Still searching for that special book with big colourful tarot card art and history, when I came upon this apparently rare book.
It may not be what I'm looking for, so I will see if my library can get it first (save money that way ;) I don't think much of the front cover, but maybe the inside makes up for it.
Blurb written by seller: Truly beautiful pages with a great many black-and-white illustrations. 'At some point Moakley became interested in the study of Tarot. Her article, The Waite-Smith Tarot, appeared in the Bulletin of the New York Public Library, (v.58, 1954). Among other insights, she argued for the influence of Arthur E. Waite's Tarot book and deck on T.S. Eliot's landmark poem The Waste Land. From 1955 through 1967 she corresponded with art historian Erwin Panofsky; this period brackets her article and book on the iconography of the Visconti-Sforza deck. The 17-page article, 'The Tarot Trumps and Petrarch's Trionfi: Some Suggestions on their Relationship', appeared in the Bulletin of the New York Public Library (v.60, 1956), and foreshadowed the 1966 book for which she is famous. In 1958 she wrote a brief introduction to the Arcanum Books edition of Waite's translation of The Tarot of the Bohemians, by Papus. Among other things, it expresses her interest in and understanding of the two sides of modern Tarot. Introducing the occult or "dark" side, she compares the duality of Tarot to "the Yin-Yang symbol, whose dark side has a little spot of brightness at its center." Today, of course, Moakley is best remembered for her 1966 book, The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza Family: An Historical and Iconographic Study. Here she presented the first (and what remains to this day the most respectable) iconographic study of a particular Tarot deck. Her research (by this time over a decade of it) encompassed the history of the Visconti-Sforza deck itself, the family for which it was made, their heraldry and relationships, the artist who was responsible for its creation, and the symbolism of the allegorical figures. She provided sober identifications for 'enigmas' like the Hanged Man and 'mysteries' like the Popess, opening the door for subsequent rational treatment of Tarot iconography. Her findings in each of these areas remain foundational today, and her conclusions about the iconographic program of the trump cycle remain more reasonable than 99% of what has been written since'.
Below is a card from The Beautiful Creatures Tarot:
There is a book out there somewhere, but this is a start. I find some tarot cards are just so interesting and beautiful.
*Here is another book, but no local libraries have it, or can get it. It's on Amazon ,but it's costly!
The Painted Caravan: A Penetration Into the Secrets of Tarot Cards Hardcover – 1954 by Basil Ivan Rakoczi (Author, Illustrator)
