The Lovers Tarot Card Meaning and Art Visconti A Tarot Deck Fragment
Designation
About the Deck
Visconti A Tarot Deck Fragment
(aka Cary-Yale Tarot Deck or Visconti di Madrone Tarot Deck) One of the earliest Tarot Decks, the Cary Yale Visconti Deck is entirely gilded, with fine paintings upon it. Like the other Visconti decks, it features numerous heraldic devices. Unlike the other Visconti decks, it features a maid and a lady among the court cards.
Traditionally said to have been commissioned by Fillipo Maria Visconti for the 1441 marriage of Bianca Maria Visconti to Francesco Sforza I.
Provenance
Italy, c. 1441.
Tags
visconti-biscione, trumps-6, the-lovers
According to Many Schools of Thought
A. E. Waite's Secondary Meanings
The Lovers or Marriage. This symbol has undergone many variations, as might be expected from its subject. In the eighteenth century form, by which it first became known to the world of archaeological research, it is really a card of married life, shewing father and mother, with their child placed between them; and the pagan Cupid above, in the act of flying his shaft, is, of course, a misapplied emblem. The Cupid is of love beginning rather than of love in its fulness, guarding the fruit thereof. The card is said to have been entitled Simulacyum fidei, the symbol of conjugal faith, for which the rainbow as a sign of the covenant would have been a more appropriate concomitant. The figures are also held to have signified Truth, Honour and Love, but I suspect that this was, so to speak, the gloss of a commentator moralizing. It has these, but it has other and higher aspects.
S. L. MacGregor Mathers's Divinatory Meanings
Upright
Wise Dispositions, Proof, Trials Surmounted
Reversed
Unwise Plans, Failure when put to the test.
Papus's Divinatory Meanings
Love.
