Tarot. Origins, cards, fortune

The exhibition Tarot. Origins, cards, fortune offers a fascinating immersion into the centuries-old affair of the tarot, from the origins in Italian Renaissance courts to the most daring interpretations of contemporary art. Edited by Paolo Plebani, the exhibition is divided into a over seven centuries, offering the public the complete history of these mysterious and symbolic, often misunderstood, but always inspiring cards.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is the extraordinary meeting of the Mazzo Colleoni, the most comprehensive of the ancient ones, whose 74 original cards are today divided between Carrara Academy, The Morgan Library & Museum of New York and a private collection. For the first time in more than a century, these works return to dialogue in the same exhibition space.

Via exceptional loans by prestigious institutions such as the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the National Library of Florence, the route addresses iconographic, technical and symbolic evolution of the tarot, also exploring their use as divinatory instrument from the 18th century onwards. Alongside the old masters such as Boniface Bembo, appear artists of the 20th century and beyond: from Victor Brauner a Irving Penn, from Leonora Carrington a Niki de Saint Phalle, testifying to the surprising topicality and universality of these cards.

A project multidisciplinary and international, capable of engaging both art enthusiasts and those curious about the symbolism and cultural history of the West.