Hand-Painted Tarocchi Cards

Above: three XV century hand-painted and gilded tarocchi cards in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris). These cards are heavily worked with burnished gold leaf and tooled ornamentation reminiscent of medieval illuminated manuscripts and Books of Hours. This expensive and laborious process was, therefore, only affordable by the wealthy.

Illustrations of cards in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris) are taken from F. King (1988) pp.54 & 56.