Woodcut design for the back of a playing card, Venus, Mars and Cupid: P.14641-R(3)

Current Location: In storage

Titles

Woodcut design for the back of a playing card, Venus, Mars and Cupid

Maker(s)

Printmaker: Unknown
Publisher: Unknown

Entities

Playing card

Description

Fragment of a woodcut on paper printed in brown ink of a design for the back of a playing card. There are losses along the upper and left edges. A central rectangular frame contains a group of three nude mythological figures; Mars wearing a plumed helmet is seated with the child Cupid at his knee, who holds an arrow and Venus stands to the right, her right hand resting on Mars's shoulders and her left hand at her groin. The central image is enclosed within a border of a repeated pattern of small diamond shapes. There is a narrow band of grey wash at upper centre which has transferred from another sheet and would seem to relate to the fact that in P.14641-R(4), the central area behind the figures has been hand-coloured in black ink, indicating that possibly the whole design would originally have been coloured. One of four impressions of the same design with only P.14641-R(2) complete. The mount is inscribed in graphite at lower centre and lower right: 'Playing Cards / Italian, 16th Century / Given by / C.Fairfax Murray, Esq. / Dec.1916'. A handwritten inscription on the verso of the mount board indicates that the four designs were exhibited in the Print Room from October 1950-January 1951, probably in the exhibition of Early Italian Engravings.