Tarot de Marseille Pierre Madenie 1709

The record

I was poised to write up the next installment of my favourite decks when a new treasure landed on my doorstep like a meteor this week and I find that I cannot think of anything else except this beauty. It is number 232 of a 3,000 limited edition print run by Yves Reynaud and Wilfried Houdouin of an unknown Tarot de Marseilles, the earliest of the so-called Tarot de Marseilles, type II. There is one copy, (from which this deck was reproduced) complete with original wrapper, in the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum, Zurich (see Kaplan, Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume II, p 314-315) and there is another similar copy – which may or may not be the exact same deck – lacking the Trumps, and housed in The British Museum. This is a facsimilie reproduction and apparently one of a series of historic decks which researcher Yves Reynaud and graphic designer/technician Wilfried Houdouin (who corrected and adapted the images) plan on issuing over the next few years. They have recently launched their elegant and informative website where a number of the proposed decks can now be seen. I knew absolutely nothing about this deck but when I opened it up I had the sense that this must be the most (not “one of

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