Inspired by the rich and detailed artistic style of Flemish painter, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, these cards show the daily life of the medieval peasant in lively fashion. It’s a rather more earthy Tarot than the Giotto Tarot by the same author.
Corpulent peasants live and gambol and make faces at sheep in this rustic art deck inspired by 16th century Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The little white booklet explains that during the Protestant Reformation, artists used to fat commissions from the Church now had to find other sources of income for their art, hence the “genre painting” based on nature and the round of daily life, of which Bruegel is considered a master. Perhaps the loss of “fat” commissions led to the enlargement of the models as a form of wish fulfillment.
The Bruegel Tarot is peopled with their country cousins, their servants, and their tenant farmers. I’m no elitist, but, based on this deck, I must say that if one can get the upper parlor, perhaps one should. Bruegel is also known for his use of the grotesque, and Marchesi has not shied away from that propensity. Additionally, qualities of Bosch’s art have been intermingled with Bruegel’s, so the images of the tarot, remade in the mode of these artists, seem to have lost not just their sophistication, but also their majesty. The Chariot, normally a vehicle for personal evolution, shows the darkest side of this trump–one of the horses is crushing an old man who got in the way of the cart. That a misshapen lump rides at the top of a bale of hay on that same cart, seemingly fingering an angel-puppet just makes the scene more degraded.
Name: Bruegel Tarot
Creators: Guido Zibordi
Publisher: Lo Scarabeo
Deck Type: Tarot Deck
Cards: 78
