frelkins
sorry nisaba, here in the history forums we are enablers. because the historical decks need to get printed and stay in print. so we need you to please buy them all. buy as many as possible. 
Visconti
Rosanne
nisaba said:
I should tell you that re- creation of the Visconti by Lo Scarabeo called the Visconti Gold- is actually a re- drawing or re painting- it is not an exact copy like the photo reproductions. The artist is a miniaturist (Atanassov) it is not a reduced photocopy of the original. So some details are missing. Ummm like the string to Death's Bow, the red ball on The Moon card. It is not a re touch up of the original cards. I think it great though.
I also agree with frelkins- buy all of them. They are wonderful.
~Rosanne
SolSionnach
Just a note: I'm very into historical decks (see my profile!), but I sold my large-sized Pierpont-Morgan Visconti.nisaba said:
Why?
I didn't care for it, that's why.
You don't **need** to have anything in your collection.
You are poor right now (per your own admission). We are in a deep, deep recession. You don't need one of these decks right now. Just sayin.
nisaba
<grin>Rosanne said:
<puzzled look>
I've obviously spent too much time in the de-enablement thread. I really don't know how to feel ...
<hides grin>
SolSionnach
Girlfriend, if you can't afford them, you can't afford them!nisaba said:
However, you are an adult and I will now refrain from saying anything else.
Sherryl
Review of Visconti-Sforza decks available
Nisaba and other Visconti-Sforza aficionados:
Let me help you choose the perfect Visconti-Sforza deck for yourself so you don’t have to waste money trying several decks until you find the one you like.
My fascination with this deck led to my obsession with tarot history, which has taken over my life and my bookshelves. This deck is a window into the late medieval world that produced Tarot. It allows us to actually hold in our hands the kind of luxury item the International Gothic era was known for. I have most versions of the deck, so I thank you for giving me an opportunity to get them all out again for a comparison look.
I was fortunate to be able to see the originals in the Morgan Library in NYC about three years ago. The cards are large and loaded with gold leaf. The court cards in the suit of cups are almost solid gold, so it's difficult to distinguish the figures from the background. The curators at the Morgan are probably still trying to wipe my nose prints and saliva off the glass case!
The trumps are a bit worse for wear, especially the Lovers. Photo reproductions show you all the damage – warts and all – including the nasty holes at the top of every card. It looks like someone displayed the cards on a wall with rusty thumb tacks. More likely, they were strung on a ribbon or string to keep the cards in order and to make it difficult to snitch a card from the pack. As far as I know, the only cleaned-up version is by Lo Scarabeo.
My main criteria for judging a deck is how the replacement Tower and Devil are done. Does the style blend with the other cards? Are they historically correct or do they imitate the TdM? A Devil with two little people in chains, and a Tower with lightning and falling people are anachronistic. I also look at the replacement Knight of Coins.
If you just want to study the images and don’t need a deck, I recommend two out-of-print but inexpensive paperback books:
The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards, by Michael Dummett, published by George Braziller, 1986. Large, good quality, full-page reproductions of all the cards.
The Art of Tarot, Christina Olsen, Abbeville Press. Small in size but a real gem. She has color prints of all the early hand painted decks plus a sampling of decks throughout tarot history. This is the illustrated version of her PhD thesis on tarot history. A real gem of a book for just immersing yourself in the images.
Here are opinionated comments on all the versions in my collection.
Lo Scarabeo has two versions of the replacement cards, both done by A. A. Atanassov:
1) More historic version:
The Devil is a fantastical creature with horns, bat wings and bird claw feet. He is swallowing a person, and has a huge human face attached to his torso. The Tower has a massive wall that fills the foreground. Flames leap from the tower, and there are two red suns in the top corners. Two falling figures are about to hit bottom in the center of the card. The Knight of Coins is dressed in an entirely different color than the other court figures of the same suit, which seems inexcusable. This rendering is in older, non-gold leaf printings of the deck, the mini-version (3 by 1.5 inches), and some gold printings of the deck.
