print;
playing-card
- Museum number
- 1895,0915.44
- Description
-
The Sun; the god in the sky holding the emblem of the sun and steering a chariot drawn by four horses, over a landscape with a river, with a scorpion above; the figure of Phaeton captured in mid-air as he falls; inscribed at lower left: 'A', at lower centre: 'SOL XXXXIIII' and at lower right: '44'; encircled by a frame of diamonds. c.1465
Engraving
- Production date
- 1465 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 180 millimetres
-
Width: 100 millimetres
- Curator's comments
- The print belongs to the first version (called 'E 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 fifth and last group of the set marked with the letter "A" and illustrates the ' Firmaments of the Universe'. The seven circles of the sun, moon and planets are followed by the sphere of the fixed stars, the Prime Mover and the First Cause (the dwelling place of God). The iconography of this images is based on the Libellus de imaginibus deorum, a treatise composed by an anonymous author around 1400, in its turn related to the Ovide Moralise.
Images of the Sun in regular tarots are very different from the present one.
Other impressions of the print are in Vienna; Paris; Boston; Florence (Galleria degli Uffizi), Florence (Biblioteca Nazionale); Chantilly; in the Chicago Art Institute; Darmstadt (Hessisches Landesmuseum); in the Cleveland Museum of Art; Hamburg; in the Rothschild collection (Louvre, Paris); Naples (Museo di Capodimonte); in the Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe (Rome); Pavia (Raccolta Malaspina, Museo Civico); in the National Gallery of Art (Washington); Zürich; and elsewhere.
See also Jay A. Levinson, Konrad Oberhuber, and Jacquelyn Sheehan, Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1973, no. 57.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1895
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1895,0915.44