Calling Cards – Part 2

So…

… what is this ‘Sola-Busca Tarocchi’ deck, anyway?

It is one of the earliest Tarocchi decks available… and the oldest complete deck we have.

It was completed in Ferrara, Italy, in 1491. This was just before Columbus set sail to find a new route to India. It was toward the end of the European Renaissance, near the dawn of the Age of Discovery.

The name “Sola-Busca” refers to the family that owned the extent deck most recently, and sold it to the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage. It should probably be called the “Este” tarocchi, because scholars point to the ducal house of Este in Ferrara as the most likely house to have commissioned the deck.

The detailed artwork of the Sola-Busca deck is quite striking, and its high quality is a testament to the wealth of whoever did commission it. 

Unlike most fancy decks of this time, which had ornate trump card designs against rather basic suit cards, the Sola-Busca deck features a unique scene for each of its 78 cards.

Not only did this require an artist to plan out and draft the details of every card, it required the engraving of 78 unique copperplate templates…

…And then, the printing and hand-painting of every image for every deck that was made. 

What a stupendously elaborate and expensive deck this was!

Were they really made for silly card games? Given the excellent shape the Sola-Busca cards are in, it’s safe to say that they were almost never handled.

Some scholars speculate that the deck was an elaborate wedding gift, so perhaps they simply sat on display to showcase the recipient’s wealth and prestige to visitor’s of interest.

As for the content of the artwork, it looks like no other tarocchi deck of its time.

Aside from the unique suit cards, even the trump cards stand apart from the typical tarocchi designs. There is no Devil, or Death, or Pope, or Lovers, or Hanged Man.

There is a Fool, though he looks nothing like the Fool cards from other decks. 

Instead, the deck includes a fair amount of characters from history. The trumps mostly depict figures of Roman history: various Caesars and generals from ancient wars. But there’s also Alexander the Great in the court cards, and some various characters from more ancient history elsewhere…

Given this content, some scholars have simply described the Sola-Busca as an educational deck, to depict various characters of renown in order to aid instruction in lessons of history.

Okay, that’s all well and good, if rather boring.

Enter Peter Mark Adams. 

For this scholar, something just didn’t smell right about the various explanations given for the Sola-Busca deck.

If this was an educational deck for young Italian nobles… why do the cards mostly depict obscure or disgraced figures from history, rather than the greats?

Why would the card designers include a nobody like Lucius Postumious Allbinus – who is mainly known for his skull being used as a drinking goblet after his death in battle–but not include Julius or Augustus Caesar? 

And for that matter, what’s up with including Nimrod and Nebuchadnezzar, both ancient Babylonian tyrants of Judeo-Christian lore, without having figures like Moses or Jesus Christ?

And if this was a wedding gift, why did it feature some gruesome, violent imagery, such as Nero ready to throw a baby into a fire?

And why did some cards have sexually suggestive, sometimes homoerotic imagery to them?

The imagery in the Seven of Disks card calls to mind the myth of Ganymede, the beautiful boy taken by Zeus as lover and cup bearer.

That’s some pretty strange wedding gift material, at least for 15th century Italy.

So…

…what’s going on here?

Surely – there’s more than meets the eye with the Sola-Busca deck…

Join me next time for a deeper dive into the nature of the cards!

…to be continued…

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