The Babel of Tarots - Giordano Berti Lecture at the 2002 World Tarot Congress

5 - Evolution of the Visconti-Sforza deck

Already at the end of the 15th century there existed in Milan a very interesting variation of the Visconti-Sforza tarots. We know about them thanks to the so-called “Cary Sheet”, a xylographic print found at the beginning of the 20th century in the Sforza Castle in Milan.

SLIDE 28: the “Cary Sheet”, from 1500 (© Beinecke Library, Yale University).

Here we can clearly recognise the similarities with certain illustrations from the Marseillaise Tarots, not only the Star and the Moon, which are perfectly visible, but also the figures cut out on the sides.

Probably the tarots emigrated from the Milan Duchy to nearby France following the French invasion, which occurred from 1495 onwards. The oldest testimony however was established by a passage in the romance Gargantua by Francois Rabelais, published in 1534; here the tarot game is called Tarau, but there is no description of the illustrations that make up the game.

The oldest French Tarot known today is that printed in Lyon in 1557 by Catelin Geofroy.

SLIDE 29: Tarot of Catelin Geofroy (© Bibliothèque National, Paris)

This deck however does not have the characteristics of the Marseillaise tarots. To see something similar we must wait for another century. In fact there exist three decks from half-way through the 17th century that are the missing link between the antique Milan tarots and the Marseillaise tarots. The first is an anonymous Parisian tarot, wich shows some cards which are very different from those of the Marseillaise tarots; the second deck is the Tarot of Jacques Vieville.

SLIDE 30: Anonymous Parisian Tarot (© Bibliothèque National, Paris)

SLIDE 32: Tarot of Jacques Vieville (© Bibliothèque National, Paris). Printed from around 1660, is substancially identical, in the first eleven cards, to the classic Marseilles Tarot.

SLIDE 32: Tarot of Jacques Vieville (© Bibliothèque National, Paris). Here we can see the most evident differences with regards to the Marseillaise tarots: Temperance, Devil, Tower, Star, Moon and Sun. I want to emphasize that the image of the World appeared in this way already in a Milan tarot from the beginning of the 16th century.

However, the deck that connects the ancient Milan tarots to the Marseillaise tarots in a definitive manner, was printed in Paris by Jean Noblet around 1660, around the same period as Vieville. I do not have a slide of these, but their characteristics are substantially identical to those of the French tarots of the 18th century which took the name of Marseille, even if they were printed not only in Marseille but also in Besançon, Dijon, Strasbourg and other French cities.

essential bibliography

Michael Dummett, The Game of Tarot from Ferrara to Salt Lake City (London, Duckworth, 1980).

Giordano Berti and Marina Chiesa, Ancient Tarots of Lumbardy. History, games, divination (Antichi Tarocchi lombardi, Torino, Lo Scarabeo, 1995).

Giordano Berti and Tiberio Gonard, The Marseillese Tarot (I Tarocchi Marsigliesi, Torino, Lo Scarabeo, 1998).  

Text © 2002 Giordano Berti

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