![Maria auf dem Bauch der Schlange (Meister der Spielkarten)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Maria_auf_dem_Bauch_der_Schlange_%28Meister_der_Spielkarten%29.png)
The Master of the Playing Cards (german: Meister der Spielkarten) was the first major master in the history of
printmaking. He was a German (or conceivably
Swiss)
engraver, and probably also a
painter, active in southwestern Germany – probably in
Alsace
Alsace (, ; ; Low Alemannic German/ gsw-FR, Elsàss ; german: Elsass ; la, Alsatia) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2020, it had ...
, from the 1430s to the 1450s, who has been called "the first personality in the history of engraving."
[Alan Shestack; Fifteenth century Engravings of Northern Europe;1967, National Gallery of Art, Washington (Catalogue), LOC 67-29080]
Various attempts to identify him have not been generally accepted, so he remains known only through his 106
engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an in ...
s, which include the set of
playing cards
A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a f ...
in five suits from which he takes his name. The majority of the set survives in unique impressions, most of which are in the
Kupferstich-Kabinett in
Dresden
Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...
and the
Bibliothèque nationale de France in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
.
A further 88 engravings are regarded as sufficiently close to his style to be by his pupils.
Style
It has long been recognised that Master's style was closely related to that of paintings from south-western Germany and Switzerland in the period 1430–1450, by artists of whom the best known is
Konrad Witz
Konrad Witz (1400/1410 probably in Rottweil, Germany – winter 1445/spring 1446 in Basel, in current day Switzerland) was a German painter, active mainly in Basel. His 1444 panel '' The Miraculous Draft of Fishes'' (a portion of a lost altarp ...
. In addition, the Alpine
cyclamen
''Cyclamen'' ( or ) is a genus of 23 species of perennial flowering plants in the family Primulaceae. ''Cyclamen'' species are native to Europe and the Mediterranean Basin east to the Caucasus and Iran, with one species in Somalia. They gro ...
– a flowering plant native to the region – very frequently appears in the engravings. Although the theory proposed by Leo Baer to identify the Master as Witz has not been widely accepted, the Master does appear to have been trained as an artist rather than a
goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Nowadays they mainly specialize in jewelry-making but historically, goldsmiths have also made silverware, platters, goblets, decorative and servicea ...
like many other early engravers. His prints show an engraving technique closely related to drawing, with forms conceived in three dimensions and delicately modeled; other engravers were usually trained either as armourers or as goldsmiths, such as
Master E. S. or
Israhel van Meckenem
Israhel van Meckenem (c.1445 – 10 November 1503), also known as Israhel van Meckenem the Younger, was a German printmaker and goldsmith, perhaps of a Dutch family origin.
He was the most prolific engraver of the fifteenth century and an imp ...
, and their works display a different set of stylistic conventions.
The Master's shading is mostly done using parallel vertical lines, and
cross-hatching is rare.
[''A History of Engraving and Etching'', Arthur M. Hind,p 20-21, Houghton Mifflin Co. 1923 (in USA), reprinted Dover Publications, 1963 ]
Apart from comparisons with paintings, the start of his period of activity can only be dated to before 1446 by a dated print by his presumed pupil, referred to as the "Master of 1446". The fact that by then he already had a mature pupil suggests that the Master himself had been active for many years by that date.
Prints done by the Master very rarely appear on the market, but on 20 September 2006
Christie's London auctioned a print titled ''Queen of Flowers'' for £243,200 (about $450,000). The print is now part of the print collection at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
.
Cards
![Raubtier Neun (Meister der Spielkarten)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/Raubtier_Neun_%28Meister_der_Spielkarten%29.png)
Many of Master's engravings, especially the cards, contain compositional elements that also occur in the
miniatures of the
Giant Bible of Mainz of 1452–3 and other illuminations made in Mainz between then and 1482, including at least one illuminated copy of the
Gutenberg Bible
The Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42) was the earliest major book printed using mass-produced movable metal type in Europe. It marked the start of the " Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of printed ...
, which is now in the
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
library. It has been suggested that he painted elements of these miniatures.
It is generally thought that both sets derive from a common manuscript model-book of the sort painters are known to have maintained, though this does not rule out his involvement, or that of his workshop, in the painting.
