The Playing-Card Volume 44, Number 1

Jean Verame
Origin of Tarots -
the Avignon Hypothesis

W
hatever is said, whatever is written, NOTHING is known about the
origin of the Tarot, and nobody seems to have made – to solve the
mystery – a global study, neither on the painting of the Middle Ages
nor on illuminations or miniatures. Remember that in the north of Italy there
is no example older than the famous Visconti Tarot (second quarter of the 15th
century) and that in the following there has been a downright enthusiasm for
this game at the different courts of the region. I think it is time to open up a new
field of consideration.
In the 14th century, Avignon was the centre of Europe and of the Christian
world, the domicile of the Pope and of several cardinals and courtiers. That
city has attracted a lot of artists from Flanders, the Ile de France, Spain, from
the Moselle, from Northern Italy, from England, and furthermore miniaturists
from Paris. Avignon was a city of the Comtat Venaissin and formed part of the
Holy German Empire. Millions of drawings and sketches, in black, in bistre or
in colour, have been cumulated during almost a century.
But actually, paradoxically, this cosmopolitan city, aswarm with artists, at-
tracting pilgrims, artisans, bankers; where they spoke Provençal, Francilien or
French, and Florentine, obviously Latin, too, has been drained of all its trea-
sures. But you need not to be astonished about the absence of any trace of
playing-cards as practically almost everything has vanished except the build-
ings and their frescos. In March 1403, the last Pope of Avignon, Pedro de Luna,
called Benedict XIII, fled the palace and Avignon for Châteaurenard in dis-
guise. The end of the papacy in Avignon caused a downright disbandment,
starting in 1398, emptying the city of a great part of its population and scatter-
ing everything that could be born away all over Europe.
In that era, a number of symbolic elements and allegorical figures circulated
in paintings, and not only those that became the trumps of the famous Tarot de
Marseille. It is enough to read Christine de Pisan, Martin Le Franc, and on to
Le Cœur d’Amour Epris by René d’Anjou, where we find in addition to La Tem-
pérance, La Force, La Fortune eventually all the known trumps, vertus, Charité
(Charity), Raison (Reason), Espérance (Hope), Mélancolie (Melancholy), Pa-
resse (Lazyness), Vice, Amour (Love), Chasteté (Chastity), all the elements that
could have been in the place of Le Monde, Les Amoureux, La Maison-Dieu, Le
Pendu, Le Diable, etc.
Furthermore, the complete absence of females in the Italian card games, ex-
actly like in the Spanish games, while the French card always had them, leads
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us directly to our Tarot. A notarial document dated 1381 that bars a sailor from
Marseille from playing with cards during the passage to Egypt proves that
there were cards very well. And you cannot imagine a single moment that the
card makers in Marseille or Avignon could know about the existence of what
was hidden in a casket or a shrine in a Duke’s palace in Milan. The opposite
seems more probable. We are there at the dilemma of the egg and the hen, but,
I insist, who can nowadays prove that Marseille has copied the ducal tarots and
not vice versa?...
Better: In the museum Petit Palais d’Avignon there are frescos originating
from a house in Sorgues, one of them showing a
Valet de Chien (Valet of Dogs), see Fig. 1. The fres-
cos should have been painted between 1360 and
1380. At Villeneuve-les-Avignons, painted during
the same papal era, there is another Valet de Chien
(Fig. 2)! Now, the Fou, or Fol, or Mat of the Tarot
has a dog at his lap.
Even better, there is
a multitude of Jacks
with a dog on the cards
made in Marseille,
Avignon, Paris, Lyon,
Rouen, Strasbourg, but
also in the cards with
French pattern that
were made in Brus-
sels, Munich, Düssel-
Fig. 1
dorf, Vienna, Prague,
and Liechtenstein. (For
some Fools see Fig. 4
and for two Jacks see
Fig. 2 Fig. 5, both on the next
page; a small selection of Jacks is also on the back
cover.) Generally they are Jacks of Spades, but I
have a similar Jack of Diamonds made in Madrid
(Fig. 3). There are practically none of them in the
Italian cards, except the Fools taken from the Tarot
de Marseille.
The oldest card known is that belonging to the
“Goldschmidt” series, named after the collector
who owned nine cards from this pack, painted on
parchment, and they are supposed to be from the
Provence. This pack is composed, in addition to the
Jack with his dog (Fig. 6, next page), of a Five of Ba- Fig. 3
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 The Playing-Card Volume 44, Number 1

