A Tarot Relic

August 17, 2007

This is the Queen of Wands from a deck identified as Bembo Bonifacio’s Visconti Tarot. (Click on the image to get a closer look). It is in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. The date they have for it is c. 1445. That would make this card 562 years old.

Think about that. A Tarot card that was created and used more than half a millennium ago. It is speculated that this deck was created to celebrate a wedding joining the Visconti and Sforza families of Milan. I’m assuming that’s gold leaf on the card, at least it certainly looks like it. I did a bit of half-hearted googling and was unable to find a description. Perhaps someone with better google-fu than me can find that information.

I saw this link to the online images of these cards on a relatively new forum called Tarot America. It’s a small but growing group of nice folk, where you will find discussions on Cartomancy of all kinds, Runes, the I-Ching and Phenomenology.

You can view the rest of the collection here. You’ll just need to type Tarot in the search field.

Posted in Decks