2) More fanciful version:
The Devil is more TdM-like, standing in flames instead of on a pedestal, with two human figures chained to each other instead of chained to the pedestal. There is no face on the Devil’s abdomen, and his body is long and graceful, with long angelic wings. The Tower is a slender column on a base with a domed cupola. Lightening strikes the tower and splits it down one side. There are two falling figures. These cards are modeled too much on the TdM for my taste. This rendering is in the 2002 gold foil printing, but I seem to have a gold foil version with the more historic rendering described above. Unfortunately, the box is in my storage unit so I can’t get to it to check what edition is it. The Knight of Coins has clothes the same fabric as other coins court figures, but the rendering of the knight and his horse is very inferior to the other style. Instead of filling the card as the other court figures do, the Knight is disproportionately small and his horse is less animated. His outer tunic has no folds and looks like a triangular tent. The rendering is stiff and amateurish and does not blend with the other court cards.
I’m a little confused right now about which Lo Scarabeo printings of the regular-sized deck have which versions of the Tower and Devil. If someone really needs to know, I can probably go to my storage unit next week and look at the boxes to find out.
You can see the printed sheets of cards from about 1500 that the Devil and Tower were supposedly based on in The Encyclopedia of Tarot by Stuart Kaplan, Vol. 1, pages 125 through 131.
Here are some other comments on the two printings of the deck in my collection:
Lo Scarabeo 2000 edition:
• The "A Bon Droyt" motto is printed upside down on the 1, 2, and 4 of Rods and the 3 of Coins. This is corrected in the 2002 edition.
• Size: A little more slender than most decks, in keeping with the original proportions of the cards.
• Devil & Tower: The booklet says the artist used the Rosenwald sheet as his model, but it actually follows the Rothschild sheet very closely and is fairly historically accurate.
Lo Scarabeo 2002 gold leaf edition – book-deck set
• Size: A bit wider and longer than 2000 edition, giving it a somewhat awkward shape.
• The gold leaf: Even though it’s historically correct, I found the gold to be a distraction. The colors in the 2000 edition are a bit deeper and richer than in this printing, so I prefer the non-gold printing on aesthetic grounds.
• Devil & Tower: The book says the replacement cards are based loosely on the Rosenwald and Metropolitan sheets. In an email conversation with Riccardo Minetti of Lo Scarabeo, he told me the Cary Sheet was used as a model. Actually, the cards don't resemble any of these models and seem to be more TdM based.
The book that comes with the book-deck set is worth having. It has an interesting discussion on the nature of divination, and some nice spreads, including a very unique spread based on palmistry. The chapter on 15th century decks has information that is hard to find elsewhere, with a brief but informative discussion of each Trump card. In spite of its erroneous statement that the deck is a product of Renaissance humanism, the book does an excellent job of sticking to the original Christian message of the cards and refraining from anachronisms. The discussion of the pip cards is interesting, but many of the divinatory meanings don't relate to the discussion, and many of them are similar to Rider-Waite-Smith meanings. Inexplicably, there are many references to Buddhist symbolism. I was disappointed not to find divinatory meanings with roots in traditional European cartomancy.
Lo Scarabeo gold leaf edition – large size, 22 trumps only
The closest you’ll ever get to seeing what the originals looked like back in 1450 before the gold started chipping off. Very lovely. Gorgeous backs that are more renaissance than medieval. Unfortunately, the Devil and Tower are the unhistorical versions I describe above.
Photo-Reproductions:
All the cards described below are photo reproductions. With the larger decks, you can see the detail very clearly, but the rusty holes and the wear and damage are very in-your-face in the larger decks. Il Meneghello is the only small photo-repro (4.5 x 2.3 inches) - about the same size as the regular Lo Scarabeo deck. The damage is less obvious but so are the details. The other decks are 7 x 3.5 inches, which I believe is the original size. They all have plain maroon backs like the originals.
Il Meneghello, 2002, limited edition of 1,000.
The Devil is a hairy guy with small wings and a pitchfork. The Tower is being blasted by lightning rather than having fire coming out of it, which is more historically correct. There is one falling person. I think these are the best replacement cards of any deck. The Knight is on a rearing white horse and is dressed in solid peacock blue which matches the blue accent pattern of the Page. There’s no booklet as with many other Meneghello decks. If you love the Visconti-Sforza deck, get this, as it’s a collector’s item.
