Sola Busca tarot

[1] In 1907, the Busca-Serbelloni family donated black-and-white photographs of all 78 cards to the British Museum, where they were likely seen by A. E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, inspiring the subsequent Rider–Waite Tarot deck.

[3] The similarities between the artwork of the Minor Arcana of the Waite-Smith deck and Sola-Busca's plain suits has led some scholars to suggest that artist Pamela Colman Smith drew inspiration from the earlier work.

He also supposed that the deck was created for a Venetian client by Mattia Serrati da Cosandola, a miniaturist operating in Ferrara (the center of Tarot card production at the time).

[11] In 1987, in the catalogue of a great Tarot exhibition realized at the Estense Castle of Ferrara, Italian historian Giordano Berti wrote a summary of all the research made up to that point by various scholars.

L'alchimia nei Tarocchi Sola-Busca (Turin, 1995 and Stamford, 1998), argued that many images of the Sola Busca deck are related to themes of European alchemy as practised during the Renaissance.

[13] In 1998, the German publisher Wolfgang Mayer printed, for the first time, a faithful version of the 78 cards in a limited edition of 700 numbered copies.

In 2012, the Pinacoteca di Brera organized the exhibition Il Segreto dei Segreti - I Tarocchi Sola Busca e la cultura ermetico-alchemica.

In the catalog, the possible author of the engravings, Nicola di Maestro Antonio, the possible inspirer, the hermeticist Ludovico Lazzarelli, the year and place of execution of the color version, Venice in 1491, are suggested.

The key figure is the King of Swords, titled Alecxandro M. (Alexander the Great), who according to a legend, reported in the medieval book entitled Secretum secretorum, was initiated into alchemy by his master, the philosopher Aristotle.