A Short History of Italian Playing Cards

Italian playing cards have a very old tradition, which dates back to six centuries ago; how long and complicated their history is can be told by the number of patterns that still today exist in this country: sixteen standard designs (not counting the few that turned obsolete) plus three different tarots, a selection much larger than elsewhere in the Western world.

Sometime around the late 1300s, thanks to the frequent trades with northern Africa and the Near East, where the Arabic populations already knew card games, this form of pastime reached Italy, and within a few years it developed throughout the country. By that time, the standard deck already consisted of 52 cards, divided into four suits marked by Coins, Cups, Swords and Sticks. While in the south, strongly influenced by the Arabic culture, the structure of the deck remained practically unchanged, in the northern regions, no more than half a century later, a number of illustrated cards featuring allegories were added to the standard ones, thus giving birth to another important branch in the history of playing cards: the tarot. This new deck was used mostly by the upper class, for two main reasons: the additional allegories and their ranking was based on a good level of knowledge, that only few rich people had, and also the price of these decks, some of which were hand-painted by artists, was out of reach for the large majority of the folk.

An interesting change that both kinds of deck developed concerned the last three subjects of each suits, i.e. the court cards, no longer bore a written name, as they did in the Arabic tradition, but human figures: in the south they were a knave, a cavalier and a king; in the tarot, also a female personage, the queen, was added to the aforesaid three.

The standard deck and the tarot underwent an almost parallel evolution: the former, which the lower social class played with most, in many areas dropped the 8s, the 9s and the 10s, so that from the original 52 cards only 40 were left. Curiously, a pattern with very similar features was also used in Portugal (but not in Spain, where a local design had developed). The design of such Italo-Portuguese cards, found in the whole southern half of Italy, up to Rome, maintained some original elements, such as the old arrangement of the suit pips. Instead in the north, the same suits were redesigned in order to fit the local taste and tradition.

Meanwhile, also the additional allegory cards of the tarot, yet slightly differing in subject and rank from one place to another, developed into a steady scheme, so that already by the late 1400s three main tarot patterns could be told: one in the area of Milan, one in the area of Bologna, and one in the area of Ferrara and Venice. The latter died out very soon, during the 16th century.

Also the one in Milan would have died out in a slightly longer time, had the French occupants not exported this pattern to their own country, where the tarot set new roots: at the beginning of the 19th century the same kind of deck, with some changes through which the old design had inevitably undergone during 300 years, came back to north-western Italy, and revived the players' interest, developing again into local patterns (Lombardic, Piedmontese).

The tarot scheme devised in Bologna was the most long-lasting. It survived with few changes up to our present age, being one of the three regional tarots still in production. Sometime during the 17th century it also inspired a new special variety of tarot called Minchiate, with many more additional allegories (97 cards all together), which spread towards Florence, then towards Rome, and probably reached much farther regions. The Minchiate did not last very long, though, except in the Tuscan area, where the last specimens were manufactured in the early years of the 20th century.

Furthermore, the tarot of Bologna somehow influenced also the one used in Sicily since the 18th century: the latter has a few peculiar mismatching features, but its structure still maintains some elements in common, consistent with such distant origin.

From the 1600s onwards, the Spanish administration of the southern Italian regions exerted its influence also on playing cards: the old Italo-Portuguese pattern gradually disappeared, replaced by decks of clear Spanish influence; their structure was the same, but their designs somewhat differed. Also most of the central parts of Italy became acquainted with the Spanish pattern, particularly the lands under the Papal State, whom the Spanish had always been in good relations with.

This situation remained unchanged for about two centuries: between the late 1700s and the turn of the following century, when the many lands under foreign administration gradually began to gain independence, some local patterns, still clearly inspired by the old Spanish cards, were established in different parts of central and southern Italy. In the city of Piacenza, under French administration, a fifth pattern, presently called Piacentine, was developed from the special deck used by the occupant soldiers to play Aluette, a Spanish-suited deck. In the island of Sardinia, located midway between Italy and Spain, a special design created by a manufacturer of Barcelona became the local regional pattern.

In north-eastern Italy, the old Latin-suited designs that had been used for the local tarots were also adopted for standard decks, giving origin to five different patterns, some of which still today maintain a double version, with either 40 or 52 cards.

Instead the north-western parts of Italy, more subject to a French cultural influence, switched to Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs and Spades, yet with a different pattern in each region.

Finally, when after WW I the southern part of Tirol was annexed to Italy, the German-speaking population never gave up the region's traditional pattern, whose suits are Hearts, Acorns, Bells and Leaves; an Italian version was then created, identical to the original Austrian one, whose name, after the city of Salzburg, was also maintained. Today Italian Salzburger decks contain 40 cards. Only in very recent years, the traditional number of 36 cards (i.e. each suit starting with a 6) has been increased by adding 5s to each suit, thus marking a slight difference with Austrian editions, whose number of cards has remained as usual.

For more details visit the site Andy's Playing Cards!