The Painted Stuttgart cards, 1430
Above: eight cards from the luxury, hand-painted Stuttgart Cards (Stuttgarter Kartenspiel) dated c.1430, with suits of ducks, falcons, stags and hounds suggestive of the chase. The pack originally contained 52 cards: the numeral cards (1 - 9 + banner card) indicated by repeating the suit sign. In the court cards, the suit symbols are depicted in a harmonious relationship with the human figures: ducks and falcons with male courts; hounds and stags with female court cards.
Originally in the collections of the dukes of Bavaria, these are considered amongst the earliest surviving sets of playing cards.
These cards were made by an unknown workshop in southern Germany, possibly Swabia. The artist has freely invented the suit symbols and the court hierarchy in relation to the theme of the courtly hunt. See also "The Ambras Princely Hunting Cards".
The first playing cards were unique hand-painted luxury items, sometimes engraved, before printing emerged and facilitated mass production. The imagery in Hunting Books of the day, and on playing cards such as these which were destined for nobility, was often a parallel comment on moralia and human nature, although in this case the artist has portrayed the theme of hunting in a somewhat idyllic fashion.