Franco-Spanish Tarot

variantventures

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This is the knave of swords from a 17th Century tarot deck printed in France in the Spanish style. Unfortunately not enough of this deck remains to create a tarot deck, but there are sufficient court figures to make a deck of playing cards.

This is an interesting deck, to me, because the colors are extremely lush and that's not really a feature of playing cards at that point in time.
 

blue_fusion

the line art looks really neat/clean for a deck done in that period. The colors look nice and warm - for some reason they remind me of decks printed in the '60s and '70s - it has that retro vibe, like the Aquarian Tarot.

I hope you can work on a Tarot version of this as well. I think there are enough cards remaining to be the bases for reconstructing the missing cards. Heck, the Estensi deck managed it, and that was based on the Gringonneur, which had a lot of missing cards!

Good luck! :)
 

variantventures

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I really don't think enough remains as this image shows all the cards we have. This deck is from Limogne, a city located in the South-West of France near, but not extremely so, to the Spanish border. This follows the Spanish layout of having a King on foot, a mounted Knight, and a Knave on foot as can be seen in the complete court of swords. The straight swords (instead of curved swords) and the style of cup and the rough club rather than a smooth baton mark this deck as being Spanish style. The seated king and queen on the far left of the image do not meet any of the criteria for a regular deck of playing cards. They are probably trumps. However, it is not uncommon for printers to print multiple decks on single sheets so we can't rule out the idea that the seated king and queen are part of a separate deck. The lack of a discernible suit for the queen argues against this in this case, I believe. But note the imperial double eagle on the chest of the seated king and consider that we have other instances of cards with what appears to be a fifth suit or, possibly, a trump suit that feature this double eagle.

The Rothschild Collection at the Louvre contains a 15th Century Germano-Italian deck that shares many similarities with this deck.
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Note the suits of coins, cups, staves (a pilgrim staff in this case), and swords. Note that it uses a Swiss/German court layout (King, Over, Under). Note also the fifth suit of shields (a very common suit in German/Swiss decks) with the eagle.

Again, this might be a case of printing multiple decks to make greatest use of a sheet of paper. But it might also be the case that we're seeing some early trumps.
 

variantventures

Here's the deck I put together using the images from this deck and using other Spanish decks for reference on how the pip cards should be arranged.

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blue_fusion

The pips look quite intriguing! The black staves, the big hexagram, the red swords. The color scheme is nicely warm.

I meant earlier thaf maybe you could do some "frankenstein cards": cut up the head of one, place it on the body of another, remove some details, add some from another card. That sort of thing.
 

gregory

I can't see your image. I get:

403. That’s an error.
Your client does not have permission to get URL/myKZIg3E3H_mH4nUjpmsSEZcYLbFLc8P9Gq8DArGKNkRIbWRzjsYos3l8UEqk25T0_6Y27AAvZvuyFQ=w1256-h803-rw from this server. (Client IP address: (oops deleted in case it is YOUR IP !) )

Forbidden That’s all we know.


WAAAAAAH :(
 

variantventures

I can't see your image. I get:

403. That’s an error.
Your client does not have permission to get URL/myKZIg3E3H_mH4nUjpmsSEZcYLbFLc8P9Gq8DArGKNkRIbWRzjsYos3l8UEqk25T0_6Y27AAvZvuyFQ=w1256-h803-rw from this server. (Client IP address: (oops deleted in case it is YOUR IP !) )

Forbidden That’s all we know.


WAAAAAAH :(
Which image? The deck I put together?
 

blue_fusion

It was visible a couple of minutes after you posted it. Now the only imagea showing are the first and third ones you posted. I never got to view the second one. It might help if you just uploaded them here as attachments, or maybe use a different image hosting site?
 

gregory

It was visible a couple of minutes after you posted it. Now the only images showing are the first and third ones you posted. I never got to view the second one. It might help if you just uploaded them here as attachments, or maybe use a different image hosting site?
Pardon ? It's the THIRD I can't see. I can see the big knave and the Rothschild Collection cards but not the "deck you put together", VV)