A new exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York, titled Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions, traces the unlikely journey of tarot cards from a 15th-century Italian card game to a modern tool for divination and artistic inspiration. The show, on display until 4 October, capitalizes on the practice's surging popularity—searches for how to do tarot readings skyrocketed during the pandemic—to lure in the curious and knowledgeable alike.
From Renaissance Game to Occult Tool
According to Claire Gilman, curator of the show's Modern Visions section, tarot originated in 15th-century Italy not as a tool for divination, but simply as a card game. It was only as it moved into France in the 18th century that it began to take on occult connotations, and from there it migrated to the UK and eventually spread around the globe in the 20th century.
Gilman believes the tarot's ability to be at once old and new is key to its enduring popularity. “One of the amazing things about the tarot is that there is so much continuity,” she said, “but there is also a tremendous amount of change and transformation. It has these established characters, but there’s also this openness being built into it.”
Rare Glimpse at Oldest Surviving Deck
When the tarot first emerged, long before mass-produced decks, it was only used by those fortunate enough to afford hand-painted collections done by masterful artists in intricate detail. Tarot! offers a rare chance to see a sizable chunk of what remains of the oldest surviving deck—known as the Visconti-Sforza, for the family it was created for. The Morgan’s partial collection has been combined with that held by the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Italy. “They’re hand-painted luxury objects and they stand at the very beginning of the tarot pictorial tradition,” said Joshua O’Driscoll, co-curator of the Renaissance Symbols section with Francisco H Trujillo.
These early decks required knowledge of a wide variety of practices. “In order to make them, Bonifacio Bembo and his workshop had to master different types of art making, including panel painting, wall painting, and manuscript illumination,” Trujillo added.
Continuity Across Centuries
Despite being nearly 600 years old, the Renaissance decks are recognizable to anyone familiar with tarot imagery. “This is one of the things that I find most surprising,” said O’Driscoll. “Despite being nearly 600 years old, the Renaissance decks at the core of the show will be recognizable to anyone familiar with tarot imagery.”
When the tarot originated in Italy, its primary inspiration was Petrarch’s series of poems known as the Triumphs, which charted a life path from sin to redemption. However, by the time of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, introduced in 1909 and by far the most widely used deck in the world, the range of influences had expanded. In illustrating the deck, Pamela Colman Smith drew on diverse sources such as the Bible, her friends, the Art-Nouveau movement, and contemporary British society.
Key Innovations and Modern Decks
One of the Rider-Waite-Smith’s big innovations was to illustrate the minor arcana, which up to that point had seldom been given their own associated imagery. Gilman sees this as key to its unprecedented success. “It really enhances the mystery built into these cards, and also the accessibility,” she said, “because you could look at these cards and write this story into every single one. It really democratizes the cards and captures people’s fascination with them.”
Later decks came from Aleister Crowley (the Thoth Tarot) and David Palladini (the Aquarian Deck), which took off in the 1960s and 1970s. “Even with these decks, the number published in the 60s and 70s was quite limited compared to today,” Gilman said. “There’s absolutely no comparison. There’s hundreds and hundreds.”
Artists and the Tarot
The exhibition also features tarot-themed work by more than two dozen artists, including Surrealists Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo, as well as new art by celebrated British painter Chris Ofili. Gilman explained that Surrealist painters were less interested in making their own deck and more in using the mysticism of the tarot for their own artistic ends. “With the Surrealists, it’s less about making a full deck and more about how these tarot references populate, in a way, everything they’re doing visually,” she said. “There’s interest from the Surrealists in how these things challenge our understanding of the rational world.”
Among the more intriguing artistic collections are selections from British Surrealist Ithell Colquhoun’s deck, described by Gilman as the first fully abstract deck. “It’s called ‘Tarot as Color’ and each of the suits is assigned a hue. It’s just a really gorgeous deck.” There’s also Xul Solar, an Argentine painter and close friend of Jorge Luis Borges, whose hand-painted tarot deck incorporates Mesoamerican references.
Universal Appeal
Gilman believes that the tarot hit a major turning point around 2019, with a big assist from the pandemic, helping it onto a meteoric trajectory toward ubiquity. She sees in tarot a kind of universal language that can transcend cultural barriers. “The arcana are so universal,” she said, “the world, justice, temperance, lovers – these are all things that occur in every tradition, so people can relate to it, and shift it and slant it according to what those things mean in their specific community.”
