2 of Pentacles

In the 15th-century Italian decks the Two of Coins is a plain pip card: two disc-shaped coins (denari) with no figure and no scene. In the Visconti-Sforza deck, made around 1450 in the workshop of Bonifacio Bembo, the two coins sit on a pale ground of flowers and vines. The card survives in the Bergamo collections (Accademia Carrara and Colleoni). Nothing in the surviving material from that period gives the card a meaning such as balance or adaptability.

The Tarot de Marseille, from roughly 1650 to 1700, joins its two coins with an ornamental ribbon or cartouche, often carrying the printer’s name and date. This is best understood as a printing convention rather than a symbol, and it is a later French development, not a feature of the 1450 card.

The first deck to show full scenes on its numbered suit cards is the Sola Busca, engraved around 1490 and painted in 1491. It is regarded as a distant model for later illustrated pips, though the sources consulted do not describe its own Two of Coins.

In 1909 Pamela Colman Smith drew the card for Waite as a scene: a young man, dancing, holds a coin in each hand while an endless cord in the shape of a sideways figure eight links them. Older decks gave only the two coins, so the figure and the movement are new. Waite’s own description, below, comes from his 1910 book.

Photographs of the Sola Busca deck were held by the British Museum from 1907, and some scholars think Smith drew on them for her numbered suit cards. That link is argued for other cards, such as the Three of Swords and Ten of Wands; no source consulted names it for this card.