped together after the Chariot, and the Angel/Judgment switches place with the World. When I look at these enigmatic trump images, I feel like I’m touching one of the oldest strata of tarot history.
In my opinion, Bolognese decks have the loveliest aces of any tarot.
Technical Details
The Dalla Tore is a traditional 62-card Tarocchini, meaning pip cards two to five of each suit have been removed. Benedetti has recreated these cards to make a 78-card deck for those who prefer a Tarot de Marseille structure. The missing Queen of Coins has been recreated using the Dalla Tore Queen of Batons, along with details like the shield and coins, taken from the Queen of Coins of the Tarocchino Al Mondo.
The thin paper used for the folded borders is amazingly durable and actually makes the cards sturdier. I’ve been shuffling a deck with rivoltini borders for two years and the cards still look like new. Handling these cards is a very different experience from shuffling a mass-produced deck.
One of the last steps in traditional playing card construction was coating the face of each card with soap to protect the surface and make the cards easier to shuffle. Cards treated with soap have a luscious silky feel. (I know because I’ve handled some.) The Favini canvas paper used for this deck comes very close to the feel of antique soaped decks.
The museum’s cards were trimmed down at some point in time. This deck restores the cards to what is believed to be the original size. With the added borders, the cards measure 11.75 x 5.25 centimeters. The custom-made wooden box is numbered, and includes a card with historic information. Because of the labor-intensive handiwork involved, only 20 copies of the Dalla Tore Tarocchino will be made.
With its ancient imagery and traditional construction, this Dalla Tore production brings a unique era of tarot history to life.
Tarot de Marseille Type I is having its moment in the sun, thanks to several card makers who are recreating these rare decks from museum originals. As far as I know, there are only nine complete, or nearly complete, Type I decks in existence. All but two have been meticulously recreated by artisans in limited editions and are available to purchase. Find contact information for these card makers at the bottom of this article.
What’s a Type I Tarot de Marseille?
The term was coined by Thierry Depaulis in his 1984 exhibit catalog, Tarot, Jeu et Magie. I’ve identified twelve details that set the Type I off from the Tarot de Marseille Type II (Conver and Madenié Tarot de Marseille, for example). This article shows the two types of decks side-by-side.
The earliest Tarot de Marseille decks we know of are Type I. As new discoveries are made, the date of the earliest-known Tarot de Marseille is pushed back. Currently, the contenders for the earliest TdM are the 1639 Vachie Tarot, and the Nicolas Rolichon Tarot which might be dated as early as 1637. Initially, historians believed that Type II evolved out of Type I and eventually superseded it. But as new information comes to light, the date of the first known TdM Type II keeps getting pushed back. It was recently discovered that the 1730 François Chosson Tarot was printed with wood blocks dating to 1672, or possibly earlier. So, both types I and II existed concurrently in the 17th and 18th centuries. The last Type I deck was printed in 1743, more than a half-century after the first known TdM Type II.
The rest of this article is a run-through of all nine TdM Type I decks we know of, illustrated with cards from my collection. Contact information for the card makers is listed at the bottom.
Early in 2023, historical deck aficionados were thrilled to learn that a previously unheard of Tarot de Marseille, possibly the oldest known deck of its kind, was being auctioned off by the Drouot auction house in Paris. The Vachie deck ultimately sold for 50,000 euros. These images are from the auction catalog. Thierry Depaulis discovered the deck and wrote about it in the January 2023 edition of the publication Vieux Papier. Yves Reynaud searched the Marseille archives and found evidence of a master card maker, Philippe Vachier, in 1632 and 1637.
The 1639 date on the Two of Coins is rather puzzling. The numbers are mirrored and the carving is very crude, so not everyone accepts the date as authentic. One theory postulates that an even older date was scraped off, except for the first “1”, then the other three digits were carved by a clumsy apprentice with bad eyesight. If this is true, it makes this deck the oldest Tarot de Marseille in existence.
I was in despair, believing that the oldest known TdM had vanished into a private collection and we would never see all the cards. Then Depaulis noticed that the lines in the Vachie deck are identical to the Jean Payen deck of 1743. There are breaks and wear in some lines since the wood blocks were nearly a century old when Payen acquired them. But if you look past the worn lines and the stenciled colors, the lines are obviously identical.
It was very common for a card maker to buy up the contents of a workshop whose master has died without heirs. So let’s take a look at the Payen family.
Jean Payen Tarot: Avignon 1743 and Jean-Pierre Payen Tarot: Avignon 1713
Father and son, Jean-Pierre and Jean, relocated from Marseille to Avignon about 1710. Their combined careers spanned nearly a century, from the mid-1600s to mid-1700s. There is so much confusion about their birth and death dates that I’ve given up sorting out which of them did what and when. One of them acquired wood blocks from the Philippe Vachier workshop in Marseille and used them for his TdM I tarot of 1743. Payen scraped off the original name and date on the Two of Coins and replaced it with his own. Shown here are the Two of Coins printed by Vachie in 1639 and by Payen in 1743 after altering Vachie’s wood block.
Marco Benedetti and Florent Giraud have done facsimiles of a complete Payen 1743 deck housed in the Fournier Museum in Spain. Two of Benedetti’s cards are shown here.
Jean-Pierre Payen produced a TdM I in Avignon in 1713. Yves Reynaud has recreated this deck based on examples in three museums: The Swiss Game Museum, the Playing Card Museum of Issy les Moulineaux, and the Yale University Beinecke Library.
Nicolas Rolichon Tarot: Lyon c. 1637
This mysterious deck is the phantom of the tarot world. No actual deck exists, yet we know what it looked like. The July 1919 edition of the Larousse Mensuel magazine reproduced the engraved lines of all the trumps, a court card from each suit, all aces, and examples of pip cards for each suit. The deck’s style is very similar to the Dodal and Payen decks, also printed in Lyon, so it’s not difficult to recreate the missing cards. The deck has the same backs as the Anonymous Tarot de Paris, the Jacques Vievil and Jean Noblet decks, all produced at nearly the same time in the same Parisian neighborhood, a few decades after the Rolichon was printed at the opposite side of country. It seems card makers’ guilds on both sides of France purchased pre-printed card backs in bulk from the same supplier.
The 1851 catalog of a French auction house lists 78 cards by Nicolas Rolichon of Lyon in perfect condition. Perhaps this is the same deck that was reproduced in the magazine. Let’s hope the deck is languishing in in a vault and will come to light one day.
Several generations of the Rolichon family of card makers are recorded in Lyon from 1575 to 1670. There seemed to be a Nicolas in every generation, so it’s difficult to sort them out. The printer of this deck is believed to be the Nicolas Rolichon who lived from 1595 to 1635 or 1637. He was a Master Cartier by 1611, at age 16. You could become a master before age 20 if you were the son and heir of a master card maker and both parents were deceased. In 1638, Nicolas’ widow married a master card maker with Claude Valentin as a witness. The initials NR on Valentin’s Chariot card, may show that a son or grandson of the Rolichon who created the deck shown here was the carver of Valentin’s deck. We’ll deal with Valentin below.
Restoration of Rolichon’s deck involves acquiring the Larousse Mensuel magazine, making high resolution scans of the illustrated cards, digitally restoring the missing cards, then coloring them. Here are examples of two radically different color choices.
Marco Benedetti chose a jewel-toned color palette. Florent Giraud drew inspiration for his palette from the Vachie deck and other decks from Lyon that are contemporary to Rolichon.