[A Hyatt Mayor, Prints and People, Metropolitan Museum of Art/Princeton, 1971, nos 115-117.] There are similar repetitions in many other manuscripts and other works of art, mostly but not all German.
[Anne H. van Buren, Sheila Edmunds: ''Playing Cards and Manuscripts: Some Widely Disseminated Fifteenth Century Model Sheets'', In: The Art Bulletin 56. March 1974, p.12-30, ]
The cards have typical
suits for Northern European cards of the period: flowers, birds, deer, beasts of prey and
wild men – so five suits in total. Each symbol (or "pip") on a card is different, so the quantity and difficulty of the engraving is far greater than found in a modern set of cards (and, equally, rapid play must have been very difficult as there are no numbers depicted on the cards). Engraved sets of cards are few; they must have been much more expensive than those made in
woodcut
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas tha ...
, which can be printed in much greater numbers before the matrix wears out. Interestingly and unusually, some of the cards are composed of different little plates, one per pip, which were presumably held together in a frame for printing. Possibly the Master was in Mainz and was influenced by
Johannes Gutenberg's
movable type
Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuation m ...
.
Despite this, the majority of the pips are unique, and although they appear rather jumbled as groups, when looked at individually it is apparent that many are very fine studies of their subjects.
[See Van Buren & Edmunds op cit for a table] Despite the very few impressions surviving, some cards exist in two
states, and some in different versions, all catalogued by
Max Lehrs
Max Lehrs (24 June 1855, in Berlin – 12 November 1938, in Dresden) was a German art historian and long-time director of the Dresden Kupferstichskabinett, 1896–1904, and 1908–24, with the intervening as director in Berlin. He is es ...
.
Place in printmaking
Woodcut
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas tha ...
old master prints had begun around the turn of the century, and were extremely popular by the start of the Master of the Playing Cards' career, but were then almost all very crudely executed. Playing cards and religious images were the vast majority of the production. Although he comes very early in the history of engraving for
prints, the Master of the Playing Cards is certainly not the inventor of the technique. He is however considered the first significant artist to use either printmaking technique. The art historian
Arthur Mayger Hind characterised his style as "incisive and individual".
After him came a series of other significant engravers who had trained as either an artist or a goldsmith, and after woodcuts became widely used for illustrating printed books, their quality also improved. The Master's other works are mostly religious and some are relatively large for very early engravings; these were intended mainly for insertion as illustrations into
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in ...
devotional books. As with most early printmakers, many of his designs survive only in copies by others, and many have not survived at all.
Some of his presumed pupils have also been given names by art historians, such as the "Master of the Nuremberg Passion", the "Master of 1446", and the "Master of the Banderoles".
If the Master also practiced as a painter, whether on panel or in manuscript illuminations, no identification of any of his works has been generally accepted.
References
Literature
NB: Twenty-nine of the cards, and other prints, are illustrated on Commons a
* Max Geisberg: Das älteste gestochene deutsche Kartenspiel vom Meister der Spielkarten, Studien zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, Heitz, Straßburg 1905 - The standard work on the cards, in which all are reproduced.
* Dorothy Miner, The Great Bible of Mainz, 500th Anniversary, Washington 1952
* Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, Gutenberg and the Master of the Playing Cards, 1966 (Yale)
*Martha Anne Wood Wolff: ''The Master of the playing cards: an early engraver and his relationship to traditional media'', 1979, Dissertation, Yale; UMI (
ProQuest
ProQuest LLC is an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based global information-content and technology company, founded in 1938 as University Microfilms by Eugene B. Power. ProQuest is known for its applications and information services for libraries, provid ...
), Dissertation Services, 2002
*Martha Wolff: ''Some Manuscript Sources for the Playing Card Master's Number Cards'', In: The Art Bulletin 64, Dec. 1982, p. 587-600,
External links
More images*Two cards from The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
"The Queen of Stags"by the Master of the Playing Cards, an
"Five of Flowers"by a student of the Master of Playing cards
- a
Book of Hours with border decorations including motifs from the cards - MS 007
{{Authority control
15th-century engravers
Playing Cards, Master of the
German engravers
Gothic artists
Playing card manufacturers