Visconti-Sforza Tarot

Gold grounds, patterned textiles and elongated courtly figures make each card feel closer to an illuminated manuscript than a later printed pack. Rank and allegory are carried through costume, gesture and heraldic detail rather than printed titles or standardized numbering.

The name Visconti-Sforza describes related groups of luxury cards commissioned in fifteenth-century Milan. Seventy-four cards survive from the best-known Pierpont Morgan–Bergamo group; four familiar subjects are absent. The surviving works document courtly tarot before later Marseille and occult systems, so modern card correspondences should be treated as comparison rather than proof of original intent.