print;
playing-card
- Museum number
- 1895,0915.46
- Description
-
Jupiter; sitting on a rainbow, wearing a crown and holding an arrow in his right hand, surrounded by a mandorla and with a child at his feet; an eagle above and several dead warriors lying on the ground; inscribed at lower left: 'A', at lower centre: 'IVPITER XXXXVI' and at lower right: '46'; 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'.
The image follows in many respects the description in the 'Libellus de imaginibus deorum'. However, Jupiter sits not on a throne but on a sort of rainbow, as he does in a fourteenth-century French illustration of Ovid. Not mentioned in the 'Libellus' is also the mandorla surrounding the figure of the god, common in the depictions of Christ in majesty.
Other impressions of the print are in Vienna; Paris; Boston; Florence (Galleria degli Uffizi), Florence (Biblioteca Nazionale); Chantilly; in the Chicago Art Institute; Munich; Darmstadt (Hessisches Landesmuseum); in the Cleveland Museum of Art; 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); and elsewhere.
This print was issued as a black and white facsimile by the British Museum in 'Reproductions of Prints in the British Museum', New [Second] Series Part I (Early Italian Prints), Published by the Trustees in 1886, where it was number VIII(A) [reproduced alongside 1895,0915.9], and described there as 'Unknown Master: Probably North Italian. XV. Century. Jupiter.'; (Shelfmark 245*.b.15).
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1895
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1895,0915.46