Visconti-Sforza-Trionfi cards
When Visconti-Sforza Tarot Deck referred to in the broadest sense about 300 received playing cards from about 20 different card games that in the 15th century within the Milanese duke families Visconti and Sforza were produced and played. They form a large part of the entire surviving Italian playing cards of the 15th century and are to be regarded as the first examples of tarot or tarot cards; the name Taraux or Tarocchi first appeared in Ferrara and Avignon in 1505 according to today's knowledge, the earlier name was Trionfi , ludus triumphorum or similar.
In the narrowest sense, the term Visconti-Sforza deck is also used specifically for the most fully preserved, the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo deck .
The cards are hand-painted and partially covered and decorated with gold leaf and were already very complex in the production process (a normal game of this type corresponded to the weekly wage of a nobleman and roughly the 3-month wage of a minor servant).
Three relatively complete games are considered to be the oldest tarot cards ever.
- Brera-Brambilla Tarocchi (48 cards received, 2 of them trumps), since 1971 in the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan
- Cary-Yale Tarocchi (also Visconti di Modrone) (67 cards, including 11 trumps), written in 1441. The cards of the Cary-Yale Tarocchi are in the Beincke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University .
- Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo Tarocchi (74 cards, including 20 trumps). 35 cards are in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, 26 cards in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, and a further 13 cards in the collection of the Colleoni family in Bergamo.
Today it is believed that Bonifazio Bembo , Marziano of Tortona or the Zavaratti brothers are the artists of Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo-Tarocchi.
An even older game (created between 1418 and 1425) has only survived in literary terms : it is described in detail in an extensive manuscript by Martiano da Tortona (he died in 1425). The game first became famous in a literary note when Pier Candido Decembrio , a secretary and diplomat to Duke Filippo Maria Visconti (ruled 1412–1447), left the comment in the vita of his recently deceased master that it cost 1,500 ducats (a gigantic Total). As trump cards, however, it did not show any known tarot motifs, but 16 Greek deities. It is now called Michelino Deck after the painter Michelino da Besozzo , who was considered the best artist of his time.
literature
- Gertrude Moakley: The Tarot Cards, painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza Family. An iconographic and historical study. Public Library, New York NY 1966.
- Germano Mulazzani: I Tarocchi viscontei e Bonifacio Bembo. Il mazzo di Yale. Shell Italia, Milan 1981.
- Sandrina Bandera-Bistoletti: Bonifacio Bembo. Tarocchi viscontei della Pinacoteca di Brera. Martello libreria, Milan 1991.
- Giordano Berti, Tiberio Gonard: The Visconti Tarot. Königsfurt, Klein Königsförde-Krummwisch 1999, ISBN 3-933939-11-9 .
Web links
- Michelino deck (Engl.)
- Brera-Brambilla Tarocchi (Engl.)
- Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo Tarocchi (Eng.)
- Visconti Sforza Tarot (PDF, 646 kB)
- Tarotpedia [1] (Engl.)