Sacred Art
Medieval, Renaissance, and Pre-Raphaelite religious art adapted for tarot symbolism.
by Andre St. Dryden · 2008
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The record
The Sacred Art Tarot takes religious artwork from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the pre-Raphaelites, and adds extra tarot symbolism to make a 78-card deck in the Rider-Waite tradition. The deck was four years in the making, but sadly overall it falls flat for me. Some of the cards work as complete tarot images, but in many more the juxtaposition of the classical paintings and the added computer-generated tarot elements is jarring - they distract from and even clash with the great original art rather than enhance it. The added tarot elements dont fit the painted world or atmosphere and sometimes dont even seem to be obeying the same laws of physics. There are swords resting in hands rather than being held by them, as though they were weightless (Queen of Swords); strange angles in perspective (the Chariot); and most obviously, the colour tones of the tarot emblems just dont match. The Wands are black thin rectangles with no blend or shape, and far too dark and sharply outlined against the aged hues of the paintings. The wands are also identically cloned in multiples (as are all of the tarot emblems on all of the suit cards). The Cups are ultra-shiny and untarnished, the C
The cards
