Tarot de Marseille: how a game found its standard

Tarot did not remain a pastime of the Italian courts for long. With soldiers, merchants and printers, it travelled to France and Switzerland in the 16th century, where it became a mass-produced article. In the workshops of Lyon, Paris and Marseille, a pictorial pattern emerged that lasted for centuries and is known today as the Tarot de Marseille. This part tells of woodcuts, stencils and a game that is still played in Europe today.

Across the Alps

When French armies marched into Italy from 1494 onwards, soldiers and officers got to know the game, and it returned home with them. As early as 1505 the word taraux appears in Avignon, and in the same year tarocchi in Ferrara; from then on, the new name displaced the older trionfi. Where the word comes from is still unexplained. Lyon, with its fairs and printing houses one of the most important trading cities in Europe, quickly became the centre of card-making. From there, the game spread to eastern France, western Switzerland and the German-speaking lands, where it was called Tarock. In Italy it remained alive in any case, above all in Bologna, Piedmont and Sicily.

Woodcut, stencil, tax stamp

Card makers, known in France as maîtres cartiers, were craftsmen bound by guild regulations. They cut the lines of a whole sheet into wood, printed it on paper, coloured it with stencils in just a few colours, usually red, blue, yellow, green and a flesh tone, glued several layers together into a stiff pasteboard and cut out the cards. The Two of Coins traditionally carried a banner with the maker’s name and often the date, which is why we know of many workshops. From the 18th century onwards, tax stamps were added, for the state had discovered the playing-card trade as a source of revenue. During this period Marseille became the most important export centre; from there, tarots went back in large numbers to Italy, the land of their origin.

The Marseille pattern

The pictorial scheme we now call the Tarot de Marseille probably has Milanese roots. An uncut printed sheet from around 1500, the so-called Cary Sheet at Yale, already shows figures that closely resemble the later French trumps. The oldest surviving complete deck of this type, however, comes from Paris: Jean Noblet printed it around 1650, and it is now held by the French National Library. Then come Jean Dodal in Lyon, whose cards are dated to about 1701 to 1715, Jean-Pierre Payen in Avignon in 1713 and finally Nicolas Conver in Marseille, whose deck of 1760 became the true benchmark. Conver’s woodblocks remained in use for generations, and when the Paris publisher Paul Marteau brought out a new edition with Grimaud in 1930 as the “Ancien Tarot de Marseille”, the name was settled for good. It had probably already come into use in the 19th century; the card makers themselves had never used it.

Scholars distinguish two types of the pattern, which differ in the details of individual trumps. Alongside these, a variant arose in eastern France, Switzerland and southern Germany, the Besançon tarot, in which the Popess and the Pope are replaced by Juno and Jupiter. This avoided trouble with Catholic and Protestant sensibilities alike.

78 cards: the structure

A Tarot de Marseille has 78 cards in two groups. The 22 trumps, in French atouts, bear Roman numerals from I to XXI and names in capital letters: Le Bateleur, La Papesse, L’Impératrice, L’Empereur, Le Pape, L’Amoureux, Le Chariot, La Justice, L’Ermite, La Roue de Fortune, La Force, Le Pendu, the nameless XIII with the Grim Reaper, Tempérance, Le Diable, La Maison Dieu, L’Étoile, La Lune, Le Soleil, Le Jugement, Le Monde. Then there is Le Mat, the Fool, without a number. The remaining 56 cards are divided among the four suits Bâtons, Coupes, Épées and Deniers, each with ten number cards from Ace to Ten and four court cards: Valet, Cavalier, Reine, Roi. The number cards show no scenes, only the suit signs, artfully arranged: crossed batons, curved and interlaced swords, cups and coins entwined with foliage. Make a note of the numbers of Justice (VIII) and Strength (XI): in the fourth part of the series, they are swapped.

How tarot is played

Tarot is a trick-taking game. Whoever leads determines the suit; the others must follow suit, and anyone who cannot must play a trump. Trumps beat every suit, and higher trumps beat lower ones. The Fool is an exception: it beats nothing, but can be played at any time to “excuse” a trick, and it stays with its owner. At the end, the points of the cards won are counted, the most valuable being the kings and three special cards: the lowest trump, the highest trump and the Fool. In today’s French tarot four people play, one of whom, after a round of bidding, plays alone against the other three. In older forms, such as the Grand Tarot of the 18th century, three people sat at the table and the whole pack of 78 cards was dealt out.

Tarock and Tarocchi today

As a game, tarot is still alive today, though almost everywhere under a different name. France has had its own federation since 1973, with tournaments and a standardised pack with French suits and genre scenes on the trumps. Austria plays Königrufen, Tapp and other variants with 54 cards and is the country where tarock is most deeply rooted in everyday life; it is also played in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia. In Italy, Bologna holds on to Tarocchino with 62 cards, Piedmont to the full pack, Sicily to a set of its own. In Graubünden the game is called Troccas, in Valais Troggu. In Bavaria, Haferltarock, or Bavarian Tarock, does bear the name but is played with an ordinary pack of 36 cards and, strictly speaking, is no longer a tarot game. What all these games have in common is that they use the deck for what it was invented for. The idea of reading the cards came later, and not from players but from scholars.