An early use of the woodcut technique was for making playing cards. The oldest surviving examples date to about 1420. This sheet is thought to have been made by an artist called F. Durand in Rouen or Lyons in the first half of the 16th century. Woodcuts allowed multiple copies of an image to be printed relatively cheaply and quickly. This sheet shows how cards were printed for speed and economy, many to a sheet and cut into individual cards afterwards.

Printed playing cards were sometimes coloured by hand. To speed things up stencils might be used, as in this case. The neat, shaped blocks of colour sometimes do not match up with the area meant to take the colour indicating that the colour was applied through a stencil rather than painted on freehand. This colouring is of a high quality, suggesting that this pack was intended for a well-off client.

The names on these cards include legendary and historical figures, including Bethsabée and Pallas among the queens and some of the Nine Worthies among the kings. The Nine Worthies were trios of pagan, Jewish and Christian heroes introduced by Jacques de Longuyon in his romance Voeux de Paon of 1312. They were seen as exemplars of chivalry and knightly prowess and aristocratic rulers sometimes associated themselves symbolically with one or other of them. The Worthies included here among the kings are David, shown with his harp, and Charlemagne, with his globe symbolising his status as the first Holy Roman Emperor. Although playing cards and their suits were not standardized at this time and varied according to region and the whim of designers, these names were starting to become standard on French picture cards by this date.