Mitelli's Tarot 1660

Around 1660, Bolognese engraver Giuseppe Maria Mitelli created a remarkable piece of Baroque card art for Count Filippo Bentivoglio: a Tarocchino Bolognese consisting of 62 cards across six engraved sheets. The Tarocchino differs from standard tarot by removing the 2, 3, 4, and 5 of each suit, producing a leaner but historically significant deck. A few decades after Mitelli's death, an anonymous Bolognese cardmaker reprinted and hand-colored the images for sale to players. In 2017 historian Giordano Berti published this splendid limited reproduction, limited to 900 numbered and signed copies, with marbled paper box covering that faithfully reproduces Bolognese paper styles of the early 18th century. The deluxe box edition includes a 118-page full-color companion booklet with historical background, analysis of the imagery, divinatory meanings, and reading methods.