Cardinal Sins

Check out this very old and very beautiful Death card from Italy, about 1450, which was the very earliest days of tarot.

This is from one of those Visconti Family hand-painted decks. Unfortunately, only four cards remain from this particular pack, which has traditionally been associated with the painter Antonio Cicognara.

The Visconti family had a feud going with the Pope at the time, and it shows in this picture in which Death wears a cardinal's robes. A person who lives in Europe told me some years ago that the tassels hanging from Death's hat are goat-bell tassels, which would be a tremendous insult to the men of the Church, pictorially implying that they're as lustful as goats. This may be as much a political cartoon as it is a tarot card.

People still puzzle over the words on the little speech banner coming out of Death's mouth. One expert (Stewart Kaplan in the Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. II) says the words are "san fine," which means "without end." But they look more to me like "son fine," which would be "I am the end."