When the Minor Arcana Became a World of Images

Many contemporary readers learn with numbered suit cards that show complete scenes. This makes it easy to assume that scenic Minor Arcana have always been the norm. They have not.

The 1491 Sola Busca is the earliest surviving complete 78-card tarot pack and an extraordinary early example in which the suit cards are populated by figures, tools and actions. Its imagery is not a draft of the Rider–Waite–Smith system. It belongs to another cultural and symbolic world. Yet its existence reminds us that number cards could become narrative images long before the twentieth century.

In 1909, Pamela Colman Smith created a new, coherent sequence of scenic suit cards for the deck published by William Rider & Son under the direction of A. E. Waite. Her compositions made relationship, labour, conflict, celebration and uncertainty visible across the Minor Arcana. This visual continuity became one reason the deck was so teachable and influential.

The connection should be handled carefully. Similar motifs do not prove a simple line of copying, and scholarship distinguishes evidence from attractive speculation. The more useful observation is that illustrated Minor Arcana can transform reading: number and suit remain present, but gesture, setting and sequence add another layer of meaning.

Sources and further reading:
British Museum, Sola Busca object record: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1845-0825-485
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “It’s in the Cards”: https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/tarot