The Visconti-Sforza Tarocchi Cards, c.1445

This pack of hand painted tarot cards appears to have have been made for Francesco Sforza about the time that he became Duke of Milan (1450). The production of these cards has long been attributed to the Milanese court painter Bonifacio Bembo but more recently some collaboration on the part of Francesco Zavattari has been suggested. The pack comprises an ordinary pack of playing cards augmented by a Fool (Matto) and twenty-one unsuited trump cards (trionfi). Hand painted packs like this were being produced in Italy at around the same time as hand painted packs were being produced in Northern Europe.   See also:   Ambraser Hofjagdspiel, Stuttgarter Kartenspiel, Hofämterspiel, Flemish Hunting Deck, c.1475.

Right: 8 cards from the replica pack "I Tarocchi dei Visconti" published by Dal Negro, Treviso, Italy. This is the most complete 15th Century Tarot deck. The original deck has 74 of the assumed original 78 cards, the missing cards are The Devil, The Tower, Three of Swords and Knight of Coins. These missing cards have been reconstructed in this edition.

Other surviving fifteenth century Italian tarot packs include: the Visconti di Modrone pack (c.1441) and the Brambilla Tarocchi (c.1444-45), both adopting the names of former owners. Further examples include: the so-called Playing Cards of Charles VI (seventeen cards survive); thirty-one cards from the Rothschild Collection in the Musée du Louvre, Paris; sixteen surviving cards in the Cary Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University, believed to have been made in Ferrara; fifteen cards in the Museo Civico, Catania; fifteen cards are known from a pack that was badly damaged in a 1904 fire in the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, Turin; as well as several other examples of a few remaining cards in other museums or private collections.