Mantegna
Modern redesign of 1460 Italian ancestor deck by A. Atanassov.
by A. Atanassov · 2000
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The record
The Mantegna deck is an ancestor to the 78 card tarot deck with major and minor arcana as we know it today. The fifty original engravings created by an Italian artist have been dated to around 1460. Many artists have recopied the original Mantegna artwork. Atanas Atanassov is the latest, redesigning and painting the cards in soft pastel colours and flesh tones. What would normally be the sky or background to a human figure is a kind of fine, flowered tracery raised slightly above the textured silver foil. Like Nefertari's Tarot, which is also published by Lo Scarabeo, the Mantegna Tarot uses a metal foil treatment on the cards. Nerfertari's was sumptous gold, but the Mantega is a cool silver. As a tarot deck reflects the attitudes and human situations of its time, the Mantegna deck is an insight into the medieval society. The deck is divided into five classes of figures, each of ten cards: Human Conditions, Apollo and the Muses, Arts and Sciences, Geniuses and Virtues, and Planets and Celestial Spheres. Human Conditions are ten cards in ascending order; Pauper, Servant, Artisan, Merchant, Gentleman, Knight, Duke, King, Emperor, and finally 'Papa' (the High Priest). Apollo and the M
The cards
