Accademia Carrara reunites Colleoni tarot deck in major Bergamo exhibition

The Accademia Carrara in Bergamo has mounted a landmark exhibition titled "TAROCCHI. Le origini, le carte, la fortuna" that reunites for the first time the complete surviving Colleoni tarot deck, originally comprising 78 cards of which 74 survive. The deck is split between the museum, a private collection in Bergamo, and the Morgan Library in New York. Curated by Paolo Plebani, the show spans six sections plus a library, tracing tarot history from 14th-century court games to Niki de Saint Phalle's Giardino dei Tarocchi. Highlights include the Gurion le Courtois manuscript (14th-century France), Baccio Baldini's engravings (c. 1460), the Sola Busca deck, and a library featuring Italo Calvino's 1969 book "Il castello dei destini incrociati" inspired by the Colleoni cards, with original letters between Calvino and publisher Franco Maria Ricci. The Colleoni cards, part of the Visconti-Sforza decks, were mostly painted by Bonifacio Bembo around 1455-1460, with later additions by Antonio Cicognara (1480-1490). The exhibition also explores tarot's shift from game to divination tool after Antoine Court de Gébelin's 1781 claim linking them to the Books of Thoth, and 20th-century surrealist interest, featuring Leonora Carrington's personal deck and Victor Brauner's 1947 painting "Le Surréaliste."