Fig. 4: Fools made by Noblet, Sarton, Rochias

tons, an Ace of Cups and an Ace of Coins! These were the customary suit signs
in the middle of the era. The problem however, for those that neglect the fact
that nothing was institutionalised in the 14th century when the playing cards
were created and when there was a total freedom (see the hand-painted cards
of the Ambras Hunting pack and the Stuttgart pack,
and see also the Fool of the Visconti Tarot kept at
Yale), is that it is obvious that the Tarot cannot have
been created all at once but that the images have

Fig. 5: Jacks, a pack from Paris and an Etteilla pack Fig. 6: Goldschmidt jack
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been introduced into it to make the regular game more complex. These images
were manifold, and what mattered their appearance as they were considered
as equal to Atouts or Trumps, images that were found elsewhere also in the
library of Charles V as in that of Charles VI, not to forget Christine de Pisan,
just like the religious images were distributed for a population mostly illiter-
ate. The only irritation for those that believe as hard as iron that the Tarot has
been invented in a single room and conceived by a single painter, although by
no means it is a matter of painting but actually of illumination, and that the
painter to whom the “invention” of the Tarot is attributed is better known as
a fresco painter. Can you imagine the Duke of Milano who decides to offer a
wedding gift to himself asking a painter to create that gift with a game of cards
and... the painter comes back with 78 illuminated cards and the rules of what
he calls Tarot!!!??? Who can really believe such a nonsense ?
In this matter it is appropriate to remind of the enormous success across
Europe of Le Livre de la Chasse (The Hunting Book) by Gaston Phébus, written
between 1387 and 1389 and then largely illustrated and most successful. The
most beautiful specimen of it was executed at the beginning of the 15th century,
which corresponds to the height of the subtle art of illumination encouraged by
the Dukes of Berry, of Bourgogne, and of Bedford. In the era when the manu-
script 616 (Bibliothèque nationale de France) was illuminated, the illustrations
of which have a needle etching background like in earlier manuscripts made by
illuminators from Avignon at the end of the 14th century. Everything was made
by a team of different artists, and they did not sign their works.
Anyway, and to get
back to the Jacks and
Fools with a dog, a great
English collector of the
end of the 19th century,
George Clulow, had
in possession what he
thought to be the oldest
cards in Europe, and he
regarded them as from
the Provence, although
others tended to Rouen.
There are two Jacks,
Spades and Clubs, of
Fig. 7
course accompanied by
a dog (Fig. 7), but batches of these Jacks and Fools can be found in dozens and
dozens of games! (Again: For a selection see Figs. 4, 5 and the back cover.)
Another discovery. Whatever the Tarot is that you might have in your hands
you can assert that L’Imperatrice, and sometimes L’Empereur, have an “eagle”

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 The Playing-Card Volume 44, Number 1

Fig. 8

on their shield (Fig. 8). Investigation closed, it is not at

all an eagle (for those who think so, as Avignon was
part of the Holy Roman Empire, it would have been an
eagle which later became double-headed). This shield
shows a gyrfalcon and … that was exactly the emblem
of Avignon until Queen Jeanne
sold the city of Avignon to Pope
Clemens VI in 1348 (Fig. 9). The
latter wanted to change the of-
ficial coat-of-arms by putting on
it three keys, but the protests of
the people from Avignon made
him revise his decision and he
conceded two more gyrfalcons
to them! Incidentally, the walls of
the hall situated on the first floor
Fig. 10
of the Médiathèque d’Avignon,
Fig. 9: Avignon seal the former livrée (palace) of Cardinal Ceccano, are dec-
orated by coats-of-arms imposed by a blind arcade made between 1340 and
1350, and the gyrfalcon is present there (Fig. 10).
(Translated by Peter Endebrock)
(Editor’s note: Please be aware that most of the cards including those on the back cover
are shown in different reduction factors.)
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