There are several different tarot decks out there today that are Visconti Sforza tarot decks.  I am reviewing the two that are the most significant, the Pierpont Morgan Visconti Sforza Tarocchi Deck, and the Cary-Yale Visconti Sforza Tarocchi Deck.  Both decks are strikingly similar in a lot of ways, especially to the untrained eye.  There has been a lot of speculation about these decks, and whether they are the oldest surviving tarot cards, or whether the rough Marseille Tarot cards are the oldest.  I have heard compelling arguments for both sides.  I will just let it suffice to say, with these decks being created in the 1400's, that makes them really, really old.

Of course these tarocchi decks are actually just reproductions of the original cards, which are housed in museums.  The Pierpont Morgan Visconti cards are split up in three different places; some of the cards are in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, other cards are at the Academia Carrara, and the remainder of the cards are in a private collection of the Colleoni family in Bergamo, Italy.  The cards that make up the Cary-Yale Visconti are at the Cary Collection of Playing Cards, which is part of the rare book and manuscript library at Yale University.  These cards *look* old, because they are reproduced to look the way the real cards look today.

The major difference between the Cary-Yale deck and the Pierpont Morgan deck seems to be that the Cary-Yale deck has more cards in it.  The Pierpont Morgan deck has a total of 78 cards, to correspond to the traditional tarot we know today.  There were 74 cards that they had from the original, and they made four new ones to look like they matched the old ones, to fill in the gap and correct the deck back to the way it is supposed that it originally was.  The Cary-Yale deck has 86 cards which is a lot more than the other deck.  Out of this number, only 67 cards are the originals, they had to recreate the rest to fill in the gaps.  In my opinion this makes the Pierpont Morgan deck closer to the genuine article.  Less cards, but a higher percentage of the original ones.

Of course, there are some things that may make the Cary-Yale more appealing for some people.  There are a bunch of extra court cards, in fact in each suit there is a King and Queen, a male Knight and a female Knight, and a male Page and a female Page.  Something about that bothers me in that I don't think women got to be knights and pages very often back in the 1400's, but then maybe it is supposed to make the deck more politically correct for the late 1900's.  Also, three of the cards which have been added to the Cary-Yale deck represent the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity.  These are not in your traditional tarot deck but rather are reminiscent of Minchiate decks and even the famous Tarocchi Del Mantegna.

Something I think is interesting is that both decks have a very close to identical back design.  I can still tell if I mix the decks up, but it isn't easy to tell.  If the decks were identical in size (they're like half an inch off in either direction) you could probably take your favorites from each deck and make one out of them.

None of the cards are numbered, or have titles on them, in either deck.  You have to bear in mind when you're looking at these, that tarocchi decks like this were painted, on commission most likely, by painters for rich families in Italy in the early Renaissance.  A lot of the people who are painted into the cards are actually family members who were alive back then.  If you were a painter getting a big commission to paint a deck of tarot cards for a wealthy family, you bet that you would paint the Empress to look like the Visconti's wife!  Other figures represent people who were important in those days, like I'm sure the Pope in the cards is an actual pope from back then, although I'm not up on my Vatican history.

I tend to like the look of the Pierpont Morgan cards best, but then that's just my tastes.  I can see where either of them would be cool to have in any collection, or both of them for real tarot history buffs.  Without numbers or titles on the cards it's really hard to know which card is which, unless you refer to the little pamphlet that comes with the cards, so you'd have to kind of know your stuff to use these.  Might be fun trying to figure it out though!

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Guest Review Copyright 1999 by Maria Eisele