Le Corte dei Tarocchi

The record

The La Corte dei Tarocchi is published by Il Meneghello in Italy. It was probably intended as a collector’s deck more so than a reading deck, and was published as a limited edition of 1100. The artist was Anna Maria D’Onofrio, who has since died. Her artwork is quirky, naive and very charming. It is achieved through engraving zinc plates and hand painting the resulting prints with watercolour, which has resulted in clean, sharp lines softened by a warm, gentle palette and very skilful shading. The original art was embellished richly with gold foil in strategic accents; the high-quality printing process employed by Il Meneghello has ensured that even without gold ink, this detail is made quite obvious. The cards are all hand-titled in Italian, and some of the pips have letters within the pip symbols to reiterate the number of the card. The deck is based on the Tarot de Marseilles pattern, with 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana, with suits entitled Coppe, Denari, Spade and Bastoni. The pips are mostly non-scenic, with the exception of the two of Cups, which shows a man standing behind a table holding a cup; another cup sits on the table. Some of the other pips have small illuminati

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