Grigonneur deck

brendanxx

I'm very new to tarot and I'm making a very small collection of traditional decks. I have the Waites and Visconti and now am looking for the Grigonneur cards (I know it's just some of the major arcana) and an as close to the original as possible(not brightly recoloured for instance) Marseilles deck. When I search for these I find it very confusing - there seem so many variations at widely differing prices. Any help would be appreciated to help me acquiring the oldest versions of the Marseilles and Grigonneur decks.
Thank you
Brendan
 

brendanxx

Gringonneur deck

Many thanks, Philippe,
I Looked at the Lo Scarebeo deck before but was confused because I thought there were only 17 cards remaining of the Gringonneur deck (if indeed any at all are remaining").
The other cards you have shown don't at all look 14th century, more modern redrawings of other cards. Am still confused!
Best
Brendan
 

Philippe

Yes, there are only 17 remaining cards, including a Page of Swords. Missing cards are the fool, the magician, the high priestess, the empress, the wheel of fortune, the devil, the star.

The minors of the Golden Renaissance Tarot are taken from the Palazzo Schifanoia' s frescoes

Here is the original in the Bibliothèque Nationale :

http://gallica.bnf.fr/services/engi...date/sort.descending&filter=century all "15"#

I recommend you zoom in on each card, it's stunning
 

brendanxx

Grigonneur

Thanks Philippe - yes they're wonderful - strange that the first are still, to my mind at least, the most beautiful and powerful - amazing too that it's possible they were created just to distract a mad king!
 

DeToX

Fantastic photographs on the BnF site. Thanks for the link.
 

Barleywine

Taking a step back, I'm fascinated by Berti and Dworkin's reconstruction using the frescoes, and will probably buy the deck. It will give me a new model to work with for the scenic pips. But I'll never again be able to think of the 2 of Wands without seeing a castrated man, the 8 of Swords as an imminent beheading or the 9 of Swords as a standing, decapitated figure with flames (or maybe it's gushing blood?) coming out of its neck. Thinking about it though, the modern take on the 8 of Swords (almost total sensory deprivation) and 9 of Swords (abject mental anguish) aren't that far afield from these images. I'll have to ponder some more about that 2 of Wands, though. Maybe that man in the RWS version has his separated "manhood" (the staff and the globe) in his two hands and is trying to figure out how to reconcile himself to that.