2 of Cups

Tarot began in northern Italy in the 15th century as a card game, and the numbered cards of its suits were mostly plain counting cards, not scenes. The suit of cups is one of the four Italian suits (cups, swords, batons, coins), so the Two of Cups was at first just two cups on a card.

In the best-known early Milanese decks, the Visconti-Sforza group, the numbered cards are decorated rather than pictorial. One of them, the Pierpont Morgan Bergamo deck (about 1451), is described as having cream-coloured numbered cards with a flower and vine motif. The article we used does not describe the Two of Cups itself, so we cannot say how that card looked.

The Tarot de Marseille pattern is later: the earliest surviving cards of that type are from Marseille in 1639. There, cups are drawn as real cups, and the Two of Cups typically carries a floral, caduceus-like ornament ending in two heraldic dolphin heads. That ornament matters for the Rider-Waite-Smith card below.

No source we found links the Two of Cups to the illustrated Sola Busca deck (about 1491).

William Rider & Son published the Rider-Waite deck in December 1909, with Pamela Colman Smith drawing the numbered cards of every suit as small scenes, to Waite’s instructions. Earlier decks, with a few rare exceptions, gave these cards simple designs.

For the Two of Cups Smith drew a man and a woman exchanging cups, with a winged staff topped by a lion’s head above them. Waite’s own text calls this a variant of a sign found in a few old examples of the card, which fits the caduceus-like ornament on Marseille-pattern versions. Waite says the sign has curious emblematical meanings but does not explain them.

Scholars suggest Smith saw photographs of the Sola Busca deck at the British Museum, and some of her cards, such as the Three of Swords and the Ten of Wands, resemble its cards. We found no source tying the Two of Cups to a Sola Busca card.