AG Muller/U.S. Games
Replacement cards done by Luigi Scapini in his unmistakable style. Tower and Devil: psychedelic colors, overly-dramatic figures, more TdM-like. Very jarring and out of synch with the rest of the deck. The Knight of Coins is very nice – you wouldn’t know it isn’t an original card. Booklet written by Stuart Kaplan has historical information. Divinatory meanings for the trumps are standard; for the suit cards they are similar to what you get in any US Games LWB. There’s the inevitable Celtic Cross spread.
Dal Negro
The Tower and Devil are very well done, artistically. The Devil card is way too TdM-like for my taste. The Tower is a blend of the TdM and older imagery. For the Knight of Coins, they took the Knight of Cups, flipped the card so the knight and horse are facing the other way and substituted a Coin for the Cup. The cards are identical: same horse, same clothing, same places where the paint has chipped off.
Booklet is in Italian. Detailed history of Tarot with much on the origin of playing cards and Tarocchi in the 14th & 15th centuries. It makes too much of a link with Tarot and Chinese and Indian games, for my taste. A section on rules of the card game. Standard divinatory meanings for the trump cards, but they also give the associated Hebrew letter (Continental association where the Magician is Aleph, not the Fool as in the Golden Dawn system). It also gives one sentence on how the card works with its opposite. Divinatory meanings for the suit cards are taken from Stuart Kaplan’s LWB, but briefer. The discussion of divination starts with the Celtic Cross – ack! They call it the “Old Method” and tell you to just use the Major Arcana, which is standard practice in Europe for all spreads. There are several other interesting spreads that use the Major Arcana shuffled with just part of the Minor Arcana (the Europeans are really allergic to using all 78 cards!).
I hope this helps anyone who is in the market for a Visconti-Sforza deck.
Sherryl Smith
Nisaba and other Visconti-Sforza aficionados:
Let me help you choose the perfect Visconti-Sforza deck for yourself so you don’t have to waste money trying several decks until you find the one you like.
My fascination with this deck led to my obsession with tarot history, which has taken over my life and my bookshelves. This deck is a window into the late medieval world that produced Tarot. It allows us to actually hold in our hands the kind of luxury item the International Gothic era was known for. I have most versions of the deck, so I thank you for giving me an opportunity to get them all out again for a comparison look.
I was fortunate to be able to see the originals in the Morgan Library in NYC about three years ago. The cards are large and loaded with gold leaf. The court cards in the suit of cups are almost solid gold, so it's difficult to distinguish the figures from the background. The curators at the Morgan are probably still trying to wipe my nose prints and saliva off the glass case!
The trumps are a bit worse for wear, especially the Lovers. Photo reproductions show you all the damage – warts and all – including the nasty holes at the top of every card. It looks like someone displayed the cards on a wall with rusty thumb tacks. More likely, they were strung on a ribbon or string to keep the cards in order and to make it difficult to snitch a card from the pack. As far as I know, the only cleaned-up version is by Lo Scarabeo.
My main criteria for judging a deck is how the replacement Tower and Devil are done. Does the style blend with the other cards? Are they historically correct or do they imitate the TdM? A Devil with two little people in chains, and a Tower with lightning and falling people are anachronistic. I also look at the replacement Knight of Coins.
If you just want to study the images and don’t need a deck, I recommend two out-of-print but inexpensive paperback books:
The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards, by Michael Dummett, published by George Braziller, 1986. Large, good quality, full-page reproductions of all the cards.
The Art of Tarot, Christina Olsen, Abbeville Press. Small in size but a real gem. She has color prints of all the early hand painted decks plus a sampling of decks throughout tarot history. This is the illustrated version of her PhD thesis on tarot history. A real gem of a book for just immersing yourself in the images.
Here are opinionated comments on all the versions in my collection.
Lo Scarabeo has two versions of the replacement cards, both done by A. A. Atanassov:
1) More historic version:
The Devil is a fantastical creature with horns, bat wings and bird claw feet. He is swallowing a person, and has a huge human face attached to his torso. The Tower has a massive wall that fills the foreground. Flames leap from the tower, and there are two red suns in the top corners. Two falling figures are about to hit bottom in the center of the card. The Knight of Coins is dressed in an entirely different color than the other court figures of the same suit, which seems inexcusable. This rendering is in older, non-gold leaf printings of the deck, the mini-version (3 by 1.5 inches), and some gold printings of the deck.
