Master of the Playing Cards
Encyclopedia
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Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
. He was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
(or conceivably Swiss
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
) engraver
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
, and probably also a painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, active in southwestern Germany from the 1430s to the 1450s, who has been called "the first personality in the history of engraving." Various attempts to identify him have not been generally accepted, so he remains known only through his 106 engraving
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
s, which include the set of playing cards in five suits from which he takes his name. The majority of the set survives in unique impressions, most of which are in the Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden and the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. A further eighty-eight engravings are regarded as sufficiently close to his style to be by his pupils.
Style
It has long been recognised that his style was closely related to that of paintings from south-western GermanyGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
in the period 1430-50, by artists of whom the best known is Konrad Witz
Konrad Witz
Konrad Witz - c. Winter 1445/Spring 1446 in Basel, Switzerland) was a German painter, active mainly in Basel, Switzerland.Witz is most famous for painting three altarpieces, all of which survive only partially...
. In addition the Alpine cyclamen
Cyclamen
Cyclamen is a genus of 23 species of perennials growing from tubers, valued for their flowers with upswept petals and variably patterned leaves...
very frequently appears in the engravings. Although an identification proposed by Leo Baer of him with Witz has not been accepted, he does appear to have been trained as an artist rather than a goldsmith
Goldsmith
A goldsmith is a metalworker who specializes in working with gold and other precious metals. Since ancient times the techniques of a goldsmith have evolved very little in order to produce items of jewelry of quality standards. In modern times actual goldsmiths are rare...
like many early engravers. His prints show an engraving technique closely related to drawing, with forms conceived in three dimensions and delicately modeled; engravers trained as goldsmiths, such as Master E. S.
Master E. S.
Master E. S. , is an unidentified German engraver, goldsmith, and printmaker of the late Gothic period. He was the first major German artist of old master prints and was greatly copied and imitated. The name assigned to him by art historians, Master E. S., is derived from the monogram, E...
or Israhel van Meckenem
Israhel van Meckenem
Israhel van Meckenem , also known as Israhel van Meckenem the Younger, was a German printmaker and goldsmith.He was the most prolific engraver of the fifteenth century and an important figure in the early history of old master prints. He was active from 1465 until his death.-Life:His birth date is...
, have a different set of stylistic conventions. His shading is mostly parallel vertical lines, and cross-hatching is rare.
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 the Master of 1446. The fact that he had a mature pupil suggests that he himself had been active for many years by that date.
Prints by the Master very rarely come on the market, but on 20 September 2006 Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
London auctioned an impression of the Queen of Flowers for £243,200 (about $450,000).
Cards
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Miniature (illuminated manuscript)
The word miniature, derived from the Latin minium, red lead, is a picture in an ancient or medieval illuminated manuscript; the simple decoration of the early codices having been miniated or delineated with that pigment...
of the Giant Bible of Mainz
Giant Bible of Mainz
The Giant Bible of Mainz is a very large manuscript Bible produced in 1452-3, probably in Mainz or nearby. It is notable for its beauty, for being one of the last manuscript Bibles written before the invention of printing in the West, and for its possible connections with the Gutenberg...
of 1452-3 and other illuminations made in Mainz between then and 1482, including at least one illuminated copy of the Gutenberg Bible
Gutenberg Bible
The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed with a movable type printing press, and marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of the printed book. Widely praised for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities, the book has an iconic status...
, the copy now in Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
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. There are similar repetitions in many other manuscripts and other works of art, mostly but not all German.
The cards have typical suits for Northern European cards of the period: flowers, birds, deer, beasts of prey and wild men
Woodwose
The wild man is a mythical figure that appears in the artwork and literature of medieval Europe, comparable to the satyr or faun type in classical mythology and to Silvanus, the Roman god of the woodlands.The defining characteristic of the figure is its "wildness"; from the 12th century...
- 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 with a modern set (and, equally, rapid play must have been very difficult as there are no numbers). Engraved sets of cards are few; they must have been much more expensive than those made in woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
, 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
Movable type is the system of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document ....
. Despite this the majority of the pips are unique, and although they appear rather jumbled as groups, individually many are very fine studies of their subjects. Despite the very few impressions surviving, some cards exist in two states
State (printmaking)
A state, in printmaking, is a different form of a print, caused by a deliberate and permanent change to a matrix such as a copper plate or woodblock ....
, and some in different versions, all catalogued by Lehrs.
Place in printmaking
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Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
old master print
Old master print
An old master print is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition . A date of about 1830 is usually taken as marking the end of the period whose prints are covered by this term. The main techniques concerned are woodcut, engraving and etching, although there are...
s 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, but he is the first significant artist to use either printmaking technique. After him come a series of other significant engravers with a training as either an artist or a goldsmith, and after woodcuts became 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
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
devotional books. As with most early printmakers, many of his designs survive only in copies by others, and many have doubtless not survived at all.
Some of his presumed pupils have been given names, 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.
Literature
NB: Twenty-nine of the cards, and other prints, are illustrated on Commons at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meister_der_Spielkarten- 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 (ProQuestProQuestProQuest LLC is an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based electronic publisher and microfilm publisher.It provides archives of sources such as newspapers, periodicals, dissertations, and aggregated databases of many types. Its content is estimated at 125 billion digital pages...
), 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 Boston
- http://www.schoyencollection.com/smallercollect.htmSchoyen collection - a Book of HoursBook of HoursThe book of hours was a devotional book popular in the later Middle Ages. It is the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Like every manuscript, each manuscript book of hours is unique in one way or another, but most contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and...
with border decorations including motifs from the cards - MS 007]