Jean Dodal Tarot: Lyon c. 1710
Jean Dodal was active in Lyon from 1701 to 1715. In the cards at left, we see his name spelled Dodal on the Two of Cups, but Dodali on the Two of Coins. The label F P Letrange on the Strength card tells us why. He gave his name an Italian flavor on the Two of Coins because he made this deck for export, most likely to Savoy and Piedmont. Several cards in the deck say F P Letrange (Fait Pour L’Etrange – Made for Export) to avoid the heavy taxes imposed on playing cards made for domestic consumption. Another oddity of this deck: La Papesse is titled La Pances (belly) which may be a sly reference to Pope Joan.
The Dodal tarot has been reproduced more often than most other Type I decks. Here are three from my collection to show the variations. The largest card on the left, by J. C. Flornoy, has a slight yellowish cast to its cream background. Flornoy used the original lines, but hand stenciled the colors with gouache. The next two cards were meticulously hand drawn and are very faithful to the original. The center card by Sullivan Hismans has a crisp, fresh look. The smallest card on the right, by Pablo Robledo, has a pink/beige background.
Dubesset/Valentin Tarot: Lyon, 17th Century
This ugly duckling is comprised of two decks cobbled together to make a complete 78-card deck. Both decks were printed in Lyon in the mid-1600s and are characterized by sloppy stenciling, crude lettering, randomly mirrored cards, and the occasional ghost image.
The C V on either side of the shield on the Two of Cups tells us the card was printed by Claude Valentin. The twenty-six cards he contributed to the deck are more refined and have neater titles. The block carver’s initials, NR, on the Chariot’s shield may be those of Nicolas Rolichon. Valentin witnessed widow Rolichon’s marriage in 1638. Several generations of Rolichon card makers had workshops in Lyon, and every generation had at least one Nicolas. One of them could easily have been the carver of Valentin’s deck.
Dubesset’s fifty-two cards are cruder than Valentin’s. Ten of his trump cards are mirrored. The Pope holds a crook rather than a triple cross, which is typical of the Type I TdM, but the figure is mirrored and the title is badly done.
Jean Noblet Tarot: Paris, c. 1650
In spite of having almost all the traits of a standard TdM I, this deck is an odd duck, and many people believe it isn’t really a TdM Type I. This deck has all but two of the markers for a Type I deck: there is no numeral “4” floating in front of Emperor, and the Fool is not titled Le Fol. The Noblet was published in Paris at approximately the same time, and in the same neighborhood, as the Jacques Vieville and the Anonymous Tarot de Paris, both one-of-a kind decks with a lot of quirks.
The Noblet has many unusual features you don’t find in any other deck. It’s more accurate to call this a unique deck strongly based on the TdM I. Here are four cards with details you won’t find on any other TdM, illustrated with a facsimile printed by Marco Benedetti.
The most obvious feature is the Fool’s bare bottom and the dangly bits in mortal danger of being clawed by the dog. Other small details make this Fool unique. There is no obvious spoon at the end of the knapsack handle. A ribbon hangs down the back of his neck with a bell at the end. In the TdM Type II, the bell becomes a detached red dot on the handle. His walking stick has a head carved at the top.
The object of the dog’s attack ends up in the Bateleur’s hand as a “penis-wand.” It’s assumed the carved wood chipped off, leaving a truncated wand. But it seems like a strange coincidence, and evidently no one made an effort to repair it. Le Bateleur has three die on his table, a unique feature. The second “L” of the title might be an incomplete “E”, but it doesn’t really look like one. It’s more likely a sleepy apprentice went on automatic pilot and duplicated the letter he just completed.
The Pope carries a Bishop’s crook, standard for the TdM I; and he stands in front of an elaborate throne rather than two pillars. The animated hands of the two people at his feet are unique to this deck. The man on the left flings his hands up in amazement at what he’s just heard. The man on the right has his palms facing forward, as if fending something off—possibly a new idea he just can’t accept.
Most tarot Hermits are rather shaggy. This fellow has a neat beard, with hair in a well-coiffed flip.
Charles Cheminade Tarot: Grenoble, mid 17th Century
The Charles Cheminade Tarot de Marseille Type I is housed in a private collection and has never been reproduced. The cards shown here come from the World of Playing Cards website. Several generations of Cheminade card makers are recorded in Grenoble from1642 to 1834. It seems every generation had at least one Charles and one Pierre, so it’s difficult to determine who created which deck. The cards shown here are from a deck probably printed by a Charles Cheminade who was born in 1675 and lived for 75 years. He retired in 1742 and turned the card making business over to his son Pierre. Yves Reynaud has published a facsimile Tarot de Marseille Type II printed by Pierre in 1742.
Nicola Novaro Tarot: Orneglia, 19th Century
This unique deck maybe the last TdM Type I ever printed, and the only existing deck of the type printed in Italy. The Novaro Tarot meets all criteria for a Type I deck, except the Emperor doesn’t have the numeral 4 floating in front of face.
The deck was created in Oneglia, an area of Piedmont that was controlled by France and then Savoy in the 19th century. It’s very similar to the Payen tarot, a classic French TdM I. Marco Benedetti is only card maker who has done a facsimile of this deck, based on an original in the British Museum. Benedetti speculates that Novaro obtained French woodblocks then cut his own stencils for coloring the cards. The heavy use of blue is contrary to conventional French coloring. The deck is in the French style with no overlapping borders, and with misspelled French titles, like the humorously titled Swords court cards. The Fool’s balloon pants are the only Italian touch.
Where to Obtain These Decks Below is contact information for card makers who produce TdM Type I decks as of August 2023. Most make hand crafted limited editions. Check their websites to see what’s available.
Stav Appel: www.torahtarot.com Noblet: Large size, trumps only, soft colors, booklet on Jewish symbolism in the cards.
Artisan Tarot: www.artisantarot.com Noblet and Dodal redrawn and recolored on linen finish, 310 gpm commercial card stock.
This thread in the Tarot History Forum has detailed information on various card makers: genealogical information, records in city archives, and painstaking research to pin down the dates of many decks in this article. Tarot makers of Lyon – 1601-1738 – Tarot History Forum
List of Decks in the order they appear in this article
Sun card. Nicolas Rolichon Tarot. Lyon possibly before 1637. Restored by Marco Benedetti, Rome, 2023.
Felip Vachie/Philippe Vachier Tarot, Marseille, 1639. Photographs from Giquello auction catalog, March 2023.
Two of Coins: Philippe Vachie and Jean Payen.
Knight of Cups and Emperor cards. Jean Payen Tarot, Avignon, 1743. Facsimile by Marco Benedetti, Rome, 2023. Collection of Museo Fournier de Naipes de Álava.
World card. Jean-Pierre Payen Tarot, Avignon 1713. Produced by Yves Reynaud, France, 2016.
Lovers, Emperor and Ace of Cups cards. Nicolas Rolichon Tarot. Lyon before 1637. Restored by Marco Benedetti, Rome, 2023.
Lovers, Strength and Judgment cards. Nicolas Rolichon Tarot. Lyon before 1637. Restored by Florent Giraud, Aix en Provence, 2023.
Jean Dodal Tarot. Lyons, 1701-1715. Set of four cards and World card by Sullivan Hismans, Tarot Sheet Revival, Belgium, 2019. World card by J. C. Flornoy, France, 2002 World card by Pablo Robledo, Argentina, 2018
Guilaume Dubesset/Claude Valentin Tarot de Marseille. Lyon, 1680s. Facsimile by Marco Benedetti, Rome, April 2023. Collection of the British Museum.
Jean Noblet, Paris, c. 1650. Facsimile by Marco Benedetti, Rome. May 2023. Collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale Française, Paris.
