Versions of the Visconti Devil

BrightEye

I've been pondering Rosanne's devil question and am beginning to wonder when the devil was added to the Visconti deck and why there are different ones. What does your Visconti devil look like? I'm getting confused. My Visconti is a Lo Scarabeo repoduction and shows a devil much like the men without heads. But when I look at scans of the Visconti Sforza, the devil looks different.
 

Rosanne

Hi BrightEye- there are only 74 cards existing in the Visconti deck. In all the remaining cards we have the Tower and the Devil are not there. The other two that are missing are the 3 Swords and Knight of Coins. In the Visconti gold edition the artist Luigi Scapini painted replacements. The 3 and the Knight (female) are in the Yale deck. It is that all decks (15 I believe) do not seem to have a Devil or a Tower, which seems to indicate they were not there originally, or they were removed for sensibility reasons.
The TdM is the one that I think has a Devil like the Blemmeys/ Gog of Magog.
~Rosanne
 

BrightEye

Rosanne said:
Hi BrightEye- there are only 74 cards existing in the Visconti deck. In all the remaining cards we have the Tower and the Devil are not there. The other two that are missing are the 3 Swords and Knight of Coins. In the Visconti gold edition the artist Luigi Scapini painted replacements. The 3 and the Knight (female) are in the Yale deck. It is that all decks (15 I believe) do not seem to have a Devil or a Tower, which seems to indicate they were not there originally, or they were removed for sensibility reasons.
The TdM is the one that I think has a Devil like the Blemmeys/ Gog of Magog.
~Rosanne
Thank you, Rosanne. Do you have a scan of your TdM devil?

I like the idea of female knights by the way

I'm not sure which one the Visconti gold ed. is. The edition I have doesn't mention Scapini. But it does mention Charles VI and the Rothschild sheet. The devil in my deck seems to have been taken from that because the Rothschild sheet shows a being with the head of a devil chewing a human, it has bat wings, a human face on its stomach and enormous bird feet. Does that sound familiar? It reminded me of the men without heads we discussed in the other threads - and cannibalism (which the New World Acephali were vaguely associated with). I wonder why people at the time would have depicted a devil like that.

Do you know when the missing cards were added to the deck? 20th century?
 

Moonbow

BrightEye, have a read of this link:

http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards31.htm

Sorry to answer with a link, but this is well worth reading and keeping. There is a lot of information here about the various Visconti decks.
 

BrightEye

Thanks, Moonbow. Still perusing the site.
 

Debra

Brighteye, I believe, is correct that there are multiple versions of the "reconstructed" cards in the Visconti reproductions.

It's my understanding that there are two different sets of "added cards" in the LoScarabeo version, depending on if you get the first version or the "re-release." Here's what TarotGarden says:

"The Visconti Tarots (Lo Scarabeo Original Gold Foil Edition)

Designer(s), Artist(s): Bonifacio Bembo, A. A. Atanassov
Country of Publication: Italy
Number of Cards: 78
Publication Year: 1997
Publication Status: Out-of-Print

Description: Original edition of Lo Scarabeo's gold-foil reprint of the famous Visconti deck, distributed in North America by U.S. Games Systems. A later edition of the gold-foil deck was distributed in North America in 2002 by Llewellyn Worldwide, with recreation of the “missing” cards similarly attributed to A. A. Atanassov. However, the actual designs of three of the four cards (Devil, Tower, and Knight of Pentacles) differ significantly from those included in the first edition. The foil tones also appear more “copper” in hue."

and

"The Visconti Tarot (Lo Scarabeo Gold Foil Edition Re-Release)

Designer(s), Artist(s): Bonifacio Bembo, A. A. Atanassov, Tiberio Gonard, Giordano Berti
Country of Publication: Italy
Number of Cards: 78
Publication Year: 1998, 2002
Publication Status: In Print

Description: Rerelease of Lo Scarabeo's gold-foil edition of the historically-significant Visconti deck. As with Lo Scarabeo's previous release, the recreations of the “missing” cards in this deck are attributed to A. A. Atanassov, but the actual designs differ significantly from those included in the first edition."


My version says Llewellyn on the bottom of the box. The Devil is a head/body/chicken-legged dude with sad eyes on the belly and a half-eaten body coming out of his mouth. The Tower is shown quite close-up, with two people falling right at the front/bottom of the card. I've seen reproductions of two other versions of these cards. The Knight of Pents is on a horse, facing left, and his hair is perfect LOL.
 

Debra

MY version has a different Kn. of Pents than Tarot Garden shows for the "re-release" even though the box says "Llewellyn" on the bottom (my knight is looking left, not at us). If you go to TarotGarden and look at the images for the Tarot of Visconti Grand Trumps, you'll see one of the "reconstructed" Devils. That's NOT the one I have in my deck. So...maybe I have the original LS version, not the re-released one. Confusing!

If you search "Visconti" at the TarotGarden site, you can find several different reconstructions of the tower and devil and Kn. of Coins cards. It's very amusing!
 

BrightEye

Debra said:
My version says Llewellyn on the bottom of the box. The Devil is a head/body/chicken-legged dude with sad eyes on the belly and a half-eaten body coming out of his mouth. The Tower is shown quite close-up, with two people falling right at the front/bottom of the card. I've seen reproductions of two other versions of these cards. The Knight of Pents is on a horse, facing left, and his hair is perfect LOL.
Thanks, Debra. My version says Lo Scarabeo, but this is the devil that comes with my deck. Funny little thing!