Uncut Sheets of Cards

Uncut Sheets of Cards - links and resources

Once upon a time I only knew about the Cary sheet: now I see there is the "Rosenwald" sheet, and the "Austria Sheet", and the "Rothschild" Sheet, and the "Dick Sheets", and the Dauphine France Sheet ... my goodness you historians have been holding out on me

Are they considered less important than the Cary Sheet? Are there any others you haven't told me about?? Aside from the Cary sheet, and the "Dauphine France Sheet" and one card of the "Austria Sheet" - I don't find the others on line -- anyone have more links?

Is there some place where all this information is organised? (if not, can we organise it here?)

(Edited to say, "yes we can" and "here I go" updating to include information added later in this thread)

• The Cary Sheethttp://highway55.library.yale.edu/PHOTONEGIMG/zoom/Z361/z3613378.jpg Milanese, Fifteenth century, from Cary Collection in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. [PH]
  
  
• The Rosenwald" sheet (link to be added when found or created) - Florence, Fifteenth century, from Rosenwald Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC [PH]
  
  
• The Austria Sheet (The Knight of Wands plus some edges of others)
  
  
• Bibliothèque de l'École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts sheet (page 128 Kaplan)Late Fifteenth or early sixteenth century. (Thank you Robert)
  
  
• The Rothschild Sheethttp://www.tarothistory.com/images/encyclopedia2.jpg (thank you Robert) from a fifteenth century Bolognese Tarot, Rothschild Collection, Musée du Louvre, Paris.[PH] (Kaplan page 129)
  
  
• Metroplitan Museum "Dick Sheets" (thank you Huck) from Ferrara or Venice, Brisbane Dick Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art.[PH]

PH = details as explained by Paul Huson in Mystical Origins of the Tarot, Apendix 3 "Where to See the Originals".

What makes the Cary sheet so important for our purposes is that it is clearly either Tarot or very closely related to tarot's Atouts - whereas many of the other sheets around, though card, are not necessarily tarot (and both the Dauphine and Austria sheets are examples of this latter).

It would of course be very useful to have access to all the uncut sheets, as it would likewise be to have access to all extant cards.

jmd, (?). Rosenwald is also Tarot, Rothschild too.

firemaiden, they are hidden in the Kaplan books, here is another one:

http://trionfi.com/0/j/d/sheets/

the Chariot is most interesting ... as it is recognizable, that a group of persons is on the chariot. There is also a group on this card:

http://trionfi.com/0/j/d/ferrasingle

The group might be "Ferrara-style". Early Milanese Tarots had female charioteers.

Huck that's fantastic. What an amazing resource your museum is. What is the name of the one you've linked to, and its approximate age?

The name is usually after the Museum, where it is located, in France.

"Fig 2. Le Chariot (copyright) Coll. Musée français de la Carte à jouer, Issy-les-Moulineaux. Discovered in 1988, this atout belongs to a scattered tarot of which we know two other cards in the National museum of Warsaw. This deck was painted in Ferrara around 1455." - said the expert once, whereby 1455 looks "estimated".

I call it Ferrara-Single.

Well ... this might be possibly Sagramoro's work. Sagramoro might be the very first Trionfi-painter, he was the painter at 1.1.1441- and the painter in 1442. In 1455 he still was the major Trionfi-painter, retiring 1456.

After Michelino da Besozzo, but the Michelino deck is a little far off in the motifs - Greek gods.

Oh Thank you Huck, yes, I remember reading that article a few days ago on your site with the chariots driven by women and finding it very interesting, but I couldn't remember where I'd seen that single painted card.

So how do we refer to those 20 sheets in the Metropolitan museum, the Metropolitan sheets? OH, never mind, I found it -- those are the "Dick Sheets".

Oh my goodness, I didn't realise it but Robert le Pendu posted links to the Rothschild sheets - sheet one and sheet two.

God that Devil card is fantastic! Is that the oldest devil card?

firemaiden said:

Oh my goodness, I didn't realise it but Robert le Pendu posted links to the Rothschild sheets - sheet one and sheet two.

