print;
playing-card
- Museum number
- 1845,0825.323
- Description
-
Theology; a double-faced figure standing behind a star-filled disc, one face is youthful and looks towards the heavens, the other is older and bearded and looks towards the earth; inscribed at lower left: 'C', at lower centre: 'THEOLOGIA XXX' and at lower right: '30'; encircled by a frame of diamonds. c.1470-80
Engraving
- Production date
- 1470-1480 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 173 millimetres
-
Width: 94 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- The print belongs to the second version (called 'S series') of a group of fifty engravings traditionally known as the 'Tarocchi Cards of Mantegna' (for this set see the entry for Hind E.I.1a: P&D 1895-9-15-1). It is one of ten images in the third group of the set marked with the letter "C" and illustrates the 'Liberal Arts', branches of medieval and early Renaissance learning. Their iconography and order derive from the 'Marriage of Mercury and Philology' ('De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae'), a fifth-century allegorical treatise by the North African author Martianus Capella. He described only the classical seven Liberal Arts and divided them into a lower group called 'Trivium' (Grammar, Rhetoric and Dialectic) and a higher one called 'Quadrivium' (Music, Geometry, Arithmetic and Astronomy). In the Tarocchi engravings the total number was raised to ten, with the addition to the Quadrivium of Poetry, Philosophy and Theology.
The image is a reverse adaptation of the 'E series' Theology (for a comparison see Hind E.I.30a and Mark J. Zucker, 'The Illustrated Bartsch, Commentary', vol. 24, part 3, 2000, p. 41, no. 030a).
Other impressions of the print are in Bassano (Museo Civico); Chatsworth (Collection of the Duke of Devonshire); Dresden (Kupferstichkabinett, Zwinger); Vienna; Paris; Berlin; Zürich; and in the Rothschild collection (Louvre, Paris).
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1845
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1845,0825.323