The Polychrome Mantegna is a digitally colored version of the so-called Mantegna tarot from Renaissance Italy. The “Mantegna tarot” is a set of 50 engravings assumed to be have been printed in Ferrara around 1465. Not actually a tarot deck, they may have be a teaching tool for renaissance Italian students, a set of flash cards introducing them to the world they were entering.
The Polychrome Mantegna is available in two sizes: a tarot-sized (4.75″x2.75″/121x70mm) deck in a tuck box, and a jumbo edition with slightly larger (5.5″x3.5″ /140x89mm) cards and a two-piece box. Both come with with a title card, three uncolored bonus cards, and a descriptive booklet. The booklet is split into two for the jumbo edition, due to printing requirements. The price is $34.99 for tarot-size, $43.99 for jumbo, + tax (if applicable) and shipping; order at the links below.
The following information is adapted from the booklet[s] that come with the Polychrome Mantegna.
About the Mantegna Tarot
The Mantegna Tarot is not at all a tarot, and may not have been engraved by the Italian painter and engraver Andrea Mantegna. It is nevertheless of interest to students and users of the tarot because its creation was close in time and space to the earliest tarot decks and it therefore shares the same symbolism and world-view. Both consist of a series of images which in their entirety attempted to present an allegorical representation of the world of 15th-century Italy. As tarot creator and historian Brian Williams put it, “the Mantegna series shares with the Tarot a Renaissance impulse to chart ascending hierarchies, to create parades of allegorical characters, to categorize and compartmentalize a universe of symbols.”
There are also some close correspondences between cards:
Misero:Fool
Imperator:Emperor
Papa: Pope (Hierophant)
Temperantia:Temperance
Forteza:Strength
Justicia:Justice
Luna:Moon
Sol:Sun
Plus a few more Mantegna cards that resemble tarot cards.
According to the National Gallery of Art, the cards were made in Ferrara, c. 1465. Others have suggested Venice. Venetian cues include the titles Fameo, Artixan, and Doxe, said to be of Venetian dialect. As for the date, Cristina Dorsini, in the book she wrote for il Meneghello, believes Mantegna made the cards for Borso d’Este on his ascension to the marquisate of Ferrara in 1450. LoScarabeo’s leaflet says they appeared, possibly in Ferrara, about 1460.
There are two versions of the original engravings, referred to as the E series and the S series. The latter was done in a somewhat freer hand, and often mirror-imaged relative to the E series. The prints were done on paper with sepia ink; some were enhanced with gold detailing. There are also later copies, including a partial set by Albrecht Drürer, and a complete set created by Johann Ladenspelder in Cologne, Germany c. 1550. The Polychrome Mantegna is based on the E series.
The world of the cards
Italy in the 15th century consisted of the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples in the south, the Papal State across the middle of the peninsula, and a baker’s dozen of duchies, marquisates, and republics in the north. These states competed and sometimes warred against each other, in shifting alliances.
Italy’s location at the eastern edge of Europe put it in a prime position for trading with the East, both near and far. Goods came by both land and sea from as far away as China.
Culturally, Italy was in the early stages of what would later be called the Renaissance. Some say the Italian Renaissance began with the Florentine poet Petrarch’s re-discovery of a collection of Cicero’s letters in 1354, sparking renewed scholarly interest in the classics. It was also Petrarch who first used the term “dark ages” to refer to previous European history.
In Petrarch’s time, the immediate past was particularly dark, as the Black Death killed half the population of Europe between 1347 and 1351. Whatever started it, the Renaissance shifted scholarship away from the dogmatic Scholasticism of the Middle Ages toward a new humanism. The trauma of the plague had left people doubting the value of some of their traditional institutions, and there was more openness to new ideas as a result. The rise of banking and commerce also led to a less dogmatic, more pragmatic approach to society and government. It was a new environment which rewarded innovation, in forms of government and other areas.
The Mantegna shows Renaissance influence several ways, e.g.:
it starts with the human condition
it draws on pre-Christian mythology,
many of its figures are shown in naturalistic settings and poses.
THE DECK
The cards are numbered 1 to 50, and divided into five sets of ten each:
E (1-10): the estates of man, from beggar to pope.
D (11-20): the nine Muses, plus their guide, Apollo.
