Visconti Tarots: Differentiating the Versions

[Rusty Neon]

Some help for the Visconti-challenged, including me.

The website of Andy's Playing Cards has four excellent pages on differenting between the three different historical versions of the Visconti Tarot:

Andy's Playing Cards:

http://it.geocities.com/a_pollett/cards31.htm
page 1 of 4 here

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The three historical versions are:

BBV - Brera-Brambilla Visconti
CYV - Cary-Yale Visconti
PMBVS - Pierpont-Morgan Bergamo Visconti-Sforza

BBV - 48 surviving subjects (2 trumps, 7 courts, 39 pip cards)
CYV - 67 surviving subjects (11 trumps, 17 courts, 39 pip cards)
PMBVS - 74 surviving subjects (20 trumps, 15 courts, 39 pip cards)

Brera-Brambilla Visconti
a.k.a.
Brambilla
Contessa di Mazzarino


Cary-Yale Visconti
a.k.a.
Visconti di Modrone
Gonzaga
Bembo

Cicognara Pierpont-Morgan Bergamo Visconti-Sforza
a.k.a.
Carrara
Colleoni-Baglioni
Bembo
Cicognara

____________________

Rusty Neon's plea for assistance:

There are various photoreproduction and restored decks available. I would be grateful if someone could tell us, which of the three particular historical versions each of those various photoreproduction and restored decks relates to.

Thanks.
__________________

Of the three Visconti decks, the CYV seems to be the odd-man-out as far as court cards and major arcana:
__________________

Number of court cards:

" ... in each suit the CYV set contains a female knave, a male knave, a female cavalier, a male cavalier, a queen and a king (S.Kaplan refers to the two unique courts also as "the maid" and "the mounted lady"). This is the only western deck of cards known which features a similar set of courts."

"Due to the increased number of courts, the Cary-Yale tarot did not contain the usual 78 cards. Had the trumps been 22, as in the Pierpont-Morgan version, the total would have been 86, but this is uncertain: we can only be sure about the number of suit cards, 64 instead of the usual 56."

____________________

Major Arcana:

CYV has three extra Virtues cards not found in today's tarot:

Faith
Hope
Charity

____________________

 

[Cerulean]

Rusty's question:

There are various photoreproduction and restored decks available. I would be grateful if someone could tell us, which of the three particular historical versions each of those various photoreproduction and restored decks relates to.

Cerulean's reply:
As far as my searches and purchases go, I've only seen the Cary Yale as cards available through U.S. Games Inc.

All the other photoreproduction card decks that I've seen are versions of the Pierpont Morgan Visconti with various devil and tower cards.

If someone can update me differently, I'd appreciate knowing...

There are a few 'museum-quality' catalogs that show cards from some of the Visconti decks: the only one that I know of that shows the Brambilla-Brera cards is reviewed on Tarot Passages.com. If you wish, I can add a link to the catalogue. I've never seen the beautiful Brambilla-Brera as cards, although I dearly would wish a photo-reproduction. The catalogue reproductions are glorious, although there's only a few cards available.

 

[Fulgour]

Some help for the Visconti-challenged, including me.
____________________

Rusty Neon's plea for assistance:

There are various photoreproduction and restored decks available. I would be grateful if someone could tell us, which of the three particular historical versions each of those various photoreproduction and restored decks relates to.

Thanks.
__________________

Of the three Visconti decks, the CYV seems to be the odd-man-out as far as court cards and major arcana:
__________________

Nine entries found: Visconti
http://www.tarotgarden.com/
The Tarot Garden Database: General Search

 

[le pendu]

Agreeing with all of the above:

CARY-YALE VISCONTI
The only Cary-Yale I know of is the Cary-Yale Visconti published by US Games.

BRERA-BRAMBILLA VISCONTI
There are no published versions of the Brera-Brambilla Visconti that I know of, but some of the images can be found in a little book called "The Art of Tarot", I plan on scanning those when we come to them.

PIERPONT-MORGAN BERGAMO VISCONTI-SFORZA
All of the rest of the Visconti decks are versions of the Pierpont-Morgan Bergamo Visconti-Sforza, the most complete deck, with 75 of the 78 images. There are, at least, five available versions of this deck:

Three "large" versions
US Games
Dal Negro
il Meneghello

and two gold foiled standard size deck from Lo Scarabeo
The Visconti Tarots - deck alone
The Visconti Tarots - deck and book

These decks each have a different version of The Tower and The Devil.

Historical Note:
It is fairly well established that even though this deck comes down to us missing only The Devil, The Tower and the Knight of Coins, 6 of the historic cards were "added" later by a different artist than the original.

