The flowery mead is one of the essential components of many medieval gardens. Poet Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) in his 1348 Decameron painted a vivid picture of what a villa and garden of a wealthy Florentine was like. "In the midst of the garden a lawn of very fine grass, so green it seemed nearly black, coloured with perhaps a thousand kind of flowers…shut in with very green citrus and orange trees bearing, at the same time, both ripe fruit and young fruit and flowers so that they pleased the sense of smell as well as charmed the eyes with shade." This description has its parallels in the tapestries produced during this period…known as the mille fleurs or thousands of flowers.
These images of royal women & their attendants riding outdoors are on cards from the collection of Visconti Tarot cards of the Cary Collection of Cards, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University. Originally commissioned in the 15C by the Viscontis, a Milanese family that dominated the cultural life of northern Italy in the 14C - 15C, this deck is one of the oldest sets in existence. The cards are attributed to Bonifacio Bembo, an Italian fresco artist who flourished between 1447-1478. The deck includes 11 trump cards, six court cards, including the King, Queen, Male Knight, Female Knight, Male Valet, and Female Valet, as well as the unusual addition of the 3 Theological Virtues - Faith, Hope and Charity. The unique addition of the female knight and valet may be an indication that this set was intended to be used by a female member of court.
These playing cards are remnants of early Italian tarot packs. The tarot, originally a game of uncertain origin, came to be associated with fortune-telling several centuries after its appearance in central Europe in the late 14C. Perhaps the most beautiful surviving example of this form is the Visconti tarot, 67 particularly extravagant hand-painted cards with gold, silver, and miniature Renaissance portraiture.
The complex history of these cards led to the identification of this deck with different names: “Visconti di Modrone Tarot,” from the Milanese noble family that possessed the deck until World War II. and “Filippo Maria Visconti Tarot,” from the name of the man who commissioned it.
