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Sabio Tarot · History and curiosities

By Sabio Tarot

Visconti-Sforza tarot decks: what we know and what we do not

The Queen of Swords from a Milanese deck of around 1450 has a worked gold background and is now held by the Morgan Library & Museum. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's discussion connects it to the Visconti-Sforza tarot and the workshop of Bonifacio Bembo. We can identify an object, an approximate date and an attribution. We cannot reconstruct every game in which it was played without gaps.

That difference between a surviving piece and a complete story makes these decks especially valuable. They offer a physical window onto the fifteenth century and a chance to read carefully what a museum claims and what it leaves open.

There is more than one “Visconti tarot”

The Met distinguishes three luxury sets associated with mid-fifteenth-century Milan. One is linked to Filippo Maria Visconti and has 69 cards preserved at Yale's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The set known as Visconti-Sforza is probably associated with Francesco Sforza, who married Bianca Maria Visconti; its surviving cards are divided between Bergamo's Accademia Carrara and the Morgan Library & Museum. The third is named Brambilla after a later owner and is held at the Pinacoteca di Brera.

These set names are tools for cataloguing. They are not labels that every card bore when it left the workshop, nor do they prove that one set had exactly the same contents as another. Saying “the Visconti cards” without specifying which set may hide important differences.

What we can see: materials, figures and provenance

The Met's descriptions identify cardboard or pasted paper, opaque paint and worked gold backgrounds in pieces from these sets. The V&A also shows painted and gilded Italian cards from around 1490. The techniques tell us about objects that could display wealth and craft as well as serve for play. Examining an actual piece stops “luxurious” from becoming a vague adjective: its gold, size and treatment of the figure can be catalogued.

The images also speak to a visual world familiar to their audience. The V&A notes, for example, a Visconti heraldic emblem on the Page of Coins in its collection. A family reference on a card does not turn the entire set into a coded biography or a prediction system. Those claims would need different evidence.

What is uncertain: lost cards and early forms

The oldest Visconti deck described by the Met differs from the usual structure today. It may have had up to six court cards per suit, with female and male versions at several ranks, and three theological virtues added to the better-known trumps. The museum itself leaves the interpretation open: we do not know whether this was an exceptional design or a stage before later standardisation.

This uncertainty teaches a basic historical rule. If cards are missing from a surviving set, we do not automatically know whether they were never made, were lost, were replaced or ended up in another collection. And if a deck has cards that seem “extra” today, we do not know whether they were common in their time or made for a special commission. An inventory of material objects narrows the questions; it cannot settle them by decree.

One useful example is comparing the present-day list of 22 Major Arcana cards with a list inferred from old fragments. The first is a complete editorial set. The second may have gaps because objects were lost. Filling each gap with a modern card without marking the reconstruction passes off a hypothesis as a surviving object.

What these cards cannot tell you to do in a reading today

These pieces do not dictate how you must interpret a contemporary card. If you use a Marseille, Rider–Waite–Smith or other modern edition, its visual conventions and accompanying guide influence your practice. Visconti-Sforza history explains precursors to some figures and their circulation as a game. It does not provide a verified original dictionary of divinatory meanings for all 78 cards.

Try a short exercise: choose the Chariot in your deck, find a catalogued reproduction of the Visconti-Sforza Chariot and write two lists. In the first, record only what is visible in each image. In the second, write interpretations drawn from books or your own experience. If a conclusion appears only on the second list, present it as a reading today, not as the painter's proven intention.

Continue with the earliest tarot decks to place these cards on a historical map, and with Marseille versus Rider–Waite–Smith to compare two present-day systems without confusing them with these objects.

A fragment is not a complete deck

Imagine that ten pages of a book survive without its cover or contents page. You can describe those pages, attribute them to an era and compare them with other books. You cannot silently write the missing contents page. Something similar happens with an incomplete or dispersed tarot deck. When the surviving card count differs from 78, avoid two opposite errors: deciding that the original deck had only that many cards, or filling every visual gap with a modern edition and calling the result “original”.

The Met offers a useful comparison between the Visconti and Visconti-Sforza sets: their structures do not match exactly. A superficial reading might treat one as a flawed version of the other. A more careful approach is to leave two explanations open: was one a variation commissioned for a particular court, or does it record a period when some conventions were still changing? The museum says it cannot resolve that choice. When studying these cards, keep both possibilities open: the difference between the decks is visible, but its precise cause has not been established.

The cards' dispersion across collections adds another difficulty. Where a card is held today is not necessarily where it was painted or the only place it circulated. To investigate provenance, follow the chain documented in the object's catalogue entry, not merely the museum's address. “The Morgan owns this card” and “this card was made in New York” are entirely different statements.

How to compare without inventing continuity

Choose two cards showing a similar figure, one from a Visconti set and one from your deck. Record their assigned names, approximate object dates, materials, visual details and numbers if present. Then note what you cannot observe: lost cards, original playing instructions and the intention of whoever commissioned each image. A “we do not know” column is a tool for precision, not a weakness in the exercise.

The comparison may reveal a continuing image feature in one figure and major changes in another. Do not treat a visual resemblance as identical meaning. A Justice image in a fifteenth-century deck and another in a twentieth-century manual may share recognisable attributes, while a psychological or divinatory explanation belongs to the later manual. Studying the object lets you see both layers without merging them.

Sources consulted