The Earliest Fully Illustrated Deck

The Sola Busca, engraved in Northern Italy around 1491, holds a distinct place in tarot history as the earliest known deck to give every minor arcana card its own illustrated scene rather than a plain repetition of suit signs. Where earlier and contemporary decks such as the Visconti-Sforza illustrate only the trumps and court cards and leave the pip cards as simple arrangements of cups, coins, swords or batons, the Sola Busca gives each of its forty numbered minor cards a distinct figure or narrative scene, a level of visual ambition no surviving earlier deck attempts.

Only one substantially complete set of the deck survives, later divided between collections with the majority now held at the British Museum. The deck takes its modern name not from its original patron, whose identity is not securely established in the surviving record, but from the Sola-Busca family who owned it in a later century, a naming pattern common to several surviving historical decks named for a later collector rather than a first commissioner.