Master of The Playing Cards

The Master of the Playing Cards 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 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 engravings, 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 in Paris. A further eighty-eight engravings are regarded as sufficiently close to his style to be by his pupils.

Read more about Master Of The Playing Cards:  Style, Cards, Place in Printmaking

Famous quotes containing the words master of, master, playing and/or cards:

    A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
    A mate of the wind and sea,
    If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
    They are fools eternally.

    I ha’ seen him eat o’ the honey-comb
    Sin’ they nailed him to the tree.
    Ezra Pound (1885–1972)

    I remember the almost daily talks of my mother on the cruelty of slavery. I would say nothing to her, but I was thinking all the time that slavery did not seem so cruel. Master and Mistress Jennings were not mean to my mother. It was she who was mean to them.
    Cornelia (1844–?)

    A normal adolescent is so restless and twitchy and awkward that he can mange to injure his knee—not playing soccer, not playing football—but by falling off his chair in the middle of French class.
    Judith Viorst (20th century)

    The world is a puzzling place today. All these banks sending us credit cards, with our names on them. Well, we didn’t order any credit cards! We don’t spend what we don’t have. So we just cut them in half and throw them out, just as soon as we open them in the mail. Imagine a bank sending credit cards to two ladies over a hundred years old! What are those folks thinking?
    Sarah Louise Delany (b. 1889)