Trionfi (cards) which offers details about the deck and a cursory explanation of how it is played. It likely had a total of 60 cards (four kings, forty pip cards and sixteen trumps). The forty-four plain-suited cards used birds as suit signs and the trumps presented sixteen Roman gods. In two suits, the pip cards are in reverse order as in many of the oldest card games. Two decks from June 1457 seem to relate to a visit at Ferrara of the young Milanese heir of the dukedom Galeazzo Maria Sforza in July/August 1457. Each deck consisted of 70 cards — the
Cartomancy Cartomancy Cartomancy is fortune-telling or divination using a deck of cards. Forms of cartomancy appeared soon after playing cards were first introduced into Europe in the 14th century. Practitioners of cartomancy are generally known as "cartomancers", "card readers", or simply "readers". Cartomancy using standard playing cards was the most popular form of providing fortune-telling card readings in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The standard 52-card deck is often augmented with jokers or even with the blank card found in many packaged decks. In France, the 32-card piquet stripped deck is most typically used in cartomantic readings, although the 52