There is debate among historians as to whether these were *replacement* cards for lost cards, or *additional* cards, not in the original deck, that were added later. The cards that were probably by a different artist are Fortitude, Temperance, Star, Moon, Sun, and World.

Some of the members of AT have contributed work on an excellent site dedicated to the historic research of these and other early decks. One of the main theories at this site is that the 6 cards were *added* and not part of the original deck, this has been nicknamed the 5X14 Theory. You can read more about it here:
http://geocities.com/autorbis/pbm14new.html

For the purposes of our study, since we are studying the "cards", I suggest we discuss all cards, replacement, added, or whatever. The focus should perhaps be on the decks as we have them now, as complete and useful tools, as well as historical curiosities.

robert

 

[Ross G Caldwell]

Hi Rusty,

Some help for the Visconti-challenged, including me.
______________

The three historical versions are:

BBV - Brera-Brambilla Visconti
CYV - Cary-Yale Visconti
PMBVS - Pierpont-Morgan Bergamo Visconti-Sforza

BBV - 48 surviving subjects (2 trumps, 7 courts, 39 pip cards)
CYV - 67 surviving subjects (11 trumps, 17 courts, 39 pip cards)
PMBVS - 74 surviving subjects (20 trumps, 15 courts, 39 pip cards)

Brera-Brambilla Visconti
a.k.a.
Brambilla
Contessa di Mazzarino


Cary-Yale Visconti
a.k.a.
Visconti di Modrone
Gonzaga
Bembo

Cicognara Pierpont-Morgan Bergamo Visconti-Sforza
a.k.a.
Carrara
Colleoni-Baglioni
Bembo
Cicognara

____________________

Rusty Neon's plea for assistance:

There are various photoreproduction and restored decks available. I would be grateful if someone could tell us, which of the three particular historical versions each of those various photoreproduction and restored decks relates to.

Thanks.
__________________

Brera or Brambilla (named because Giovanni Brambilla bought the cards around 1900; Brera is the museum in Milan where they are currently held) - .

12 cards of the Brera Brambilla deck is illustrated in b/w in Kaplan vol. I pp. 96-98 (reduced).

20 of the cards are illustrated in color in Christina Olsen, "The Art of Tarot" (Abbeville, 1995) (reduced).

All 48 cards are shown in color in Sandrina Bandera "I tarocchi: il caso e la fortuna" (Milan, Brera, 1999) (full-size. This is the edition to get. I would scan them, but I only have a (b/w!) photocopy).

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Cary-Yale (so-called because part of the Cary collection at Yale)

Kaplan reproduces 16 of the cards in b/w in vol. I, pp. 88-95, and 49 of the cards in vol. II, pp. 26-35.

Bandera reproduces only 20 of the cards, although in full size.

A full-size reproduction (including modern replacement cards) is published by US Games. This is the edition to get, since it is the only place where you can view the whole deck in color.

The Beneicke website also has the whole deck, although only a few cards are in color
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The Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo (named after the collections or city) or "Visconti-Sforza" (because containing Visconti and Sforza motifs, and made for the family of that name)

The reproductions are numerous and have already been noted by others above.

Ross

 

[Huck]

there are more than 3 Visconti Sforza decks

There are - beside the already mentioned 3 deck-fragments with many cards, also other Visconti Sforza cards. Kaplan gives an overview at Encyclopedia 2, page 45 (it seems, that the list is still reliable and displays the actual state(?)).

Lombardy: 23 cards, from this 15 trumps
Rosenthal: 23 cards, from this 5 trumps
von Bartsch: 13 cards, from this 5 trumps
Fournier: 6 cards, from this 2 trumps
Victoria Albert: 4 cards, from this 2 trumps
Lombardy II: 4 cards, from this 2 trumps
Bonomi: 4 cards, from this 2 trumps
Guildhall: 1 card, from this 1 trump
Andrioletti : 1 card, from this 0 trumps
Kaplan-Marzoli : 1 card, from this 0 trumps
Kaplan-Biedak : 1 card, from this 0 trumps
Lombardy III : 1 card, from this 0 trumps

so, outside of the 3 big fragments there are 82 cards, from this are 34 trumps. In the case of Lombardy I it's somehow a little unlikely, that this cards are "really old", so the true number might be 59 cards totally, 19 trumps, so together less than the Pierpont-Morgan-Bergamo for instance (74 cards). The single Guildhall card is in debate, if it is part of the Guildhall-Goldschmidt-group, which are not counted as Visconti Sforza.