The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards [Paperback]

Michael Dummett (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 141 pages
• Publisher: George Braziller; 1st edition (April 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807611417
• ISBN-13: 978-0807611418
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,054,030 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A mediocre commentary on the Visconti-Sforza deck, January 12, 2001

By 

Uri Raz (Israel) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards (Paperback)

The book begins with a 15 pages introduction to tarot, which I enjoyed a lot - it is informative, readable, and I learnt from it.

The second part of the book - which is most of it's pages - brings color reproductions of the Visconti-Sforza cards, with commentary on each cards. As the book is out of print, I could find only a black & white photocopy of the book from which I cant say anything about the quality of the cards' reproductions.

As reproductions of the cards are available commercially and the book is out of print for a long time, I think most people would buy this book for commentary on the cards, rather than the reproductions of the cards and thus rate this book based on the text, rather than the pictures.

I find the text disappointing, especially considering the author. Beyond tracing copies of the cards (e.g. who painted them and who owned them at the time of the book's writing, etc) the text is doesnt bring a lot of information.

Some cards - both minor & major arcana - have only a couple of lines of text (e.g. commenting that in the pips of the coin suite with odd number of coins the arrangement is sometimes unusual), and in general I didnt learn much from it.

This is in contrast to such books as Brian Williams' (e.g. Renessance & Minchiate decks), which go much deeper into the history of tarot including comparison of decks and examples of art from the appropriate historical times.

This is a simple book about the deck - basic commentary about it's history and art with no serius attempt to put it in the context of it's time (e.g. art of the time or the works of the artists).