L'Impératrice (The Empress) - Poster

Most people picture the Empress in a wheat field, sprawled on cushions in a pomegranate robe, a crown of twelve stars and Venus at her side. That version is a harvest. This one is a head of state: crowned, upright on her throne, holding a cross-topped sceptre and a shield bearing the imperial eagle. In the older decks the sceptre meant political authority rather than abundance, and nothing grows behind this throne. She built it and she runs it, which is a different claim than being born to it.

This print is hand-vectored from an 1891 French chromolithograph in the Besançon pattern, the variant that replaces the Papess and the Pope with Junon and Jupiter. Every line is redrawn by hand. No auto-trace, no AI, no upscaling — the irregularities of the original press are kept where they belong and the color is matched to the antique sheet rather than modernized.