tarot deck
Sola Busca
Northern Italy, 1491 · Unknown engraver, hand-coloured
The oldest complete seventy-eight-card deck that survives, engraved in 1491, and the first in which every suit card carries a scene rather than an arrangement of pips — three and a half centuries before the Rider–Waite pack of 1909 did the same thing.
Its trumps are Roman and biblical figures with their own names and no evident relation to the allegories the other decks share. They are filed here beside the standard trumps because they occupy the same numbered slots, which is a statement about position and nothing else.
Its twenty-two trumps → Its fifty-six suit cards → Deal a spread with it →
The pictures
Engraved in 1491 and out of copyright by centuries. The photographs are the British Museum's, released as public domain and hosted on Wikimedia Commons.
What it calls things
- Suits
- Bastoni · Coppe · Spade · Denari
- Court ranks
- Fante · Cavallo · Regina · Re
Trumps this deck renames
| Filed as | In this deck | Numeral |
|---|---|---|
| The Fool | Mato | |
| The Magician | Panfilio | I |
| The High Priestess | Postumio | II |
| The Empress | Lenpio | III |
| The Emperor | Mario | IIII |
| The Hierophant | Catulo | V |
| The Lovers | Sesto | VI |
| The Chariot | Deo Tauro | VII |
| Strength | Nerone | VIII |
| The Hermit | Falco | VIIII |
| Wheel of Fortune | Venturio | X |
| Justice | Tulio | XI |
| The Hanged Man | Carbone | XII |
| Death | Catone | XIII |
| Temperance | Bocho | XIIII |
| The Devil | Metelo | XV |
| The Tower | Olivo | XVI |
| The Star | Ipeo | XVII |
| The Moon | Lentulo | XVIII |
| The Sun | Sabino | XVIIII |
| Judgement | Nenbroto | XX |
| The World | Nabuchodenasor | XXI |