User:Michael Hurst/Visconti-Sforza

The Tarocchi Players fresco, from the Sala dei Giochi of Casa Borromeo, Milan, c.1440s

The Visconti-Sforza Tarot deck generally refers to the surviving cards of a deck also known as the Pierpont Morgan-Bergamo deck. As indicated by the name, the original provenance of the deck was Milan, Italy, ruled by Visconti and Sforza dukes. The deck is commonly dated to around 1450. This makes it one of the oldest surviving Tarot decks, created perhaps only a decade after the earliest reliable references to the game.

The Deck

Seventy-four of the original 78 cards survive, making the Visconti-Sforza the most complete early Tarot deck. The cards are large (175 by 87 mm, 6.9 by 3.4 in) and hand-painted. The trump cards and court cards have gilded backgrounds, while the other cards include gilded detail. It is a magnificent example of the decorative arts in Renaissance Italy. The condition of the cards combined with the fact that six of the extant cards are later replacements indicate that the deck was used for actual play.

Thirty-five of the cards, including 15 of the 20 surviving trumps, are in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. Twenty-six cards, including the other 5 trumps, (Emperor, Justice, Star, Moon, and World), are in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Italy. Thirteen suit cards are in a private collection, (owned by the Colleoni family), also in Bergamo. Only four cards are lost: the Devil and Fire/Tower trumps, the Three of Swords, and the Knight of Coins.

Scholarly consensus attributes the original deck to Bonifacio Bembo, but there is no agreement on the artist who painted the six replacement cards. The deck has been the subject of scholarly articles and book, including The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo, by Gertrude Moakley, and The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards, by Michael Dummett.

Influence

Tarot was an extremely popular card game in 15th-century Italy. In just a few decades it had spread from Milan in the north to Naples in the south, being documented in Ferrara, Bologna, Florence, Rome, and elsewhere. It was played not only among nobles using hand-painted masterpieces like the Visconti-Sforza deck, but also among commoners with printed decks. As early as the 1440s, Tarot decks had already become a commodity, and trade is documented between city-states.

It is considered unlikely that luxury decks, such as the Visconti-Sforza, had significant influence on the popular printed decks. However, the Visconti-Sforza deck was copied repeatedly in other hand-painted decks, and numerous Visconti-style decks survive in more fragmentary form. The number of surviving cards in these decks ranges from one to 67. It appears that such decks were produced in Cremona. Cremona was also ruled by the Visconti. It was the site of the 1441 wedding Francesco I Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti, thought by some to be the occasion of a commemorative Tarot deck known as Cary-Yale.

The Trump Cards

• Visconti-Sforza Trumps, circa 1450.
• 
  The Fool card
• 
  The Magician card
• 
  The Popess card
• 
  The Empress card
• 
  The Emperor card
• 
  The Pope card
• 
  The Love card
• 
  The Chariot card
• 
  The Justice card
• 
  The Time card
• 
  The Fortune card
• 
  The Fortitude card
• 
  The Traitor card
• 
  The Death card
• 
  The Temperance card
• 
  The Star card
• 
  The Moon card
• 
  The Sun card
• 
  The Judgment card
• 
  The World card

Bibliography

• Caldwell, Ross, Thierry Depaulis, and Marco Ponzi. Explaining the Tarot: Two Italian Renaissance Essays on the Meaning of the Tarot Pack. Oxford: Maproom Publications, 2010.
• Decker, Ronald, Thierry Depaulis, and Michael Dummett. A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.
• Dummett, Michael. The Game of Tarot: From Ferrara to Salt Lake City. London: Duckworth, 1980.
• Dummett, Michael. The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards. New York: George Braziller, 1986.
• Dummett, Michael, and John McLeod. A History of the Games Played with the Tarot Pack: The Game of Triumphs. London: Edwin Mellon, 2004.
• Kaplan, Stuart. The Encyclopedia of Tarot. Stamford, U.S. Games Systems, 1978.
• Moakley, Gertrude. "The Tarot Trumps and Petrarch's Trionfi: Some Suggestions on their Relationship", Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 1956, v.60, pp. 55-69.
• Moakley, Gertrude. The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza Family; An Iconographic and Historical Study. New York Public Library, 1966.