The series of engravings known as the Tarocchi del Mantegna is neither a tarot deck nor the work of renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna. The surviving prints are not mounted on cards; in fact, many are bound in books. They have been dated to 1465-1470, but documents from the Council of Mantua in 1459-1460 refer to a "Game of the Governance of the World" that was designed for the entertainment and edification of the learned cardinals present at the council, and some scholars believe that the Tarocchi del Mantegna is this game.
What makes the Tarocchi del Mantegna interesting from the standpoint of tarot history is that it dates from only a few decades after the invention of the tarot, and draws on many of the same motifs. It's not outside the realm of possibility that the designers of these two artifacts might have known each other and exchanged opinions. At the very least, the Mantegna designer was apparently quite familiar with the tarot cards that were popular at the time and borrowed heavily from them in creating these engravings. Yet, unlike the "silent book" of the tarot, the Mantegna series is equipped with titles and a numbering scheme that make its system of organization, and hence its intended meaning and purpose, fairly clear. So although the tarot almost certainly came first, and although the Mantegna system differs in many important respects from the tarot, it is still the closest thing we have to a contemporary explication of what the tarot was thought to represent in the mid-15th century. (For comparison, the Steele sermon, the oldest surviving document to even so much as mention the titles of the trumps, dates from 1480-1490, one more generation removed from the invention of the game.)
The Mantegna prints are divided into five series, each designated by a letter printed on the cards:
E. The "Estates of Man", or The Ranks of Human Society
D. The Muses and the God Apollo
C. The Liberal Arts and Sciences
B. The Christian Virtues, accompanied by the spirits of the Sun, the Cosmos, and Time
A. The Celestial Spheres, including the seven planets, the fixed Stars, the Prime Mover, and the First Cause (God).
Intriguingly, the cards are also number 1-50, beginning with the E series (1-10) and ending with the A series (41-50). Thus the numbers and letters run in opposite directions, probably a reflection of the Neoplatonic doctrine that creation descends downward from God to Man, while the human spirit may rise back upward by going through the stages of creation in reverse.
Part 1: The Ranks of Human Society
Part 3: The Arts and Sciences
other parts to come . . .