Da Vinci

Lo Scarabeo's 2004 tribute puts two accomplished deck artists, Atanas Atanassov and Iassen Ghiuselev, in service of the Renaissance's most restless mind: painter of the Mona Lisa and Last Supper, but also the inventor, anatomist and engineer whose notebooks out-imagined his century. The deck's register is homage, Leonardo's world and visual manner carried across a full seventy-eight cards in the polished Lo Scarabeo house style. The catalog holds two Leonardo decks, and the difference is instructive: Caitlin Matthews's Da Vinci Enigma builds a system from his notebooks and thought, while this one celebrates the man and his aura in fine Italian deck craft. Choose by appetite: scholarship there, portraiture here. This one suits admirers of Renaissance art who want the beauty first, Lo Scarabeo collectors, and readers for whom Leonardo is a presence rather than a curriculum. Devotees of the notebooks who want their genius systematized should sit with the Enigma instead.