La Commedia a Soggetto Tarot

La Commedia a Soggetto (Italian for ‘scripted performance’) was a very popular theatrical genre in Italy since the Renaissance. A better known name for this genre is commedia dell’arte. The deck creator presents the images characteristic of A.E. Waite’s Tarot in a special humorous manner of his, with the two leading commedia dell’arte characters becoming the heroes of the cards – they are the boy Harlequin and the girl Domino.

The visual row of the deck is literally permeated with the spirit of the theater. Here and there you come upon the Venice Carnival masks, or plaid costumes of street actors, or, sometimes, attributes of a circus performance. In addition, the main character Harlequin is an artist who creates theatrical scenery. And if so, then the painting also becomes one of the main storylines of the deck. That is why pentacles turn into palettes, wands into pencils and brushes, swords into scissors, and cups into tubes of paint.