Polychrome Mantegna (large)

This is a digitally colored facsimile of the "Mantegna Tarot", a set of fifty engravings thought to originate in Ferrara Italy c. 1465. The Mantegna Tarot is not at all a tarot, and may not have been engraved by the Italian painter and engraver Andrea Mantegna. It is nevertheless of interest to students and users of the tarot because its creation was close in time and space to the earliest tarot decks and it therefore shares the same symbolism and world-view. Both consist of a series of images which in their entirety attempted to present an allegorical representation of the world of 15th-century Italy. As tarot creator and historian Brian Williams put it, “the Mantegna series shares with the Tarot a Renaissance impulse to chart ascending hierarchies, to create parades of allegorical characters, to categorize and compartmentalize a universe of symbols.”

There are 54 jumbo (5.5″x3.5″/140x89mm) cards, including a title card and three bonus cards, plus a two-volume descriptive booklet, in a two-piece box. Also available in tarot size; see Related Games.