I have been putting off commenting because I might have had more to say than simply congratulating you, and I wanted to think about it. Anyway, I do congratulate you for this excellent work of genealogy, Steve.

What I have to say is mostly a series of questions: Did Vachier invent the TdM1, or did both he and GS's common ancestor both have it? Since the two families are so related, and in the same town, both cartiers, there is no reason to suppose so. But then where did Vachier's TdM1 come from? I can't help noticing that he married a Torcaty. Is that the same family that produced the Tourcaty TdM2? Spelling wasn't exactly fixed in those days. If so, could the Torcaty/Tourcaty family have invented one or the other? If not, who invented these two styles? Can we assume it was Vachier and Sallon?

I am reminded of Christophe Poncet's thesis that the style of the TdM2 is so similar to Baldini's in 1680s Florence, in particular the series of Sybils and Prophets (https://www.academia.edu/3612055/A_Game ... f_Marsilio), and so amenable to a Platonic interpretation, that the design that we first see in 1672 must have originated there then. For myself, I am impressed by the similarity of numerous trumps to those engravings (see my post at viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1004&p=14956#p14956.) But Poncet's conclusion still seems to me too much of a stretch, not only because one would expect some evidence in the intervening century, but also because then one has to explain why the TdM1 is so different, yet also similar enough that one would have to suppose that Vachier also had these lost cards but intentionally or carelessly departed from them in significant ways. It is easier for me to imagine that Sallon/Sallonetz, or someone before him, acquired a copy, or a copy of a copy, of Baldini's engravings and decided to model his tarot after them. If so, he did a good job.