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Cary sheet |
Tarot de Marseille |
Lombardy Tarot |
Tarot de Besançon |
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I - Le Bateleur |
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XI - La Force |
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XVIII - La Lune |
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XXI - Le Monde |
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The Marseilles family of tarot designs is certainly both the most enduring and most influential of all the tarot variants. These are the cards that came to the attention of the French occultists and launched the widespread use of tarot cards for divination and other esoteric purposes.
These designs carry the name of Marseilles because that city was a principal card manufacturing center in the 17th and 18th centuries. The actual place of origin of the designs is unknown. When France conquered Milan in 1499, French and Swiss soldiers probably encountered Milanese tarot cards similar to those seen on the fragmentary sheet housed in the Cary collection of playing cards. This is probably how the game of tarot, and with it the Milanese card designs, spread to Switzerland and eastern France. At some point in the 16th century, the set of designs known as the Tarot de Marseille became the standard pattern for players in these French-speaking regions.
By the early 18th century, a variant pattern in which the Papess and Pope are replaced by Junon and Jupiter had emerged. This is the Tarot de Besançon, and in most other respects it copies the Tarot de Marseille closely, as the cards shown here attest. The names of the two patterns tempt one to think that the Tarot de Besançon was used in Switzerland and the Tarot de Marseille was used in southern France. Actually, both patterns were in use through most of the region where tarot was played: eastern France, the Swiss cantons, and the upper Rhine. The replacement of the Papess and Pope provided an option for Catholic players whose religious sensibilities were offended by the subjects of these cards.
Ironically, tarot had almost died out in its native Italy by the 18th century, although the 97-card Minchiate of Florence was still very popular in many regions. Tarot was actually reintroduced to northern Italy from France and Switzerland. Hence the Italians adopted the Tarot de Marseille designs, at first even retaining the French titles on the cards, as with the Zoni Tarot shown here, printed in Bologna for export to Lombardy. Gradually, the French titles gave way to Italian ones, and in the 19th century there was something of a "tarot renaissance" in northern Italy, with cardmakers producing many interesting and innovative decks.
The standard Tarot de Marseille remains popular today, with packs still being made by several different publishers, particularly Grimaud in France and Fournier in Spain.
The Tarot de Marseille has several striking features that distinguish it from the designs used in most of Italy. A mysterious third party (mother-in-law? priest? chaperone?) intrudes on the Lovers, Temperance sports angel wings, the Star maiden pours water into a pond, the Moon features a crawfish, dogs, and two distant towers, and the World shows the four living creatures of the tetramorph and a female figure with a unique dance-like pose. The Tarot de Marseille titles also include some variations not found in the Italian tradition: Love is called L'Amoreux (The Lovers), The Old Man becomes L'Ermite (the Hermit), Fire or the Devil's House becomes, oddly, Le Maison Dieu (The House of God), and the Angel becomes Le Jugement, or Judgement.
The ordering of the trumps in the Tarot de Marseille has fascinated tarot students for centuries. In Italian decks, the "dark cards" Traitor, Death, Devil, and Fire are always an uninterrupted sequence. In the Tarot de Marseille, angelic Temperance intercedes between Death and the Devil. The virtues are evenly spaced, three places apart: VIII, XI, XIV. Following the sequence downward leads us to the Pope and Papess; following it upward leads to the Star and the angel of Judgement. The Marseilles ordering is either the most peculiar of any tarot tradition, or the most subtle, depending on one's point of view. The ordering goes back at least as far as the mid-16th century luxury deck made by Catelin Geoffroy. A late 16th-century poem by Susio testifies to the use (in the vicinity of Milan) of an ordering with Temperance at XIV, although the other cards are arranged somewhat differently than in the Marseilles order.
How ancient are the distinctive features of the Tarot de Marseille--the ordering, the unique designs for the Star and Moon cards, the unusual titles? None of these features can be traced back earlier than the Cary sheet, dating from about 1500 or perhaps several decades later, and it offers us only a few designs, no titles, and no way to establish anything but some general features of the ordering. It is likely, though, that at least some of the peculiarities of the Tarot de Marseilles have their roots in 15th-century Milan. If, as some have suggested, Milan was the birthplace of the tarot, then the Tarot de Marseilles may offer a closer glimpse at the original tarot than even some of the Italian tarots do.
