The 'Charles VI' Tarot (Gringonneur) — c. 1450–1480

At a glance

Seventeen surviving hand-painted cards (sixteen trumps and a page) held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, historically — and wrongly — said to be French cards painted in 1392 for King Charles VI. They are in fact Italian, c. 1450–80, and a key witness to the B-order (Ferrarese) trump sequence. A textbook case of a name preserving an exploded myth.

Origin & dating

The legend comes from a real account-book entry: a 1392 payment to Jacquemin Gringonneur for three gilded card packs for Charles VI of France. Nineteenth-century writers attached that entry to these cards. But the surviving deck is a Northern Italian product (Ferrara or possibly Florence), dated to roughly 1450–1480 — about a century too late to be Gringonneur's. The names "Charles VI" and "Gringonneur" survive only as labels of convenience.

Provenance & evidence

17 cards in the BnF (16 trumps + the Page of Swords), hand-painted and gilded. Style and iconography place it in the Ferrarese orbit; its trump order is the main reason it matters — this library places it in the B-order that Dummett distinguishes from Bologna's A-order and Milan's C-order, but the classification is genuinely debated: the cards carry no numerals, and Dummett's own later analysis (Il Mondo e l'Angelo) argued the sequence is actually closer to the southern A-order, despite the Ferrarese style. It is genuinely debated in the literature.

Game or divination?

Game. No cartomantic use; the divinatory association is, again, a post-1781 import.

The fear question

No fear. A gilded court object of the same luxury class as the Visconti decks. The only "deception" in its history is scholarly, not social — the mis-dating, not any hidden practice.

Counter-voices

The bogus 1392 French date was itself an early piece of mythmaking that made tarot look older and more mysterious than it is — a reminder that romantic over-dating (toward Egypt, toward medieval France) has repeatedly run ahead of the documents. Correcting it is not "suppressing" an occult past; it is removing a 19th-century embellishment.

Open questions / corrections owed

• Ferrara vs. Florence origin is unresolved; date range c.1430s–1470s is still argued.
• The deck is a fragment; the full original trump set is reconstructed, not observed.

Sources & further reading

• "The Fifteenth-Century Charles VI Deck Recreated," Tarot Heritage.
• trionfi.com, "Origin of Tarot" notes on the Gringonneur entry.
• Dummett, The Game of Tarot (1980), on A/B/C orders.

RESEARCH NOTE (2026-06-13) — attribution debate. This catalogue follows the older Dummett classification (Ferrarese / B-order). Newer scholarship (BnF Catalogue général) attributes the deck to the Florentine workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni & Marco del Buono (c. 1460), an A-leaning sequence (all virtues below Death). Genuinely debated — both views are live. Also: 16 trumps + 1 Page of Swords = 17 surviving cards (not 17 trumps). See research/decks/charles-vi-tarot.md.

EDITORIAL CALL (2026-06-13): attribution set to Florentine (Apollonio di Giovanni & Marco del Buono workshop, c. 1450–70) per the current BnF Catalogue général; the trump-ORDER (A vs B) remains genuinely contested, so the genealogy branch is left unchanged pending a tree review.

Where the pictures come from: who holds this deck's pictures, how sharp they are and what their rights allow: Sources: 'Charles VI' (Ferrara).