2) More fanciful version:
The Devil is more TdM-like, standing in flames instead of on a pedestal, with two human figures chained to each other instead of chained to the pedestal. There is no face on the Devil’s abdomen, and his body is long and graceful, with long angelic wings. The Tower is a slender column on a base with a domed cupola. Lightening strikes the tower and splits it down one side. There are two falling figures. These cards are modeled too much on the TdM for my taste. This rendering is in the 2002 gold foil printing, but I seem to have a gold foil version with the more historic rendering described above. Unfortunately, the box is in my storage unit so I can’t get to it to check what edition is it. The Knight of Coins has clothes the same fabric as other coins court figures, but the rendering of the knight and his horse is very inferior to the other style. Instead of filling the card as the other court figures do, the Knight is disproportionately small and his horse is less animated. His outer tunic has no folds and looks like a triangular tent. The rendering is stiff and amateurish and does not blend with the other court cards.
I’m a little confused right now about which Lo Scarabeo printings of the regular-sized deck have which versions of the Tower and Devil. If someone really needs to know, I can probably go to my storage unit next week and look at the boxes to find out.
You can see the printed sheets of cards from about 1500 that the Devil and Tower were supposedly based on in The Encyclopedia of Tarot by Stuart Kaplan, Vol. 1, pages 125 through 131.
Here are some other comments on the two printings of the deck in my collection:
Lo Scarabeo 2000 edition:
• The "A Bon Droyt" motto is printed upside down on the 1, 2, and 4 of Rods and the 3 of Coins. This is corrected in the 2002 edition.
• Size: A little more slender than most decks, in keeping with the original proportions of the cards.
• Devil & Tower: The booklet says the artist used the Rosenwald sheet as his model, but it actually follows the Rothschild sheet very closely and is fairly historically accurate.
Lo Scarabeo 2002 gold leaf edition – book-deck set
• Size: A bit wider and longer than 2000 edition, giving it a somewhat awkward shape.
• The gold leaf: Even though it’s historically correct, I found the gold to be a distraction. The colors in the 2000 edition are a bit deeper and richer than in this printing, so I prefer the non-gold printing on aesthetic grounds.
• Devil & Tower: The book says the replacement cards are based loosely on the Rosenwald and Metropolitan sheets. In an email conversation with Riccardo Minetti of Lo Scarabeo, he told me the Cary Sheet was used as a model. Actually, the cards don't resemble any of these models and seem to be more TdM based.
The book that comes with the book-deck set is worth having. It has an interesting discussion on the nature of divination, and some nice spreads, including a very unique spread based on palmistry. The chapter on 15th century decks has information that is hard to find elsewhere, with a brief but informative discussion of each Trump card. In spite of its erroneous statement that the deck is a product of Renaissance humanism, the book does an excellent job of sticking to the original Christian message of the cards and refraining from anachronisms. The discussion of the pip cards is interesting, but many of the divinatory meanings don't relate to the discussion, and many of them are similar to Rider-Waite-Smith meanings. Inexplicably, there are many references to Buddhist symbolism. I was disappointed not to find divinatory meanings with roots in traditional European cartomancy.
Lo Scarabeo gold leaf edition – large size, 22 trumps only
The closest you’ll ever get to seeing what the originals looked like back in 1450 before the gold started chipping off. Very lovely. Gorgeous backs that are more renaissance than medieval. Unfortunately, the Devil and Tower are the unhistorical versions I describe above.
Photo-Reproductions:
All the cards described below are photo reproductions. With the larger decks, you can see the detail very clearly, but the rusty holes and the wear and damage are very in-your-face in the larger decks. Il Meneghello is the only small photo-repro (4.5 x 2.3 inches) - about the same size as the regular Lo Scarabeo deck. The damage is less obvious but so are the details. The other decks are 7 x 3.5 inches, which I believe is the original size. They all have plain maroon backs like the originals.
Il Meneghello, 2002, limited edition of 1,000.
