Ancient Italian Tarot / Tarocchino Milanese (Lo Scarabeo)

Ancient Italian tarot / tarocchino Milanese. Lo Scarabeo, Italy (original design by Cartiera Italiana, Italy). Full playing / divinatory tarot deck, Mediterranean suited, 80 single-headed cards + divinatory-meanings booklet. Size: 66mm x 120mm.

Deck make-up:
Trumps: 0-21.
Coins, clubs, cups, swords: A, 2-10, foot jack, mounted jack, queen, king.
Extras: title card, Lo Scarabeo advertising card (double-sided).

Glorious reproduction of an 1880 tarot deck originally made by Cartiera Italiana, Serravalle Sesia, in the Piedmont region of north-western Italy. Based on designs by Della Rocca, this pattern was originally published by Gumppenberg of Milan in the first half of the 19th century. By the end of the 1800s, it was issued in a (visually inferior) double-ended edition.

Click on any card to explore the design.

(Comments or corrections, please e-mail: Click to see e-mail address.)

Card image size, below: Normal Bigger

Trumps

Coins

In theory (i.e. according to the literature) this pack, being from the north-west of Italy, "should be" French suited. However, instead it is a hybrid of the two main variants of the Mediterranean set of suits: the Spanish style (also used in central and southern Italy) and the Italian style used in the north-east of that country...

Clubs

... The clubs, for example, have the Spanish-style cudgels/coshes on the ace and court cards, yet the finer north-east Italian-style sticks/rods on the pip cards...

Cups

Swords

... Similarly, the swords suit is a mixture of the straight swords of the Spanish style together with curved swords which are more in the style of the north-east Italian tradition.