Marseilles Decks -- an Overview

catboxer

After having worked on the Marseilles project whose results are entirely contained on this board, I thought it might be worthwhile for us to sum up our thoughts on this topic, having completed our analysis of the 21 trumps and Le Fou.

That tarot began in 15th-century Renaissance Italy there is no doubt. However, the Italian genesis of tarot did not result in the establishment of a firm tradition of pictorial consistency or even a uniform trump sequence. Instead, early Italian tarots and tarot-related productions were frequently innovative and experimental, not unlike 20th-century tarot. Numerous tarot-like card decks appeared during this time: the Sola Busca, the Mantegna pack, the Florentine Minchiate, and others. Even what we have come to regard as the standard trumps were executed in numerous and various formats, and there was a tremendous variety in the quality of early Italian decks as well, ranging from the elegant hand-painted packs commissioned by the nobility to some extremely crude woodblock cards which were a working-class analog to the deluxe models. What tarot lacked during this time, in short, was consistency.

Some time after 1500 the first Marseilles-style decks appeared. These were direct descendants of a Milanese pattern which appears to have been embodied in the Cary Sheet, an atypically elegant uncut sheet of Italian woodcut tarot designs. Marseilles-type packs were born in the cultural cross-pollination that resulted from French military adventurism in Lombardy. Their authors quickly did what Italian card makers had failed to do: they established a consistent and, as time went on, inviolable pictorial vocabulary, so that the trump pictures became standardized, and their sequence firmly established. This was key in establishing the idea of the trump sequence as a system, rather than just a random and haphazard collection of graphic abstractions. With the birth of the Marseilles style, we see the birth of tarot as we know it.

As with the Italian decks, there is an enormous variation in quality among the Marseilles packs. However, the best of them, scrupulously obedient to the strict observation of the details of the pictorial tradition which they exemplified, undebatably achieve the level of high art. And while the genesis of the Marseilles style signals the establishment of an extremely solid tradition, we should note that some of the elements these decks standardized originated with the Marseilles style. These include the World, the Chariot's severely foreshortened horses, and the very Aquarian lady on the Star card. These images have come to be associated with what people visualize when they hear the names of those cards.

Understanding the Marseilles tradition is key to understanding tarot. The Marseilles artists absorbed and synthesized everything that had gone before them, then gave birth to a type of deck that was truly systematic, as opposed to the odd and rather random collections of pictures that had preceded them. As this tradition persisted through time, it became sanctified, to the extent that any long-standing tradition does.

Thus it is that anybody possessing a reproduction of a good quality Marseilles deck can be confident that "the real deal" rests securely in his hand.
 

jmd

Fantastic post, catboxer!

Before posting a reply, allow me the opportunity to thank catboxer, Diana and all the other regular and occasional posters who have so enriched this Forum with their various complementary contributions.

Catboxer has certainly encapsulated really wonderfully what has so far been described - so permit me to only echo some aspects of some paragraphs focussing and modifying only parts I may still find myself somewhat at variance with.

That the earliest known extant deck dates from fifteenth century northern Italy there is no doubt. Does this, however, indicate that Tarot's genesis is to be found there? Numerous picture cards, and possibly also (probably only pip or pip & court) card games arise out of an earlier date - certainly to the mid-fourteenth century, and very likely earlier.

Of the significant impulse of Renaissance northern Italy, however, is on the one hand its wonderful eclectic community, reaching for spiritual insight from texts newly re-discovered, and on the other the way in which these eclectic impulses achieved some form of newly managed syncretic unity.

Even if Tarot's genesis antedates this time, it is undoubtedly through the narrow passage of this Renaissance syncretism in which it was in-breathed with new life - containing echoes of the past, but imbued with ever present spiritual impulses newly arising in humanity's emerging new soul consciousness.

Various modifications to cards were made for reasons we can but only variously speculate about. With the Marseille, however, an established sure and secure foundation was laid, providing both hidden mysteries upon which many wild speculations have been made, as well as a text to be exegetised. It is through such exegesis that endless depths of imaginative, inspired and intuitive insights are made possible - each new age, each individual, adding to the store of ages gone by. It is also this latter which transcends the limits of history and which leads us to, at times, periods antedating Tarot's mediaeval gestation.

With a tiny modification to catboxer's sentence I can only concur:
  • Understanding the Marseille is the key to understanding the Tarot.
 

Cerulean

I enjoyed reading the posts and summary.
I think I need to check Tom Tadforlittle's site to check some dates and samples again.
Thanks.
Mari H.
 

Supletion

oh my, congradulations :)

i enjoyed very much participating in the discussions when i did, i still have alot to read and maybe even add a little, and thanks for the great summery.

and ill also take the opportunity to share a thought i've had - after looking for a while, i've found out that there is no hebrew book about the history and iconography of tarot, and no source containing the information in an ordered and full manner, only a small number of websites containing partial information. i am therefore thinking of creating such source, a website, translating english sources and also using some of the valuable material contained in this discussion group.