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After Cornelis de Vos (1584?-1651)

The card players c.1630-1640

Engraving. Cassiano Type A omunt | 17.3 x 40.0 cm (sheet of paper) | RCIN 601934

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  • An engraving of four elegantly dressed figures playing cards at a table, with an attendant standing on the right. Lines of French text in a cartouche above them. During the nineteenth century, this print was thought to depict Charles I and his wife Henrietta Maria, due to the likeness of the King and Queen, however it is in fact after a painting by Cornelis de Vos of an anonymous group, now in the National Museum in Stockholm, see NM 689.
    This print is lettered on the curtain: "Amly ly ces vers pour nous suiure, / Et ne vien point apprendre icy / A quell iour le ciel te faict viure, / Mais bien a viure sans soucy. // Pour auoir vn plaisir par faict / Il faut que chaque creature / Imite et possede en effaict / Ce quil voit en ceste peinture"; in the lower centre: "Jaspar Isac excudit. // Cornelis de vos Pinxit". 

    Cassiano mounted this engraving as part of a sequence of card sharps, fortune tellers and other low-life subjects, but in the nineteenth century it was removed from Dutch Drolls and placed with the Engraved Royal Portraits, due to the likeness of the figures on the left to Charles I and his queen Henrietta Maria. This print must have been on the original folio 58 of the Dutch Drolls album (RCIN 970362), which is now missing. This album originally contained 99 prints on 74 folios, with the prints numbered 1-99 in pencil in a nineteenth-century hand on the mount sheet above each print. A number of other prints were added later, probably during the nineteenth century.

    For more information see Mark McDonald, The Print Collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo. I: Ceremonies, Costumes, Portraits and Genre, 3 vols, Royal Collection Trust 2017, part of The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonné, cat. no. 431.

    Provenance

    From the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588-22 October 1657); inherited by his brother, Carlo Antonio dal Pozzo (1606-1689); sold by Carlo Antonio's grandson to Clement XI, 1703; acquired by Cardinal Alessandro Albani by 1714, from whom purchased by George III in 1762

  • Medium and techniques

    Engraving. Cassiano Type A omunt

    Measurements

    17.3 x 40.0 cm (sheet of paper)

  • Alternative title(s)

    [The Card Game]


The income from your ticket contributes directly to The Royal Collection Trust, a registered charity. The aims of The Royal Collection Trust are the care and conservation of the Royal Collection, and the promotion of access and enjoyment through exhibitions, publications, loans and educational activities.