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The Fantastic Tarot Michelangelo Gaudio and Piero Alligo have created this dream-like 78-card Tarot, published by Il Meneghello in 1987 as a limited, numbered edition of 3500 sets. It comes in a beautiful ‘book cover style’ package with the words Tarocco Favoloso on the spine. The actual title though, as evidenced by the title cards within the deck, is Il Tarocco Fantastico. Michelangelo Gaudio is a painter and engraver, and Piero Alligo is a painter and stage magician. They conceived the deck while on the island of Ko-Samui, in the seas south of Thailand. Departing from more traditional iconography, they were inspired by their own imaginations and the atmosphere of the island. Several of the cards make clear allusions to the Waite-Smith deck, but in a fresh, almost satirical way. The Four of Staves shown below, for example, shows a large reptilian creature and an Arabian-dressed man reclining under the canopy of Colman-Smith’s card. The word fantastico - implying ‘fanciful, imaginary or whimsical’ - is a very good description for the theme of this deck. The images are populated with all kinds of hybrid creatures which appear to share both the appearance and character traits of multiple species. It is a world where fairy-tales collide: there are fish in the skies of ‘Il Sole;’ a fly able to overcome a lion in ‘La Forza;’ lobsters carrying sticks; equestrians riding tigers; insects, clowns and a UFO. Some of the human figures also have animal traits, such as the Fool who is part lobster and the rodent-dressed person on Fortuna’s treadmill. The Hermit is a frog-shaman studying in the safety of his cave, reminiscent of Yoda. A gazelle pokes his tongue out at us from behind the King of Cups. The figures flying from the lightning-struck Tower are humans with wings, hinting at characters like Bellerophon or Icarus who flew too near to the gods. |
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The artwork of the cards is excellent. The illustrations show highly skilled line work which renders everything
with accuracy as well as with humor. I also love the hand lettering of the card titles and the fact that they are
inside the image area. The illustrations are complimented by a huge palette of colors which are kept in harmony
because they share a muted intensity. The cards are printed on an unlaminated cream colored card stock, so the
colors are homogenized to some degree by the underlying color. They also feel great to the touch, but I am partial
to unlaminated decks. This deck really shows the beauty that can be achieved when printing on unlaminated stock,
because the way that the ink has merged onto the surface of these cards makes them appear almost to have been hand
painted with watercolor. |
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Review by Mark Filipas, 3/14/00 |