Visconti-Sforza Tarot

I got this one from the Morgan Library, which is a library and museum in New York City.

They actually hold five of the original tarot cards from the original Visconti Sforza deck.

And I got it from their museum gift shop website.

I'm not gonna lie, the price tag was a little hefty.

I'm not even trying to be funny.

They are the size of my head.

And what's interesting about them is that these were originally considered playing cards for the Visconti Sforza family.

Okay, they were a very, very powerful ruling family in Milan at the time.

It was documented as a trick-taking game Its early imagery reflected the allegorical, religious, social and artistic world of its makers.

Surviving cards associated with the Visconti-Sforza world preserve that origin in paint and gold.

Centuries later, Court de Geblen proposed an Egyptian interpretation in Le Monde Primitif.

A tailor developed tarot divination.

They first appeared in Spain.

There's some decks that were found in Bern, and one of the oldest and most complete decks, particularly of the, uh, tarot cards, is one of the crown jewels of the Morgan Library's collection, and it's the Visconti-Sforza tarot deck.

J.P. Morgan himself purchased this in 1911.

It was produced around the 1450s.

From this era, from the fourteenth century, there's only evidence of about fifteen decks.

Some of these decks are only comprised of one card that continues to exist.

The Visconti-Sforza deck in particular is so remarkable because seventy of the seventy-eight cards still remain.

That's incredible.

I mean, such a fun exhibition to dive into.

Well, it sounds like that Visconti-Sforza deck is kind of like the, the nexus around which a lot of this, uh, began revolving.

Josh, can you tell us a little bit about why this deck is so important? You mentioned that it's one of the most complete decks to survive from the 15th century.

I think a lot of us here who are typically, I think, modern tarot practitioners know it's kind of Renaissance-y, know that there's like an Italy, you know, portion to it, know that this was kind of old in some way.

And there are about, I would say, 15 or so Renaissance decks that survive from the 15th century in various states of completion.

Uh, some of them are just one or two cards.

Uh, the Visconti-Sforza deck, which is shared between the Morgan in New York and the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo and also as a private collection in Bergamo.

Preserves 74 of the 78 cards in a tarot deck.

Pages are the youngest member of the family.

In your historical decks like the Visconti-Sforza and the Tarot de Marseille, pages are depicted as young men, and Arthur Edward Waite basically adopted this attitude as well.

But the Golden Dawn blueprint where Waite got his ideas is a little different.

In the Golden Dawn model, pages lean archetypally feminine.