The Devil is a hairy guy with small wings and a pitchfork. The Tower is being blasted by lightning rather than having fire coming out of it, which is more historically correct. There is one falling person. I think these are the best replacement cards of any deck. The Knight is on a rearing white horse and is dressed in solid peacock blue which matches the blue accent pattern of the Page. There’s no booklet as with many other Meneghello decks. If you love the Visconti-Sforza deck, get this, as it’s a collector’s item.
AG Muller/U.S. Games
Replacement cards done by Luigi Scapini in his unmistakable style. Tower and Devil: psychedelic colors, overly-dramatic figures, more TdM-like. Very jarring and out of synch with the rest of the deck. The Knight of Coins is very nice – you wouldn’t know it isn’t an original card. Booklet written by Stuart Kaplan has historical information. Divinatory meanings for the trumps are standard; for the suit cards they are similar to what you get in any US Games LWB. There’s the inevitable Celtic Cross spread.
Dal Negro
The Tower and Devil are very well done, artistically. The Devil card is way too TdM-like for my taste. The Tower is a blend of the TdM and older imagery. For the Knight of Coins, they took the Knight of Cups, flipped the card so the knight and horse are facing the other way and substituted a Coin for the Cup. The cards are identical: same horse, same clothing, same places where the paint has chipped off.
Booklet is in Italian. Detailed history of Tarot with much on the origin of playing cards and Tarocchi in the 14th & 15th centuries. It makes too much of a link with Tarot and Chinese and Indian games, for my taste. A section on rules of the card game. Standard divinatory meanings for the trump cards, but they also give the associated Hebrew letter (Continental association where the Magician is Aleph, not the Fool as in the Golden Dawn system). It also gives one sentence on how the card works with its opposite. Divinatory meanings for the suit cards are taken from Stuart Kaplan’s LWB, but briefer. The discussion of divination starts with the Celtic Cross – ack! They call it the “Old Method” and tell you to just use the Major Arcana, which is standard practice in Europe for all spreads. There are several other interesting spreads that use the Major Arcana shuffled with just part of the Minor Arcana (the Europeans are really allergic to using all 78 cards!).
I hope this helps anyone who is in the market for a Visconti-Sforza deck.
Sherryl Smith
Debra
Wow. Thanks, Sherryl.
I immediately ordered "The Art of Tarot" from this bookseller for the grand price of US $1.99 plus $3.50 shipping in the US. He's got 35 other copies:
http://cgi.ebay.com/The-Art-of-Taro...209?IMSfp=TL090209212006r1340#ShippingPayment
I immediately ordered "The Art of Tarot" from this bookseller for the grand price of US $1.99 plus $3.50 shipping in the US. He's got 35 other copies:
http://cgi.ebay.com/The-Art-of-Taro...209?IMSfp=TL090209212006r1340#ShippingPayment
kwaw
Your favourite Visconti replacements and why?
Another thread that may be of interest:
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=107509
Another thread that may be of interest:
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=107509
nisaba
Sherryl said:
Booklist!
Sherryl said:
<envious sigh>
Sherryl said:
And it's so cleaned-up, it looks almost sterile.
Oh, except for Temperance. She's not sterile at all, her stockings are falling down her legs and it has the effect of making her look somewhat promiscuous - a recently slept-in look.
And Justice - why is the Knight Swords riding (roughshod) over the top of Justice?
And I counted something like sixteen or seventeen cards in this version where the character/action is at the edge of a cliff, not just the Fool. They included several minors and court cards as well as several Majors. I'm unable to see the symbolic connection with many of them.
I can justify, I think, buying the lot of them in time.
But just to hold those originals in your hands for a few minutes ... <swoon>
DoctorArcanus
The Lo Scarabeo version is cleaned up, but it's rather faithful to the originals.
So, what you write about Temperance, Justice and the cliffs apply to the original Visconti cards as well, not only to this particular version.
I think the question about "the Knight riding over the top of Justice" could deserve a thread of its own
So, what you write about Temperance, Justice and the cliffs apply to the original Visconti cards as well, not only to this particular version.
I think the question about "the Knight riding over the top of Justice" could deserve a thread of its own
