Glossary
Iconographic Sources
The set of visual, cultural, and artistic influences that contributed to the formation of tarot images.
Tarot images did not appear in isolation. They belong to a vast iconographic context that includes medieval art, religious representations, moral allegories, popular traditions, and Renaissance imagery.
Certain figures of the major arcana find parallels in medieval iconographic cycles, danse macabre imagery, representations of virtues, or images of royal and imperial power.
Understanding the iconographic sources of tarot makes it possible to place the cards in their historical and cultural context, well before the occultist interpretations developed in the 18th and 19th centuries.