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Playing Card

1748 (printed)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Playing card from a pack of 52, illusrtated with a biblical scene, the suit sign coloured by hand, being Discs (yellow), Diamonds (pink), Hearts (lavender) and Jars (buff); each card illustrates an episode from the Old Testament and bears within the suit sign an emblem whose significance is explained in the text below the illustration. The cards are not numbered but each is lettered with capital or lower-case letters. In a contemporary slip-case of stamped leather.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Materials and techniques
Etching, coloured by hand
Brief description
Antonio Visentini after designs by Francesco Zuccarelli. Playing card from a pack of 52 with biblical scenes, 1748.
Physical description
Playing card from a pack of 52, illusrtated with a biblical scene, the suit sign coloured by hand, being Discs (yellow), Diamonds (pink), Hearts (lavender) and Jars (buff); each card illustrates an episode from the Old Testament and bears within the suit sign an emblem whose significance is explained in the text below the illustration. The cards are not numbered but each is lettered with capital or lower-case letters. In a contemporary slip-case of stamped leather.
Dimensions
  • Card height: 10.2cm
  • Card width: 5.7cm
  • Size of case height: 11.11cm
  • Size of case width: 6.03cm
  • Size of case depth: 2.86cm
Dimensions taken from Victoria & Albert Museum Department of Prints and Drawings and Department of Paintings Accessions 1953. London: HMSO, 1963.
Style
Marks and inscriptions
(Lettered with descriptive text in Italian and with 2 lines of Italian and 2 lines of Latin verse)
Bibliographic references
  • Victoria and Albert Museum Department of Prints and Drawings and Department of Paintings Accessions 1953 London: HMSO, 1963
  • Hargrave, Catherine Perry. A History of Playing Cards and a Bibliography of Cards and Gaming. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1930. xxiv p. 468 p. incl. illus.
Collection
Accession number
E.449:11-1953

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Record createdJune 30, 2009
Record URL
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