I want start 2024 by showing off the happiest tarot decks in my collection. Let’s face it, some of the people in our pre-20th century decks can be rather grumpy, if not downright mean looking. I must have at least 100 facsimiles of historic decks (I haven’t actually counted them), but I could only find a handful of decks where the figures had consistently pleasant faces. The characters in the decks discussed below look friendly and optimistic, and seem to actually enjoy life. I wouldn’t hesitate to start up a conversation with any of them.
If you have a historic facsimile with happy faces, please share it in the comment section below.
My five choices are all 18th-century decks, from five different countries, made by four contemporary card makers. I’ve listed them in the order they were originally published.
Pierre Madenié Tarot, Dijon, France, 1709
The faces in this deck are consistently friendly and approachable. They seem to be slightly amused, as if nothing could really bother them or knock them off balance.
This is the only traditional French Tarot de Marseille in the list, and is the first deck I acquired from Yves Reynaud (I have them all). I’ve been reading with it for years, so we have a special bond.
Hes Tarot, Augsburg, Germany, c. 1750
It’s easy to imagine enjoying an evening of cards and beer with these easily amused folks. The Pope looks like he’s very pleased with the joke he just told. His acolytes are in stitches, shrieking with laughter. It seems the Grim Reaper overheard the joke. Even the severed heads at the bottom of the card seem amused.
This is a standard French Tarot de Marseille, with French titles, but with its own unique personality. The deck comes with a booklet giving the history of tarot in Germany.
Vandenborre Tarot, Brussels, Belgium, 1762
The gnome-like Emperor seems to be enjoying a joke. You don’t often see a pleasant Queen of Swords. Here she has the friendly, approachable face of many figures in this deck. The old crone on the Moon card seems like a wise and kind grandmother. Then there’s Bacus, the ultimate party animal, replacing the Pope.
Tarot de Besançon Miller, Salzburg, Austria, 1780
Like the characters in the German Hes Tarot, these jolly, corpulent folks look like they’d be great companions around a card table. The Page of Swords is often a sinister character, but here he seems on the point of bursting out laughing at something he’s just seen. This is a Besançon style deck with Jupiter and Juno replacing the Pope and Papesse.
The deck comes with the same booklet as the Hes Tarot, giving a detailed history of tarot in German-speaking countries. In addition, we learn that Mozart probably played cards with this deck while he was living at home in Salzburg. In the summer of 1780, he wrote notations in the margins of his sister’s diary, making sarcastic comments in a mash-up of several languages, then listing how he amused himself that day. Most days he attended mass, took a walk, called on people or received visitors, and ended the day playing Tarot. Since Miller was the only card maker registered in Salzburg at the time, it’s quite likely Mozart used this deck.
Swiss Marseille Tarot, 2022
This deck is a modern reconstruction based on various Swiss decks, including Claude Burdel c. 1751, François Gassman c. 1873, and several incomplete decks in Swiss museums. Most figures have the friendly faces and clear eyes of the cards shown here.
The hand-painted cards shimmer with life thanks to the subtle gradations of intense color.
Illustrations
Top photo: Sun cards from the Hes, Swiss, and Miller decks referenced below.
Today I’m celebrating the artistry of Giuseppe Maria Mitelli along with Marco Benedetti’s luxurious new edition of Mitelli’s tarocchino. I’ll begin by describing Benedetti’s deck; then, I’ll give some background on Mitelli, his artistic output, and the distinct features of his deck. We’ll conclude by looking at other copies of the deck in various museums. But first, what is a tarocchino and what makes this deck so different from other historic tarot decks?
Bologna’s Distinctive Tarocchi
Tarocchino is another name for Tarocco Bolognese, Bologna’s regional variant of the tarot deck. It’s still used today for playing Bologna’s regional version of the game. The traditional 78-card deck is reduced to 62 cards by removing pips two through five from all four suits. Instead of Popess, Empress, Emperor and Pope ranked in order, there are Four Papi who are unnumbered. In 1725, by order of the papal legate, the Papi were replace by four Moors, which is standard on all Bolognese decks up to today. In the few decks that remain from before 1725, the Papi are all seated. Mitelli’s deck has two emperors and two popes, one of each standing, and one of each sitting. The three Virtues are grouped after the Chariot, the Hermit is placed after the Wheel of Fortune, and the Angel/Judgment card is last in the sequence, ranking higher than the World. These changes to the standard 78-card deck were probably made in the sixteenth century, after card games with a shortened deck became popular.
I Tarocchi del Mitelli by Marco Benedetti
The deck produced by Benedetti is a facsimile of a complete deck that was printed from Mitelli’s original copper plates. The deck resides in the British Museum and is housed in a box covered in marbled paper with a red leather label lettered in gold that says, “Mitelli Carte del Taroc“. All the card images in this article are taken from Benedetti’s deck unless stated otherwise.
The backs of the original cards are plain yellow, with no printer’s or merchant’s logo. Rather than being from a commercial print run, it’s possible this particular deck was a special commission for a wealthy connoisseur. Benedetti added the Bentivoglio family arms, which appear on the Ace of Cups, to the card backs. The colors in this example are stronger than in most versions of the deck, another clue that this deck was specially commissioned, then hand painted in saturated colors by a very talented artist.
Benedetti’s deck features hand-folded borders, bordi rivoltinati, the traditional Italian method of card construction that was standard from the 15th to 19th centuries. A thin sheet of paper is glued to the back of each card, the corners clipped, then the edges folded over to the front and glued down. This laborious process creates very sturdy cards that shuffle like a dream and feel like silk.
Benedetti’s deck is housed in a wooden box that is signed and numbered. The cards are the original size, 123 x 59 mm (4.8 x 2.3 inches). For those who prefer a traditional Tarot de Marseille structure, Benedetti has recreated pips two through five of the four suits, and has placed his name, as card maker, on the Four of Coins.
Giuseppe Maria Mitelli
The creator of this deck was born in Bologna in 1634. As the son of a respected artist, he served an extensive apprenticeship under several notable Bolognese masters. Mitelli began his career by creating copper plate etchings of old master oil paintings. He eventually added painter, sculptor, actor, and athlete to his resumé. Copper plate etchings were the mainstay of his career; and over six hundred etchings still exist in museums and private collections. He invented numerous board and card games that he illustrated with scenes from curren/t events and daily life. He also created versions of popular games like Snakes and Ladders and Tarocchi, as well as allegories of the months, and fanciful alphabets, all illustrated with his etchings. Mitelli was especially known for prints satirizing human foibles and moralizing about the vanity of materialism and greed, as well as light-hearted genre scenes of everyday life. Below are two examples.
L’Arte per Via consists of forty illustrations of people plying their trade on the streets: vendors of everything from lace to chicken livers, and porters carrying butchered pigs and barrels of wine. In this print, a quack doctor hawking patent medicines holds up a snake.
Proverbi Figurati illustrates forty-eight popular proverbs. “He who believes he’s wiser than others, is actually crazier than everyone” is illustrated with a bizarrely dressed man holding balloons and whirligigs. Il Meneghello printed facsimiles of these proverb cards in 1985.
Mitelli’s Tarocchi
This Tarocchini was commissioned by Count Bentivoglio sometime between 1660 and 1665. For several centuries, the Bentivoglio were a prominent family in Bologna and Ferra, as well as ruling Bologna in the 15th century. The family’s coat of arms appears on the Ace of Cups, and Mitelli’s self-portrait is on the Ace of Coins.
The original deck was delivered to Count Bentivoglio as six sheets of copper plate engravings, arranged in two rows of 10 to 12 cards to a sheet. It was accompanied by an elaborate dedication page that gives the original name: Giuco di Carte, con nuova forma di Tarocchini.
