Ancient Tarot of Lombardy

For those of us who find the Rider-Waite-Smith illustrated pip cards too forcing and confining, but who find the Marseilles deck aesthetically unpleasing, the Italian engraved "soprafino" decks make a good compromise. This is an interesting exemplar of the type.

Lombardy is a region in northern Italy; Milan and Bologna are the chief cities. This is, as far as we can tell, the home turf of the standard deck of Tarot cards, and it is interesting to speculate as to whether the variations present in the nineteenth century "Ancient" Tarot of Lombardy represent the preservation of earlier traditions.

The deck is older, and not quite as well-preserved as the Della Rocca "Classical Italian" Tarot. It was made for the publishing house of Ferdinando Gumppenberg in 1810, according to the leaflet. Some of the finer lines have become blurred in the intervening years, but the drawings of the characters are distinct and well made. There are some interesting graphical variants in the trumps that place this deck somewhere between the Marseilles style and the Swiss 1JJ deck. Lo Scarabeo's box text makes this deck out to have been drawn in a "neoclassical" style; it is true that many of the figures are bearded and toga'd, and the coins seem to feature Roman emperors.