Marseilles Tarot

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.

Michael Dummett's research led him to conclude that (based on the lack of earlier documentary evidence) the Tarot deck was probably invented in northern Italy in the 15th century and introduced into southern France when the French conquered Milan and the Piedmont in 1499. The antecedents of the Tarot de Marseille would then have been introduced into southern France at around that time. The 78-card version of the game of Tarot died out in Italy but survived in France and Switzerland. When the game was reintroduced into northern Italy, the Marseilles designs of the cards were also reintroduced to that region. All Italian-suited tarot decks outside of Italy are descended from the Milan-Marseilles type with the exception of some early French and Belgian packs which show mixed influence from Bolognese tarot (see below). The earliest surviving cards of the Marseilles pattern were produced by Jean Noblet of Paris around 1650.

The recent documentary "Les mystères du Tarot de Marseille" (Arte, 18 dévrier 2015) claims that the work of Marsilio Ficino can be credited as having inspired imagery specific to the Marseilles.

The name Tarot de Marseille is not of particularly ancient vintage; it was coined at least as early as 1856 by the French card historian Romain Merlin, and was popularized by French cartomancers Eliphas Levi, Gérard Encausse, and Paul Marteau who used this collective name to refer to a variety of closely related designs that were being made in the city of Marseilles in the south of France, a city that was a centre of playing card manufacture, and were (in earlier, contemporaneous, and later times) also made in other cities in France. The Tarot de Marseille is one of the standards from which many tarot decks of the 19th century and later are derived.

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