The deck has all the standard tarot trump cards, but they are rendered with non-traditional images in an elegant, baroque-era style. There is no esoteric symbolism, but there are many references to classical myth such as Cupid (Lovers card) and Apollo (Sun card). The Tower is a lightning-struck man. The rather puzzling Hanged Man card depicts a sleeping man about to have his head bashed in with a very hefty mallet. Are we seeing a murder scene? Some have suggested that this was an actual method of executing criminals.
The cards below show Mitelli at the height of his artistic powers, with the graceful lines of the swords, and the opulent clothing of the court cards. The grotesque faces in the coins hint at Mitelli’s sense of humor.
Other Copies of Mitelli’s Deck
Mitelli’s original copper plates were used for many years after his death to produce commercial print runs of the deck, and for private commissions. The plates were eventually given to the Bentivoglio family, and they disappeared early in the 19th century.
The deck was always printed on six large sheets of paper, just like the original Bentivoglio printing. A workshop cut the etchings into individual cards then colored them by hand. If the deck was a special commission, the owner of the printed sheets would hire a professional artist to color them, then have the etchings cut into individual cards that would be mounted on card stock, or bound into a book to be appreciated as art objects.
The individual cards of a Mitelli deck in the British Museum are bound as pages in a book. The covers are green leather with gold tooling. Since there is no logo on the card backs, this may have been a one-off special commission for a connoisseur who treated the etchings like art objects, not playing cards.
A handful of decks are scattered in European museums, and a few have been reprinted in recent decades. Nearly all existing copies of Mitelli’s deck were produced by the Trombeta workshop. The cards were printed from Mitelli’s original copper plates. The Trombeta name and logo appear on the card backs. It’s not certain how Trombeta obtained the original plates; or if the printing was done by someone else and Trombeta finished the decks and marketed them. It’s possible Mitelli authorized a printer to use his plates during his lifetime.
Above left is a facsimile of a Trombeta deck housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale Française that was produced by Giordano Berti. It displays the delicate watercolor that’s associated with these decks. Il Meneghello reproduced an uncolored deck from a museum collection. The tradition of hiring an artist to color the black and white etchings continues today. The Dal Negro publishing company hired an artist to paint Mitelli’s original etchings with pastel water colors. This deck, above right, is currently available to purchase.
Even though all Mitelli decks were printed from the same plates, none are identical, since the etchings were all hand painted by different artists at different times. But there is one Mitelli deck that is unique.
Barattini’s Wood Block Mitelli
In 1803, nearly 150 years after the original deck was created, another Count Bentivoglio commissioned a wood block version of Mitelli’s deck from the engraver Franciscus Barattini. To comply with the 1725 law, this deck has four Moors instead of the original four Papi. The figures on some cards, like Tower, Sun, and Moon, became mirrored during the copying process. The deck is notable for its strong, vivid colors. Over a century after Mitelli’s death, his deck was still capturing the Bolognese imagination, and was treasured by the Bentivoglio family. The only known copy of this deck is in the British Museum.
These refined, baroque-era cards were designed for Bologna’s upper-class connoisseurs. Benedetti’s deck, with its gorgeous color and hand-folded borders, conveys the luxurious quality of the original.
Contact Marco Benedetti to order a deck: Benedetti.Tarot@gmail.com
Illustrations
I Tarocchi del Mitelli. Facsimile of a deck in British Museum. Marco Benedetti, Rome, 2024.
Let’s celebrate Etteilla, the eighteenth-century cartomancer who laid the groundwork for our contemporary tarot reading practices. After writing numerous books on divination, seeing clients, running a school, and establishing a tarot society, he found time to design a tarot deck that has been in print, in slightly altered form, for over 200 years. Now for the first time, thanks to Marco Benedetti’s reconstruction, Etteilla’s original tarot deck, as he conceived it, is available to the public. Before taking a close look at Etteilla’s tarot, we’ll review his amazing career.
Etteilla’s Early Career
Jean-Baptiste Alliette (Etteilla is his last name spelled backward) was born in 1738 to a family of Parisian grocers and caterers. As a teenager, he learned to tell fortunes with playing cards; and in 1757 he began studying tarot with some elderly Italian card readers. He established a shop in Paris where he sold art prints and tarot decks imported from eastern France. By 1770, he had a flourishing business as a card reader and had acquired a circle of students. He styled himself “Professor of Algebra” with a public persona as an all-purpose magus. A surviving price list shows him offering horoscopes, card readings, dream interpretation, amulets, and metaphysical lessons.
Etteilla innovated several card reading techniques that have become standard practice. In his day, a fortune-teller would take cards off the top of the deck, one-by-one, and read them individually. Etteilla pioneered laying cards out in a spread to tell an integrated story, modifying a card’s interpretation with adjacent cards, reading reversals, and associating each suit with a different topic.
In 1770, Etteilla published the world’s first systematic approach to card reading, Manière de se récréer avec un jeu des cartes (A Way of Entertaining Yourself with a Deck of Cards). He used a 32-card Piquet deck, a standard French-suited deck with cards two through six removed from each suit, and with the addition of an extra card, a significator he called “Etteilla”. The book presented elaborate spreads laid out in squares, semi-circles and zodiac wheels. His card interpretations served as the foundation for the minor arcana of his tarot deck, and influenced future generations of card readers, including A. E. Waite.
The Petit Etteilla Deck
It wasn’t until 1791, the last year of his life and two years after publishing his tarot deck, that Etteilla produced a deck based on the system set out in his 1770 book. A few months later, he issued his last publication, Etteilla, ou l’art de lire dan les cartes (Etteilla: Or the Art of Card Reading) a final summary of his career and his teachings, making this one of the first deck and book sets.
The deck, known as Petit Etteilla, features standard French-suited playing cards set in very wide borders containing handwritten keywords and other instructions taken directly from the 1770 book. Upright and reversed keywords appear on the top and bottom borders. The side borders give interpretations for multiples of the card in a spread.
Facsimile Petit Etteilla by Marco Benedetti
The nineteenth-century was a golden age for fortune-telling and oracle decks. The Petit Etteilla was reprinted many times by Grimaud and other publishers. Since the deck is based on standard playing cards, it’s not important which deck is used—but the keywords are crucial. These have remained remarkably stable and are nearly identical in all versions of the deck.
Benedetti has published a facsimile of one of the many nineteenth-century Petit Eetteilla decks still extant. The cards are 2.25 x 3.5 inches. The two layers of card stock feature smooth paper for the back and textured art paper for the front. The cards are substantial without being bulky, and their soft texture makes them easy to shuffle. The deck is housed in a sturdy telescope box printed in the style of nineteenth-century packaging.
Etteilla’s Later Career
During the last decade of his life, Etteilla produced a constant stream of books and leaflets on tarot, astrology, divination, and his ideas for improving living conditions in those turbulent years leading up to the French Revolution. His immediate inspiration may have been the writings of Antoine Court de Gébelin. In the last segment of his multi-volume work, Le Monde Primitif, de Gébelin included two essays on tarot. He revealed that the major arcana images of the Tarot de Marseille are actually Egyptian hieroglyphs that transmit ancient Egyptian wisdom from humanity’s golden age. In addition, the cards correspond to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
Etteilla was totally spellbound by the myth sweeping through occult circles of his day—the belief that tarot was invented by Egyptian magi under the guidance of Hermes Trismegistus. He believed the first tarot deck had been engraved on leaves of gold and deposited at an altar of fire near Memphis. These gold leaves were the only survivors of a fire that destroyed ancient Egypt’s library, meaning tarot cards are humanity’s only link to the wisdom teachings of the world’s most ancient civilization. Etteilla referred to the tarot deck as the Livre de Thoth (Book of Thoth) and he believed it to be a seventy-eight page book, not a deck of cards.