God that Devil card is fantastic! Is that the oldest devil card?

Click to expand...

Hard to say. It's seen as a Bolognese deck.

In "our opinion" (trionfi.com) the oldest devil is "no devil", but the "visconti-snake" ... which characteristally has a man in its mouth, like all early Tarot devils, including that of the Rothschild collection in the Bolognese style. This card survived in two examples (Visconti-Sforza), in "our opinion" belonging to the same deck type.

This deck type started in the year 1468 ("our opinion") at the wedding (2nd June) of duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza with Bona of Savoyen, accompanying the event as a "trionfi" deck.

Naturally this was not a devil, but a normal heraldic device.

In "our opinion" the heraldic motif was changed in a conscious action to a Sforza hostile motif (devil) - likely not before 1477, after Galeazzo Maria Sforza was killed rather precisely 530 years ago at St. Stephan's day in December 1476.
This "blaming version" was mass-poduced in contrast to other versions before, so it manifested itself as the "standard Tarot" later.

... but it's just only "our opinion".

Just adding: Bologna is not an impossible place for the first massproduced Trionfi deck.
There exists a document just for the year 1477.

http://trionfi.com/0/l/51-bologna/

as the type of Rothschild deck is assumed to be Bolognese with good arguments ( and we do know of a specific Milanese foe with good personal connections in Bologna) it might be really the "first devil" - after the Visconti Snake.

The Visconti Snake! I've seen it now, Huck, thank you so much for pointing that out! What was the snake considered to be, do you think? A joker? Why has it not been considered to be the missing Devil card?

Do we have any idea which is older, the Rosenwald or the Rothschild and Beaux-Arts sheets?

firemaiden said:

The Visconti Snake! I've seen it now, Huck, thank you so much for pointing that out! What was the snake considered to be, do you think? A joker? Why has it not been considered to be the missing Devil card?

Click to expand...

Hm, good question.
Playing Card reseach was blinded with the imagination, that the Tarot design was more or less ready in 1450 cause it was assumed, that Pierpont Morgan Bergamo Tarocchi was complete (22 trumps, with Devil and Tower) before.

Ron Decker made alternative suggestions already in the begin of the 70's ad researched the question already a little bit, but stopped and failed to publish (as far I know). Another, who brought this argument once, was John Berry (we heard). Lothar (autorbis, trionfi.com) discovered the possibility, that it could have been a 5x14-deck, in 1989, just having started to read Kaplan Encyclopedia I, without deep knowledge about playing card history and history of 15th century in Italy. He calculated the known facts and came to the result, that the possibility "5x14-deck" had more than 99 % odds again less than 1% for "standard Tarot" and " PMB had 22 cards".
He told about his opinion to various experts, who didn't take him serious. It was not understood, what he was talking about.

So things like the Visconti-Snake were from the normal view ("Tarot already ready") just a curious anomaly, nothing of importance("a joker perhaps?"). From Lothar's point of view it just told the story, how the devil developed inside the game and part of the story, how things advanced from 14 to 22 special cards.

Do we have any idea which is older, the Rosenwald or the Rothschild and Beaux-Arts sheets?

Click to expand...

Perhaps there are some informations, but it is difficult to get all this info together. The glorious researcher community of the early 80ies (Dummett and his cooperators) is now "old" ... Dummett is 80 or so. Internet is not "theii" media. John McLeod and Dummett together wrote a big book (very expensive, very thick, but very expensive) about Tarot Rules recently (John McLeod is not too old and he uses internet, but oldest Tarot history is not his field). Well, that playing problem is very far off to the question that we focus, and far off normal book buyers's reality. The price can only be paid by libraries or very rich fans. So this does move nothing or only processes something in far future.

.. We're moving Tarot history, cause we use internet and we don't take high prizes. Naturally these researchers of the past without internet have done a lot (and they had much more time for it), so it's difficult to get all their puzzle-pieces together.