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.
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.