Etteilla’s enthusiasm for spreading the word about Egyptian tarot led him to found the Société des Interprètes du Livre du Thoth (Society of the Interpreters of the Book of Thoth). Many prominent occultists were members of the world’s first organization dedicated to tarot. Two years later, Etteilla and his son founded Nouvelle Ecole de Magie (The New Magic School) where he taught tarot, astrology and alchemy.
Etteilla’s greatest contribution to esoteric tarot was his four-volume work on the Book of Thoth, and its companion deck published a few years later (the first book and deck set). The book, Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots (A Way of Entertaining Yourself with the Deck of Cards Called Tarot) was issued in four volumes from 1783 to 1785. The title is nearly identical to his cartomancy book published over a decade earlier. It seems like a rather flippant title for a work that transmits ancient spiritual wisdom. But in Etteilla’s day, books needed a stamp of approval from the royal censor before they could be published. Etteilla’s first book on tarot had been rejected by the censor a few years earlier. Perhaps this title was an attempt to make his tarot book seem like a frivolous work on fortunetelling that wouldn’t attract the censor’s attention.
Etteilla’s Tarot Deck: Le Livre de Thoth
This tarot deck, commonly known as the Grand Etteilla, is the summation of Etteilla’s extensive experience as a card reader, as well as his spiritual beliefs about tarot. The card illustrations arise from his belief that tarot is a wisdom book created by ancient Egyptian magi, and that it needs to be purged of Christian distortions and returned to its original Egyptian purity. He numbered the cards in sequence from zero to seventy-seven, like pages in a book. He used Arabic numbers because he believed they were Egyptian; and he numbered the Fool zero because he believed Egyptians invented the zero. Actually, there is almost nothing Egyptian in the deck. The monument on card #2, Eclaircissement, may be Etteilla’s attempt to depict Egyptian architecture. Most of what passed for knowledge about Egypt was pure fantasy until Napoleon invaded the country in 1798 and sponsored a scientific expedition.
For centuries, nearly all playing cards were printed with wood blocks. Etteilla’s tarot takes its place among the few luxury decks, like Sola Busca, Mitelli, and Soprafino, that were printed with finely engraved copper plates. Etteilla must have collaborated with an artist to ensure that his vision for each card was faithfully executed; just as A. E. Waite collaborated with Pamela Colman Smith to create his major arcana in the early twentieth century. The printing was done in the workshop of Pierre-François Basan, a prominent Parisian engraver. The final product, a limited-edition luxury deck, was intended for Etteilla’s students and members of his tarot society. The deck was published about March 1, 1789 (Etteilla’s birthday) on eight large sheets of paper which could be folded into a booklet, or cut into individual cards to make a deck.
Always the practical businessman, Etteilla placed ads on the borders of three cards. On the Eight of Batons it says “Etteilla, professor of algebra, renewer of cartonomancy, and redactor of modern errors in the ancient Book of Thot, living at #46, Rue de L’Oseille, Paris”. On the Two of Batons he advertises his two-volume book on “Tharoth”: 1200 pages, many images, price 12 livres. The ad on the Eight of Coins announces that Etteilla will teach you fortune-telling with Egyptian cards, six lessons costing three livres each.
Shortly after Etteilla’s death, one of his senior students seized his papers and decks and declared himself the successor to Etteilla’s legacy. He scratched out Etteilla’s name and address on the Eight of Batons, substituted his own name, and continued selling the decks. When he ran out of the first print run, he commissioned a block-printed version with some minor changes, and his own name and address in the borders. Subsequent nineteenth-century publications omit the advertising and make even more changes to the images and keywords. When we see Etteilla’s name and address on the border of the Eight of Batons, we can be confident we’re looking at Etteilla’s original deck.
The deck was accompanied by a four-page leaflet, making this the first deck with an LWB (Little White Book). Unfortunately, this leaflet is the first in a long line of totally unhelpful LWBs that do little to illuminate their associated deck. Etteilla was criticized for his poor writing style, with good reason. His vocabulary is basic, but the resulting word salad is nearly indecipherable. In the booklet, he seems to be justifying divination as a route to wisdom and a connection to the divine. Then he gives a sample reading using this line of cards:
He instructs us to lay the eight cards out left to right, then read them right to left, like an Egyptian. He interprets the spread by stringing keywords together to make this meandering sentence: “There will arrive presently a letter, if you acquire prudence, a community, by supporting you, will facilitate your success, which will bring you riches.” I Hope his in-person readings were less cryptic and mechanical than this brief example.
One of Etteilla’s associates acquired a deck that was water-colored in soft, delicate tones. They cut the central image out of each card, discarding the borders with keywords, then arranged the images in the tableau shown here. Cards two through ten of each suit make up the square border. The Major Arcana cards are arranged in five decreasing rows starting at the top, and ending with the Fool at bottom center. The court cards are arranged in squares of four, with the Ace of their suit below each set. The title at the top says “The leaves of the book of Thoth that were placed in the temple of fire at Memphis.” An engraving of Etteilla at his work table is at bottom center.
Etteilla’s Original Deck Recreated by Marco Benedetti
Until now, no complete, colored deck designed by Etteilla himself has been available. Benedetti is the first to see the possibility of combining the hand-painted images from the tableau above with the borders of a set of original cards printed in black-and-white with Etteilla’s keywords and advertisements. The hand-painted cards are in excellent condition, so no restoration was needed before placing them in their corresponding borders.
The cards are 2.5 x 4.75 inches, on two layers of paper: 220 gpm smooth card stock for the backs, and textured art paper for the front. These cards have the velvety feel of antique cards, which makes them very pleasant to shuffle. The deck is accompanied by a facsimile of Etteilla’s leaflet.
Purchase a custom printed deck by contacting Benedetti through Facebook, or sending him an email at Benedetti.Tarot @ Gmail.com.
Etteilla’s Tarot: Details of the Cards
Major Arcana
The first twelve trump cards contain an overlapping array of symbols: The seven days of creation, the four cardinal virtues, twelve zodiac signs, four elements, and divinatory keywords. For example: Card number 4 in the sequence represents the second day of creation, the element Air, and the zodiac sign Cancer. Its keyword is “Depouillement” (being stripped bare, or shedding one’s clothes). The image is nearly identical to the TdM Star card. Seventeen of the twenty-two major arcana bear some resemblance to Tarot de Marseille imagery, but they are not in the standard order. Attempts to correlate Etteilla’s cards with corresponding TdM cards can lead to madness. Etteilla’s deck should be treated as a unique product arising from one man’s beliefs about tarot, and shouldn’t be forced to conform to other systems.
Court Cards
Etteilla followed de Gébelin in assigning each suit to a social class: Batons/farmers, Cups/clergy, Swords/nobles, and Coins/merchants. The clothing in each suit is color-coded. The figures resemble TdM court cards, but their posture is more graceful and dynamic. Many keywords are the same as their corresponding Petit Etteilla cards.
Pip Cards
The bottom third of each pip card is a yellow panel that’s empty in the suits of Swords and Cups. The suit of Batons has long nails arranged in different configurations, and the Coins have astrological figures. The blue upper portion of each card contains the suit symbols. The upright keywords for cards 7 through 10 of each suit are the same in both the Grand and Petit Etteilla decks, with some glaring exceptions. The reversed keywords on cards 7 through 10 of Petit Etteilla are used for the upright keywords of cards 2 through 5 of the Grand Etteilla, again with exceptions that seem to be arbitrary.
