The Visconti Gaps: Why Tarot's Oldest Decks Are Missing Pieces

Today's Lesson The oldest surviving tarot decks in the world—the Visconti-Sforza decks from 15th-century Milan—aren't complete. These hand-painted treasures, commissioned by Italian nobility, are missing cards. Not because they were lost to time (though some were), but because the concept of a 'standard' tarot deck didn't exist yet. Different decks had different numbers of cards, different trump sequences, and different purposes. The Pierpont Morgan-Bergamo deck has 74 cards. The Cary-Yale deck has an expanded set of trumps. These weren't mistakes—they were custom creations, made for specific families who wanted their own version of this new card game. This matters for modern readers because it challenges the idea that there's one 'authentic' way tarot should be. When people debate whether a deck is 'real tarot' because it deviates from tradition, they're forgetting that deviation *is* the tradition. The earliest tarot makers were innovators, not preservationists. They added cards, subtracted cards, changed orders, and adapted imagery to suit their patrons. The Visconti decks remind us that tarot has always been a living, flexible system—even at its very beginning. Here's your practical takeaway: next time you encounter a deck that breaks the rules—extra cards, reordered majors, unusual structure—remember it's following tarot's oldest tradition…