C (21-30): the classical liberal arts and sciences.
B(31-40): virtues and cosmological principles
A (41-50): the cosmic spheres of the Aristotelian universe.
It’s not clear for whom they were intended, but they may have been educational aids. Thus, we have a course of study which proceeds:
The Estates of Man: Who we are from lowliest to noblest.
The Muses and Apollo: What inspires us. An introduction to mythology.
The Liberal Arts: The ways in which we study and analyze the world; the student’s introduction to what’s ahead for him.
The Geniuses and Virtues: The powers that control the universe and the priciples that guide human behavior.
The Cosmic Spheres: The universe we live in, according to the knowledge and beliefs of the 15th century.
The sequence of the A and E cards is clearly hierarchical. The order of the other three decades is less so, but all five decades end with some relation to divinity or religion: Pope, Apollo, Theology, Faith, and First Cause (God).
Resources
Published editions of the Mantegna Tarot:
Lo Scarabeo (distributed in North America by Llewellyn published a mass-market, tarot-sized edition, though it appears to be currently out of print. The cards have been re-drawn, colored, and adorned with a decorative background in silver foil.
Tarot historian Giordano Berti has produced a faithful reproduction of the Ladenspelder cards, available in two sizes, with a very informative book (also available separately).
Il Meneghello in Milan, Italy has a monochrome reproduction of the E-Series cards that comes with a book by art historian Christina Dorsini (also available separately).
Pablo Robledo published a very limited edition that re-created the gold detailing.
There is also a brightly colored Russian edition based on the S-Series cards.
Online Resources
The National Gallery of Art has 51 high-resolution (~5MP) scans of most of the E series cards, lacking I-Misero, XXIII-Rhetorica, and XXVIIII-Astrologia; plus a very few S series cards. The artist is listed as Master of the E-Series and Master of the S-Series. The condition of the originals varies somewhat but the scans are uniformly low-contrast.
Tarot artist Benebell Wen is working on a re-drawn Mantegna Tarot. She also has a complete set of printable images available to her subscribers.
Raven’s Tarot Site has some information and a set of small images of the Ladenspelder cards colored by Raven.
Notes
The Polychrome Mantegna is based on scans from the National Gallery of Art, available online. Contrast was adjusted, and stains, creases, dust, and other obvious blemishes have been removed, to the extent that it could be done without destroying detail. Every line in this deck (except the titles, which have been reconstructed) is from the original 15th-century E series engravings. Some lines have been colored or inverted to white.
The cards have been block-colored, similar to the stencil-colored woodblock cards of the historical tarot. This allows the shaded contouring of the originals to shape the image.
In the original Astrologia was erroneously numbered XXXVIIII/39, duplicating Speranza (Hope); it has been corrected to XXVIIII/29.
Divination
Though this set of engravings has long been referred to as a tarocchi (tarot), it more closely resembles an oracle deck in structure; for one thing there are no minor arcana. Also, unlike the tarot, there are no traditional interpretations, either mundane or occult. I will therefore not attempt to impose meanings
on the cards, merely suggest some strategies for reading with them.
Take each decade of cards as referring to a particular aspect, similar to the way position works in a Celtic cross layout:
E: What role are you playing, or being assigned
D: Who or what inspires you, and to do what
C: What knowledge are you applying or learning
B: what energies or qualities are in play
A: what larger idea or greater purpose is served
You may want to first randomly select a card from the E decade to represent your current position. If you have a narrowly defined question, you could select only from the most suitable decades. Randomly selecting one card from each decade is an interesting way to do an open-ended reading.
NEXT: The Estates of Man
The Mantegna Tarot is not at all a tarot, and may not have been engraved by the Italian painter and engraver Andrea Mantegna. It is nevertheless of interest to students and users of the tarot because its creation was close in time and space to the earliest tarot decks and it therefore shares the same symbolism and world-view. Both consist of a series of images which in their entirety attempted to present an allegorical representation of the world of 15th-century Italy. As tarot creator and historian Brian Williams put it, “the Mantegna series shares with the Tarot a Renaissance impulse to chart ascending hierarchies, to create parades of allegorical characters, to categorize and compartmentalize a universe of symbols.”
There are also some close correspondences between cards:
