DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.67657#0330
226 Anonymous North Italian Engravings. [E. I.
They were doubtless done more or less under Cossa’s inssuence by
some one or more among the almost innumerable minor craftsmen
whom we know to have been employed at the court of Borso d’Este.
No other potentate of the time was so great a patron of the arts of
miniature painting and illuminating. Besides native craftsmen, he
gathered about him many from other parts of Italy and from
Germany. Modern criticism has recovered from contemporary docu-
ments the names of a number of these, and done much to identify
their share in the adornment of the Duke’s celebrated Bible, now in
the possession of Ferdinand Archduke of Austria, and of many other
splendid illuminated volumes of the age and school which are still
preserved in the Schifanoia Palace, the Este Library at Modena, and
elsewhere.1 Close analogies with the style, types, and landscapes
of the present engraved series are to be found among the works of
these book-illuminators. The designs for the series, were, however,
most likely drawn, not by one of these, but by one of the special pro-
fession of card-painters which we know existed and found patronage and
employment at the court of Ferrara. Practice in card-painting seems at
any rate clearly indicated by the relations in which landscape is kept to
figures in the design of the series. In such fine illuminated packs as
have been preserved, the background is always enriched, down to about
the knees of the figures, with patterns stamped on a field of gold or
silver; where landscape occurs, whether open or wooded, it is kept
about or below the knee line. On our engraved cards landscape occu-
pies the same place with an exactly similar effect of composition:
compare particularly the woods behind the three genii (B. 31, 32, 33)
with the identical and identically placed wood behind the Knave of
Coins in the Bergamo pack. The painting of ‘ carte di trionfi ’ (that
is the winning cards or atutti in a tarocco pack—hence our word
‘trumps’) is recorded as one among the various occupations of a
painter at the court of Ferrara called Gherardo di Andrea da Vicenza.
Among painters specifically of playing-cards at the same court are
named Alessandro di Bartolommeo Quartesana, Don Domenico Messore,
Giovanni di Lazzaro Cagnolo, and an amateur named Petrecino of
Florence, a page of the Duke.2 Of such minor craftsmen of the school
by whom a series like the present might have been drawn, it would be
1 See H. J. Hermann, Zur Geschichte der Miniaturmalerei am Hofe der Este
in Ferrara, in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhochst.
Kaiserhauses, Band XXI (1900), pp. 16 ff.: an exhaustive essay, with many repro-
ductions and full references to earlier authorities.
2 See A. Venturi, L’Arte a Ferrara net periodo di Borso d’Este, Rivista
Storica Italiana, 1885, p. 730.
They were doubtless done more or less under Cossa’s inssuence by
some one or more among the almost innumerable minor craftsmen
whom we know to have been employed at the court of Borso d’Este.
No other potentate of the time was so great a patron of the arts of
miniature painting and illuminating. Besides native craftsmen, he
gathered about him many from other parts of Italy and from
Germany. Modern criticism has recovered from contemporary docu-
ments the names of a number of these, and done much to identify
their share in the adornment of the Duke’s celebrated Bible, now in
the possession of Ferdinand Archduke of Austria, and of many other
splendid illuminated volumes of the age and school which are still
preserved in the Schifanoia Palace, the Este Library at Modena, and
elsewhere.1 Close analogies with the style, types, and landscapes
of the present engraved series are to be found among the works of
these book-illuminators. The designs for the series, were, however,
most likely drawn, not by one of these, but by one of the special pro-
fession of card-painters which we know existed and found patronage and
employment at the court of Ferrara. Practice in card-painting seems at
any rate clearly indicated by the relations in which landscape is kept to
figures in the design of the series. In such fine illuminated packs as
have been preserved, the background is always enriched, down to about
the knees of the figures, with patterns stamped on a field of gold or
silver; where landscape occurs, whether open or wooded, it is kept
about or below the knee line. On our engraved cards landscape occu-
pies the same place with an exactly similar effect of composition:
compare particularly the woods behind the three genii (B. 31, 32, 33)
with the identical and identically placed wood behind the Knave of
Coins in the Bergamo pack. The painting of ‘ carte di trionfi ’ (that
is the winning cards or atutti in a tarocco pack—hence our word
‘trumps’) is recorded as one among the various occupations of a
painter at the court of Ferrara called Gherardo di Andrea da Vicenza.
Among painters specifically of playing-cards at the same court are
named Alessandro di Bartolommeo Quartesana, Don Domenico Messore,
Giovanni di Lazzaro Cagnolo, and an amateur named Petrecino of
Florence, a page of the Duke.2 Of such minor craftsmen of the school
by whom a series like the present might have been drawn, it would be
1 See H. J. Hermann, Zur Geschichte der Miniaturmalerei am Hofe der Este
in Ferrara, in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhochst.
Kaiserhauses, Band XXI (1900), pp. 16 ff.: an exhaustive essay, with many repro-
ductions and full references to earlier authorities.
2 See A. Venturi, L’Arte a Ferrara net periodo di Borso d’Este, Rivista
Storica Italiana, 1885, p. 730.