Visconti–Sforza (Milan, c. 1451)
Suits
5
Cards
73
Place
Milan
Year
c. 1451
Pattern
Visconti–Sforza
License
Public domain
Source
The most famous of the early tarots, painted in Milan around 1451 for Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti. Seventy-four of its seventy-eight cards survive, split across three collections: the Devil, the Tower, the Knight of Coins and the Three of Swords were lost centuries ago, and the King of Cups survives but is absent from the published series — so seventy-three are here. No card carries a number or a title; the Marseille order shown is the one scholarship agrees on, not one the cards state. No card back survives either, and the one here is a modern reconstruction. Images from Wikimedia Commons, public domain, where the cards are gathered as the Pierpont Morgan–Bergamo set.
