Question: What are 'Grands" & "Petits" tarot? A large & small tarot, or a full & a reduced [as in number of pips] tarot? I haven't made any real study of this, nor have I done much research into the dimensions of French cards (tarot or otherwise), but I know that some Fre...

Steve, what is your source for the 1638 date for Rolichon? The sources I have seen give 1635 as the latest known date for Nicolas Rolichon.

I think we are going to have to "agree to disagree". I still do not think your idea is plausible, for the reasons which I have stated, which you do not think are plausible. Yes, there are decks with 32 or 40 or 48 cards because that is the number needed for the game, but it would be extrem...

The subject of this post is dating the numbered cards. It is generally assumed that they were made at the same time as the first trump and court cards. My question is now, is this the truth? I've considered all your points, and I've looked again at the various images of the cards available to me, a...

Wow! Excellent work. Thank you!

Mike, if you want to know more about Bolognese card production in the 18th century, you should look at Pietro Alligo and Alberto Milano, eds, Le carte da gioco in Emilia e Romagna, secoli XVIII e XIX (Turin: Lo Scarabeo, 2007) and especially the essay in it by Gianna Paola Tomasina called "Cart...

I fully agree, the Forza Giusta Tempra names would surely have been adopted primarily for mnemonic reasons. And their use helps to explain why the Bolognese left the trumps completely unnumbered for such a very long time (plus the fact that they really only had 14 which posed any challenge to the me...

Interesting. So we can conclude that the superstition about 13 wasn't universal among the Italian nobility in the 15th century, at least.

Thanks Iolon! Much appreciated

That website, the Atlante delle Xilografie italiane del Rinascimento , is well worth exploring generally. They have a huge number of high-quality images of 16th century Italian cards, which you can find by searching for "carta da gioco" (as I have done in the link). You can also look at ma...