page_title: Tarot of Marseilles
section_title: Piedmontese and Lombard patterns
hierarchical_section_title: Tarot of Marseilles / Variants / Piedmontese and Lombard patterns
caption_attribution_description: English: The Fool in two different versions of the Tarot printed in Turin (northern Italy) by Stefano Vergnano: 1827 (left) and around 1830 (right).
context_page_description: The Tarot of Marseilles or Tarot of Marseille, also widely known by the French designation Tarot de Marseille, is one of the standard patterns for the design of tarot cards. It is a pattern from which many subsequent tarot decks derive.
context_section_description: In the early eighteenth century the Marseilles Tarot was introduced in Northern Italy starting from the Kingdom of Sardinia, which also included the Savoy (now in France) and Piedmont, where the card manufacturing industry collapsed following a severe economic depression. The Piedmontese players did not have difficulties to accept the Marseilles Tarot, because the images were similar and even the French language captioning was widespread in many areas of Piedmont.
  Around 1820 some manufacturers active in Turin, capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia, began to produce Tarot decks in Marseille's pattern, but after few years they introduced captions in Italian and small variations in certain figures. For example, the Fool was not chased by a wild animal but had a butterfly in front of him. In a few decades, variation after variation, was consolidated the iconography of the Piedmontese Tarot, which therefore must be considered as a derivation of the Tarot of Marseilles. It is currently the most widely used tarot deck in Italy.
  In the Austrian-ruled Duchy of Milan (modern-day Lombardy), the Marseilles pattern also took root with Italian captioning starting around 1810. The "Death" card was given several names by different manufacturers such as il Tredici (Thirteen), lo Specchio (the Skeleton), and Uguaglianza (Equality). Production of this pattern stopped before the First World War.
  Around 1835, Carlo Della Rocca of Milan engraved an elaborate interpretation of the Marseilles pattern. It became popular throughout Lombardy for the duration of the 19th century. It spread to Piedmont where a double-ended version was adapted to local tastes and was popular until the 1950s.
caption: Le Fol - Il Matto. Two different versions of The Fool, from the Vergnano Tarot printed in Turin (northern Italy) by Stefano Vergnano: 1827 (left) and around 1830 (right).
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