Historical patterns might be a start
In general:
Andy's Playing cards give a very nice synopsis of many early trump card sequences and also the standard subjects of major arcana to start---I believe you are asking about the order and subjects of the major arcana as trumps.
http://it.geocities.com/a_pollett/cards3.htm
Please scroll down to the 'classic table of trumps' for a typical historical sample...there's more. Hope these points might help:
The trumps and early cards:
http://it.geocities.com/a_pollett/cards26.htm
But prior to the Northern Italy patterns, some history of cards as games in Europe, etc., might be of interest--scroll down to Naibi, Tarots and Hunting decks:
http://a_pollett.tripod.com/cards.htm
You may notice that it mentions the poetic writing of Petrach's Trumps as one of the sources for what came to be known as the 'trumps' when speaking of the Northern Italian orders of the majors.
Here's Andy's Playing Cards notes:
"The enlarged pack was soon named carte da trionfi (trump cards, but literally meaning "triumph cards"), probably after the poem I Trionfi by Petrarch, and this was also the name of the game played with them. The word tarocco ("tarot") came into use later on, being found in written sources only as of the early 16th century.
More than one source mentions the "triumph cards" (or "cards of Lombardy") and the "cards for playing" (or "small cards for playing") as separate items. One source also mentions "emperor cards", although these ones have never been identified. Therefore, in the early 1400s at least two varieties of playing cards were in use at the same time, i.e. smaller ones without trumps (referred to as "of Saracen origin"), and larger ones which included the set of trumps, of Italian origin...."
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In terms of specific arcana samples and discussions of the iconography:
It takes awhile to sift through historical sources and more questions probably arise. If you want specific discussions of each arcana, Robert O'Neill's free essays also have been noted as very interesting.
http://tarot.com/about-tarot/library/boneill/
There's so many discussions about specific iconography, images and people in tarot history...and so many people who have posted very specific topics of interest, so I'm only posting a few specific sites that really dig into the historical side and note common points....hopefully this is helpful. The questions seemed to me to be asking general information--I hope those two sites with discussions of majors are helpful if you are interested in historical major arcana sources.
Best wishes,
Cerulean