Leonardo collection
Leonardo collection playing cards with drawings from his notebooks.
Published by Imagommage of Milan, each card illustrates a graphic work taken from the notebooks and drawings of the polymath of the High Renaissance Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519). While he is best known for his achievements as a painter, Leonardo is also known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, and palaeontology. Each suit in this pack is devoted to one aspect of his work: hearts display his designs; spades – his anatomical drawings; clubs – his botanical sketches; and diamonds – his inventions. Each illustration is described and dated, with the location of the original also attributed. The two jokers show Leonardo’s portrayal of Vitruvian Man (c. 1490). See the box
Above: Leonardo collection playing cards published by Imagommage of Milan, c.2015.
The joker shows Leonardo’s portrayal of Vitruvian Man (c. 1490).
By Peter Burnett
Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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