Inroduction

Pratesi's wrote an article for the Playing Card of July-Sept. 2015 (vol 44, no. 1), translated by me at http://pratesitranslations.blogspot.com/2016/02/april-2015-new-information-on.html, which stimulated a follow-up from Thierry Depaulis , Jan-March 2015 (vol. 44, No. 3). Here is the "English summary" at the end of Depaulis's article.

English summary: Tarot in France before 1500
Franco Pratesi has recently published some stunning documents pertaining to Tarot cards in Florence in 1444, 1499 and 1506 (see his article in The Playing-Card, Vol. 44, no. 1, July-Sep. 2015). The last date concerns a Florentine cardmaker's probate inventory, where germini are mentioned (first occurrence!), and also "1 paio di tr(i)onfi alia franc(i)osa non finiti", that is, a pack of Tarot cards (trionfi) of French type. This would confirm my own hypothesis about Tarot being known in Lyon in around 1500. But was the game known in France before 1500?

We know that a tarot pack was presented to Queen Isabella of Lorraine in 1450, being sent by Jacopo Antonio Marcello, a Venetian patrician and an admirer of King René of Anjou, Isabella's husband. It is not sure whether Isabella ever played with these cards, but her grandson René II played triumphe in 1496. Although the game of Triomphe is well known in France from 1480 on, it has been suggested that this specific quotation may refer to Tarot.

Another still unpublished source is to be found in the inventory of Louis de Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol, made in 1477. Louis had been found to betray both the King of France, Louis XI, who had made him his Constable of France (Commander in Chief of the army), and the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold. In 1475 Louis de Luxembourg was arrested and sent to Paris, where he was sentenced to death and beheaded. His furniture was seized by the Duke's agents at Cambrai and inventoried twice, in 1475 and 1477. In the last inventory we find "ung jeu de cartes fait en triomphe", which is so close to the Italian expression "paro di carte da trionfi" (a pack of tarot cards), that we see no other meaning for the French quotation. Since Louis de Luxembourg had no contact with Italy, it is likely that his second wife Mary of Savoy, whose sister Bonaof Savoy had married Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, in 1468 and had been taught Tarot while there, may have received the pack from Milan.

Two Tarot cards found in the Bibliotheque Nationale in 1985 (and thus not included in the 'Tarot, jeu et magie' exhibition) were still wanting an attribution. Looking at them again (they are now digitized and visible in the BnF Gallica server), I now think they can be French, very probably made in Lyon. French playing cards seem to have been quite common in Florence as early as the late 15th century. Several poets, and even Lorenzo de' Medici in 1472, did praise them.

Already this is intriguing. The inventory of 1477,  turned up the item "ung jeu de cartes fait en triomphe", literally "a pack of cards made in triumph". This is not only close to "paro di carte da trionfi", but even perhaps closer to "paro di carte a trionfi". Pratesi has given me the example of of "vaso a fiori", meaning a vase with pictures of flowers on it, in other words "made in flowers", as opposed to a vase that has flowers in it. So how early was tarot played in France? Is Mary of Savoy, who might have known the tarot from her sister Bona, an isolated case, or part of a more general spread of the tarot into France as early as the 1470s, or even in the 1450s, if Isabelle of Lorraine can be presumed to have known the game? Well, here is Depaulis's answer.