Etteilla’s Legacy
Etteilla demonstrated with his own practice that the same tarot deck can be used for both card reading and metaphysical studies. If not for this synthesis, cartomancy may have evolved on two parallel tracks: esoteric studies with the Tarot de Marseille and its derivatives like the Oswald Wirth tarot; and fortune-telling with oracle decks like Lenormand and Kipper. Etteilla’s tarot deck is the forerunner of many contemporary decks based on hermeticism, alchemy or Kabbalah, that are used for study as well as divination.
Etteilla’s reputation declined in the nineteenth century, thanks to being publicly mocked by prominent occultists like Eliphas Levi. Much of it was class snobbery. Etteilla was called a hairdresser (he wasn’t) and ridiculed for his turgid writing style and lack of formal education. Fellow occultists were horrified by the absence of Hebrew letters on his cards, as well as their eccentric order. Rather than appreciating Etteilla’s unique system, they dismissed him as an ignorant fool who tarnished the sacred tarot deck by using it to read for lovesick housemaids. Etteilla’s theories were overshadowed by the prevailing emphasis on correspondences with the Hebrew alphabet and Tree of Life. When the Golden Dawn and Waite-Smith tsunami overtook the English-speaking world, Etteilla’s reputation shrank even more, until he became side-lined as a nearly-forgotten historic curiosity.
Arthur E. Waite was one of the prominent occultists who enjoyed sneering at Etteilla while shamelessly plagiarizing his card meanings. Researcher James Revak counted up the keywords that appear on Etteilla’s cards and in Waite’s book, Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Nearly half the keywords appear in both places. If Waite’s divinatory meanings for his minor arcana sometimes read like a jumble of disconnected words with little correlation to the card image, it’s because Waite lifted many of his keywords from Etteilla. Here are cards from both Etteilla’s and Waite’s decks that share upright and reversed meanings still in common usage today.
Community/ProsperityTears/Advantage
When we lay out cards in a spread with some cards reversed, then observe how adjacent cards influence each other, we are using Etteilla’s ground-breaking methods. When we interpret the Queen of Swords as an unpleasant woman, the Three of Wands as launching an enterprise, and the Two of Cups as love and desire, we are using Etteilla’s card meanings. Modern card readers constantly draw on the rich legacy of the man who elevated divination to a respected profession while bridging the worlds of fortune-telling and metaphysics.
All Etteilla cards illustrated here are from Etteilla: Livre de Thoth, and Petit Etteilla, restored and printed by Marco Benedetti. Rome, Italy, March 2024. Purchase a custom printed deck by contacting Benedetti through Facebook, or sending him an email at Benedetti.Tarot@gmail.com.
References
Waite Smith cards: The Centennial Waite Smith Tarot Deck. London, 1909. U.S. Games System, Inc., Stamford, CT, 2009.
The engraving of Etteilla at his desk first appeared in his 1790 book, Cours théorique et pratique du Livre de Thot.
Barbier, Laetitia. Tarot and Divination Cards: A Visual Archive. New York:Abrams, 2021.
Decker, Ronald. The Esoteric Tarot. Quest Books, 2013.
Decker, Ronald, Thierry DePaulis and Michael Dummett. A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot. St. Martin’s Press, 1996.
Kaplan, Stuart R., Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volumes I and II. US Games Systems, Stamford, CT, 1978 and 1986.
Hundreds of decks have passed through my hands during my fifty years with tarot; and I’ve been reading with a few that I really love for decades. But I never became instantly infatuated with a deck until I unboxed the 1709 Pierre Madenié in 2013. This was the first deck I ever purchased from Yves Reynaud, and I was thrilled to own such a faithful reproduction of an historic deck. Adding to the magic, when I opened the package from France, something tiny zipped through the air in front of my face and brushed my cheek. I was sure a tarot fairy had been set free from the package. I knew instantly that this was no ordinary deck!
I never understood what people meant by “bonding” with a deck. How do you bond with printed cardboard? But right from the start, I sensed that something uncanny was speaking to me when I laid out the Madenié cards (maybe that tarot fairy?) Madenié quickly became my preferred reading deck; and a decade later, it’s still my go-to companion.
I’m always intrigued by the first and original of anything. At the time I purchased the deck, Madenié was thought to be the first known TdM type II. We now know that Chosson was most likely printed a few decades earlier. But that hasn’t undermined my enthusiasm.
In fact, I’m even more in love with the deck because Marco Benedetti has just issued a beautiful facsimile of the original from the Musée Nationale Suisse in Zurich. The colors, printed on cream art paper, are rich, deep, and pleasantly soft. The cards are flexible, light, and a dream to shuffle. The deck comes in a sturdy telescope box (inner box shown here).
Madenié’s deck is one of the best-quality wood block TdMs to survive from the eighteenth century. The stenciling can be rather sloppy on these historic decks. But the Madenié workshop did an excellent job lining up the stencils and keeping the ink inside the lines, with a few exceptions where blobs of ink landed outside the shape. The beautifully carved faces with their pleasant expressions make this deck stand out from the crowd.
Who was Pierre Madenié?
Madenié was born in 1678 in a small town near Lyon, France. He was orphaned by age thirteen, so he moved to Dijon to live with his maternal uncle, a card maker named César Balay. In the late 17th century, card makers began migrating to Dijon from other cities. As a young man, Balay joined the migration, moving from his hometown near Lyon to Dijon.
Balay’s nephew must have learned the trade very quickly, since he was an established card maker by the early 1700s. Madenié married in 1703 and eventually had nine children. He died in Dijon in 1741, age 63.
The initials PM appear on the Chariot where the block carver’s initials are usually found. It would be very unusual for a card maker to carve his own blocks, as it’s a specialized skill. This deck is unique in having the carver’s name on the base of the Ace of Cups, where it says Pater Graveur a Dijon. His initials “CP” are tucked into the Two of Cups next to the flower toward the bottom of the central stem. The card maker Claude Pater (1682-1724) appears often in Dijon’s records. César Balay and his wife, and Pierre Madenié and his wife, are listed several times as godparents to Pater’s children. In 1725, Pater’s widow remarried with Pierre Madenié as witness. It seems the card makers of Dijon were one big family, as their names appear repeatedly as witnesses on each other’s legal documents.
I just counted, and I seem to be the happy owner of 28 Type II TdM decks. (Do I need professional help to deal with my addiction?) I never have to agonize over which deck to read with on any given day. I’ve stayed loyal to Pierre Madenié for over a decade, and that’s not going to change any time soon.
Biographical information comes from Chronique des Cartiers de Dijon entre 1680 et 1760 by Jean-Luc Lanez, 2018. I failed to note who posted a link to the PDF on Facebook. I’m very grateful to them, and would be happy if they came forward to be recognized. See the comments below for a link to the original PDF.
All cards shown here are from Marco Benedetti’s facsimile deck.
Marco Benedetti’s restored Visconti di Modrone deck is a magic carpet ride to a late medieval world of elegant lords and ladies and knights in shining armor. A world where fabulously wealthy aristocrats commissioned trionfi decks drenched in silver and gold from the greatest artists of the day.
The Modrone deck was most likely a wedding gift, and is one of most romantic and feminine decks of the fifteenth-century. The cards have pink borders filled with delicate blue flowers, and the six court cards in each suit are arranged in three male/female pairs.
What remains of the original deck is too fragmented to be useful for divination. Benedetti’s vision was to produce not only a beautiful work of art, but to bring the deck to life in a version useful for shuffling and reading. To accomplish this, he is offering the deck in two sizes: the original large size in a custom-made wooden box, and a smaller deck designed for ease of shuffling. Benedetti has filled out the missing trump and court cards beautifully, retaining the aristocratic elegance of the original International Gothic style.
Let’s take a close look at the deck and at Benedetti’s choices for replacement cards.
What is the Visconti di Modrone Deck?
The Visconti di Modrone (also known as the Cary-Yale tarot) was commissioned by the Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti, in 1441. The card images were painted in tempera on embossed gold and silver foil, in the elegant International Gothic style, by one of the greatest artists of the day. Only eleven trump cards remain, including the three theological virtues, which are unique to this deck. The deck lacks one pip card, as well as seven of the original twenty-four court cards.
This deck was most likely commissioned to celebrate the 1441 marriage of Duke Filippo’s daughter, Bianca Visconti, to Francesco Sforza, one of the greatest military generals of the time, who became Duke of Milan in 1450. The canopy is decorated with Visconti and Savoy heraldry. Evidence in the court and pip cards clearly points to the union of the Visconti and Sforza families; so the Lovers card depicts the 1441 marriage. The little flowers on the canopy echo the blue flowers on the border, and also appear in the Del Maino arms of Bianca’s mother’s family. The little white dog is a traditional symbol of marital fidelity.
The Artist
Early in the twentieth century, a prominent art historian declared that all trionfi decks commissioned by the Visconti and Sforza families were done by Bonifacio Bembo and his workshop. This has been accepted uncritically ever since. The Visconti-Sforza deck, created about 1450 or a bit later, was certainly done by Bembo, Bianca and Francesco Sforza’s favorite artist. But there are good arguments in favor of this deck being painted by Michelino da Besozzo, the greatest artist of the time. Da Besozzo painted a deck in the 1420s for Duke Filippo (not tarot and now lost) that was considered the most beautiful deck of cards anyone had ever seen. It’s quite possible the artist was called in twenty years later to do another deck for the Duke. Da Besozzo had enormous influence on other prominent artists of his day like Pisanello and Zavattari, so the deck may have been done by another artist in the style of da Besozzo. It’s obvious that no expense was spared in the creation of this luxurious trionfi deck.
Marco Benedetti’s Personal Modrone
As in his Personal Visconti-Sforza and personal Charles VI decks, Benedetti has filled out the deck with replacement cards chosen to please himself, rather than trying to replicate what the original cards may have looked like. Replacement cards come from three sources: Other mid-15th century hand-painted decks, art from the 14th to 19th centuries, and by altering an existing court card to restore a missing card. The result is a very beautiful, 90-card deck that is a unique work of art.
Let’s go through the deck and look at some cards in detail.
The Pip Cards
Only one pip card is missing, the Three of Coins, which was digitally restored. Suit symbols are painted in blue with gold highlights on embossed silver foil. Big mistake! The silver quickly tarnished to black. Benedetti digitally lightened the cards to resemble their original appearance. Shown here is the Two of Coins with Visconti heraldry in the center of the coins.
The court figures in the suit of Batons hold ornate ceremonial batons, but the pips are rendered as arrows. This is the mirror opposite of the Brambilla deck which was also commissioned by the Duke about the same time as the Modrone. In the Brambilla deck, the court figures hold arrows while the pips are standard batons. There may be a precedent for a suit of arrows in older decks that are now lost.
The Court Cards
This deck has a total of twenty-four court cards instead of the usual sixteen. Each suit has six court cards arranged in three male/female pairs: King and Queen, male and female mounted Knights, and a Page paired with a Lady-in-Waiting. These latter were not servants. Both Pages and Ladies were young aristocrats serving an apprenticeship to prepare for their adult roles as a knight/courtier, or as a noble wife presiding over her husband’s court. At the left are the male and female Knights of Cups.
The Kings and Queens of all suits have attendants, as do the Emperor and Empress. Each suit has color-coded clothing and specific heraldry. Even in this very early deck, we can see the division of the suit cards into round/feminine suits and straight/masculine suits. This convention continued through the centuries into contemporary French-suited playing cards with two red and two black suits. The straight suits of swords and batons have Sforza heraldry of fountains and flowers. The round suits of coins and cups have the Visconti crown and sunburst with dove.
Except for a few older men, all court figures have curly blond hair and very pale skin, which was the standard of beauty at the time. This type is abundant in the International Gothic art of the early fifteenth century. The women have very high foreheads accomplished by plucking. Fashion victims bleached their hair by soaking it in a solution of herbs and urine, then sitting in the sun for hours. In other decks of the era, the court figures have vacant eyes and round, expressionless faces, making them look like rather dim-witted children. The expressive faces in this deck are a tribute to the artist’s skill.
Three of the missing court cards were created by repurposing existing court cards, in what Benedetti refers to as “self-loan”. The King, Queen, and Female Knight of Coins were used to create the missing King of Batons, Queen of Cups and Female Knight of Cups. This was done by flipping a card into its mirror image, switching out the suit symbols, then coloring the robes to match the rest of the suit. In the example shown here, the King of Coins on the left is the original card. To create the King of Batons, Benedetti eliminated the large coin at base of throne and the coin held up by a servant. The king’s baton is copied from the Queen of Batons. The clothing was re-colored to match the blue in the rest of batons suit.
Four court cards were borrowed from other decks: two from the Visconti-Sforza and two from the Brambilla. Shown here are the Page of Coins from Brambilla and Page of Swords from Visconti-Sforza.
I appreciate the pains Benedetti took to keep the color consistent on the clothing, and to replicate the original background and borders. The replacement figures blend in with the original cards amazingly well. Some mainstream publishers hire artists to create missing cards, resulting in unacceptable anachronistic images and lurid colors. This deck achieves a very pleasing unity that’s often lost in other historic decks with recreated cards.
The Trump Suit
Only twelve original trump cards remain, including the three theological virtues. To fill out the deck with the missing fourteen cards from the standard tarot deck, Benedetti borrowed cards from other fifteenth-century decks, and drew on art ranging from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries. Let’s take a look at a selection of trump cards.
Emperor
This original card may depict an actual historical event featuring the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund of Luxembourg. Sigismund made a two-year procession through Italy starting in 1431 and ending in Rome, where he was installed as Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope in 1433. The Holy Roman Emperor was also King of Italy, and traditionally received the Iron Crown of Lombardy from the hands of the Duke of Milan. On the lower right of the card, a kneeling figure seems about to hand a crown up to the Emperor.
Duke Filippo had another reason to honor Emperor Sigismund. The Duke’s only living child was Bianca, his illegitimate daughter whose wedding was celebrated with this deck. The Duke paid a hefty fee to the Emperor, and in return received a document decreeing that Bianca was legitimate and the Duke’s rightful heir.
Devil and Tower
These two cards, missing from the original deck, were replaced with images from late medieval art. The Tower is an illustration of the Tower of Babel from an unidentified illuminated manuscript. The Devil is taken from a Last Judgment fresco done in the 1390s by Taddeo di Bartolo and located in the town of San Gimignano.
The Seven Virtues
The three theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity, survive from the original deck. No other deck had these virtues until Minchiate was invented decades later. Hope (shown here) is a kneeling woman looking toward heaven, exemplifying unwavering confidence in salvation and everlasting life. The anchor is a traditional symbol of steadfast hope. The Virtues were often depicted with a man crushed underfoot who personifies the opposite vice. In this case, Despair is personified by Judas, who lost all hope after betraying Christ.
The cardinal virtue Strength also appears in the Modrone deck, so we can assume that all seven virtues were in the original. Benedetti filled out the missing virtues by borrowing from various places. He altered the Visconti-Sforza Justice card by removing the knight on horseback floating at the top of the original card. Temperance (shown here) was borrowed without alteration from The Ercole d’Este deck. Prudence was extracted from a panel of the seven virtues done by Pollaiuolo in the second half of the fifteenth century.
Because the trump suit is so incomplete, we can’t say for sure how many cards were in the original deck. Were the theological virtues added on, or did they replace other cards? Did the Modrone have a Star-Moon-Sun sequence of cards, or were they added to the game decades later? Is Modrone an example of the standard deck of the time? Is it a regional variant? Perhaps its structure is unique, since it wasn’t intended for shuffling and game playing. Benedetti supplies the maximum number of cards, ensuring that the deck is useable for divination.
Star and Moon
These two cards are illustrated with nineteenth-century images. The Star is taken from The Birth of Venus, a painting by Gustave Moreau done about 1866. The Moon is adapted from a tarot deck by Giovanni Vachetta, published in 1893. The Sun (not shown) depicts Apollo with his lyre borrowed from Giuseppe Mitelli’s deck published in the early 1660s.
The World Card
In my opinion, the Modrone has the most beautiful, and most unique, World card of any deck. In the top half of the card, we see a fashionable woman floating in the clouds, holding an orb and scepter. A large crown floats in the center below the clouds and seems to be descending to the scene below.
In the foreground of the lower half, a mounted knight approaches two people in a boat. On the far bank, a person kneels with a fishing pole. The knight holds a tall banner featuring the Visconti viper. Four walled cities occupy the mid ground. All are surrounded by a moat and two have their drawbridges extended. The ocean appears in the back toward the horizon with boats and a lighthouse.
This may be a Lombardy landscape with the ocean on the horizon. Duke Filippo greatly expanded Milanese territory, so the towns could be his newly conquered possessions. The woman at the top of the card is too fashionable to be an angel. She may be an allegorical figure handing the Duke symbols of worldly rulership.
The Modrone Deck in Two Sizes
Benedetti is offering his restored Modrone deck in two sizes.
Original size: 7.5 x 3.5 inches (189×89 mm.) on archival paper with a custom-made, personalized wooden box.
Tarot de Marseille size: 4.75×2.5 inches (120×60 mm.) housed in a telescope box with a choice of two papers: Double laid paper which is used for his TdMs and is very easy to shuffle; Archival matte paper with a laid paper back. These cards are also designed for shuffling. The archival paper produces more intense colors.
Benedetti has succeeded wonderfully in fulfilling his original intention: to bring these cards to life and create a deck that people will shuffle and use. I’m looking forward to more time travel with the Modrone deck.
To order a deck, contact him on Messenger or email benedetti.tarot@gmail.com
References
Abele-Hipp, Sabine. The World of Filippo Maria Visconti: Studying the Landscape on the World Card of the Visconti di Modrone. The Playing Card, Journal of the International Playing Card Society, Vol. 15 #2.
Dorsini, Cristina. Visconti di Modrone Tarot, Art in Milan in 1400. Il Meneghello Edizioni, 2017.
Pratesi, Franco. Ruminations on the Visconti di Modrone or Cary-Yale Tarot, January 17, 2016. Translation by Michael Howard
A flurry of excitement rippled through the tarot world in early 2023 when a previously unknown Tarot de Marseille, dated 1639, was auctioned in Paris. This very special deck is the earliest documented TdM we know of, and is in nearly pristine condition.
When it sold for a very large sum, I lamented that it would probably disappear into the vault of a private collector, not to be seen again in my lifetime. Happily, I was very wrong. It was purchased by card maker Yves Reynaud of Marseille, who has given the world many facsimiles of rare TdMs. Recently, he published a lightly touched up version of the Vachier deck, which is now available to purchase.
Card makers sometimes acquired woodblocks from printers who had died or left the business, scraping the old name and date off the blocks before reusing them. Vachier’s woodblocks were reused by the Payen workshop in Avignon after one hundred years had elapsed. As far as I know, it’s unheard of to find two tarot decks, separated by a century, printed from the same blocks. Marco Benedetti has created a facsimile of Payen’s deck, so we can compare the two printings.
Let’s take a close look at the original Vachier deck, Reynaud’s version, and the Payen 1743 printed by Benedetti. On the left is a poor quality photo from the auction house catalog. Center is Reynaud’s printing, and on the right is the Payen facsimile printed by Benedetti.
Vachier’s colors are quite rich. Especially notable is the violet, which fell out of favor after the end of the 17th century due to the ink’s cost. Seventeen of the twenty-two trumps contain violet, and it’s used to accent all the court cards. No violet appears after trump fifteen. Was Vachier running out of violet ink? Perhaps he decided he had used too much of the expensive ink and was being conservative. Reynaud’s reprinting of the deck brightens the colors, and the red is shifted slightly toward orange. Payen’s later printing substitutes dark blue for the violet.
The Jean Payen Connection
Jean Payen senior was documented as a master card maker in Marseille by 1679. He undoubtedly knew the Vachier family, since printers lived and worked in the same neighborhood, and they belonged to the same guild. In 1686, the Payen family moved to Avignon, where their workshop became the most important in that city.
Sometime between 1700 and1703, Guillaume Vachier, son or grandson of Philippe, stayed in Avignon for a while. He could have sold his father’s woodblocks to Payen at this time. Jean Payen junior took over the shop in Avignon after his father’s death in 1741. He recycled the Vachier woodblocks in 1743.
Reynaud’s Vachier deck on the left and Benedetti’s Payen deck on the right illustrate how printers scraped the previous owner’s name and date off a woodblock before reusing it. Payen and Reynaud filled in the white spaces in the leaves at the ends of the ribbon with gray ink. Compare this to the photo of the original card below.
The woodblocks were in remarkably good condition after one hundred years, and evidently hadn’t been used much before Payen acquired them. The lower coin is surrounded by three circles. The outer circle on the Payen card has a break at lower right, and the tip of the leaf on the middle right edge is broken off. The damage is minimal.
The Two of Cups allows us to further compare Reynaud’s printing of the Vachier on the left and Benedetti’s Payen on the right. (The original Payen deck is housed in the Fournier museum.)
Under the ink, we can see that the lines are identical, and are in remarkably good shape in Payen’s deck. The dolphin’s tail on the left shows some wear and little breaks, and small signs of wear appear in a few other places. The Vachier card has been touched up a bit, but it’s obvious Payen was not quite as careful in applying ink. The stenciled colors in both cards are accurately placed, which didn’t always happen, since print shops had to churn out a high volume of decks in assembly line fashion.
Is This Really a 1639 Deck?
On the left is a photo of the original card taken by Isabelle Nadolny at the Paris auction house. Reynaud’s touched-up card is on the right.
Philippe Vachier is documented as a master card maker in Marseille from 1632-1670, so he could have made this deck in 1639. But the original date on the card is hard to read and ambiguous.
What is presumed to be the number 1 in 1639 is detached from the other digits and looks more like the capital “I” that appears in the name at the bottom of the ribbon. As for the other three digits, Reynaud straightened the middle number so it looks more like a 3, then he flipped the two end numbers horizontally and switched their places so they read more like 639.
Vachier’s carving is so meticulous, it seems odd his date would be such a mess. Woodblocks are carved in mirror image. Did an inexperienced apprentice botch the job? Or did Vachier scrape off an earlier date, meaning the woodblock was created by an older generation of the Vachier family. Instead of a date, perhaps originally there was a word with the letter “I” in it. The word was scraped off in 1639, and the “I” recycled as a number.
Tarot experts have accepted that Vachier printed his deck in 1639, but those ambiguous numbers add to the mystery.
