numeral cards and twenty-two emblematic cards, called atutti or atouts (= trumps). Each suit consists of fourteen cards, ten of which are the pip cards, and four court (or more properly coat cards), viz. king, queen, chevalier and valet. The atouts are numbered from 1 to 21; the unnumbered card, called the fou, has no positive value, but augments that of the other atouts (see Académie des jeux, Corbet, Paris, 1814, for an account of the mode of playing tarocchino or tarots).
The marks of the suits on the earliest cards (German) are hearts, bells, leaves and acorns. No ace corresponding to the earliest known pack has been discovered; but other packs of about the same date have aces, and it seems unlikely that the suits commenced with the deuces.
Next in antiquity to the marks mentioned are swords, batons, cups and money. These are the most common on Italian cards of the late 15th century, and are used both in Italy and in Spain. French cards of the 16th century bear the marks now generally used in France and England, viz. coeur (hearts), trèfle (clubs), pique (spades) and carreau (diamonds).
The French trèfle, though so named from its resemblance to the trefoil leaf, was in all probability copied from the acorn; and the pique similarly from the leaf (grün) of the German suits, while its name is derived from the sword of the Italian suits. It is not derived from its resemblance to a pike head, as commonly supposed. In England the French marks are used, and are named—hearts, clubs (corresponding to trèfle, the French symbol being joined to the Italian name, bastoni), spades (corresponding to the French pique, but having the Italian name, spade=swords) and diamonds. This confusion of names and symbols is accounted for by Chatto thus—“If cards were actually known in Italy and Spain in the latter part of the 14th century, it is not unlikely that the game was introduced into this country by some of the English soldiers who had served, under Hawkwood and other free captains, in the wars of Italy and Spain. However this may be, it seems certain that the earliest cards commonly used in this country were of the same kind, with respect to the marks of the suits, as those used in Italy and Spain.”
About the last quarter of the 15th century, packs with animals, flowers and human figures, for marks of the suits, were engraved upon copper; and later, numerous variations appeared, dictated by the caprice of individual card-makers; but they never came into general use.
The court cards of the early packs were king, chevalier and knave. The Italians were probably the first to substitute a queen for the chevalier, who in French cards is altogether superseded by the queen. The court cards of French packs received fanciful names, which varied from time to time.
Authorities.—Abbé Rive, Éclaircissements sur l’invention des cartes à jouer (Paris, 1780); J. G. I. Breitkopf, Versuch den Ursprung der Spielkarten zu erforschen (Leipzig, 1784); Samuel Weller Singer, Researches into the History of Playing Cards, with Illustrations of the Origin of Printing and Engraving on Wood (London, 1816); G. Peignot, Analyse critique et raisonnée de toutes les recherches publiées jusqu’à ce jour, sur l’origine des cartes à jouer (Dijon, 1826); M. C. Leber, Études historiques sur les cartes à jouer, principalement sur les cartes françaises (Paris, 1842); William Andrew Chatto, Facts and Speculations on the Origin and History of Playing Cards (London, 1848); P. Boiteau D’Ambly, Les Cartes à jouer et la cartomancie (Paris, 1854), translated into English with additions under the title of The History of Playing Cards, with Anecdotes of their use in Conjuring, Fortune-telling, and Card-sharping, edited by the Rev. E. S. Taylor, B.A. (London, 1865); W. Hughes Willshire, M.D., A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and other Cards in the British Museum, printed by order of the trustees (London, 1876); Origine des cartes à jouer, by R. Merlin (Paris, 1869); The Devil’s Picture Books, by Mrs J. K. Van Rensselaer (New York, 1890); Bibliography of Works in English on Playing Cards and Gaming, by F. Jessel (London, 1905); and especially Les Cartes à jouer, by Henri René d’Allemagne (Paris, 1906) (an exhaustive account).
CARDUCCI, BARTOLOMMEO (1560–1610), Italian painter,
better known as Carducho, the Spanish corruption of his Italian
patronymic, was born in Florence, where he studied architecture
and sculpture under Ammanati, and painting under Zuccaero.
The latter master he accompanied to Madrid, where he painted
the ceiling of the Escorial library, assisting also in the production
of the frescos that adorn the cloisters of that famous palace.
He was a great favourite with Philip III., and lived and died in
Spain, where most of his works are to be found. The most
celebrated of them is a Descent from the Cross, in the church
of San Felipe el Real, in Madrid.
His younger brother Vincenzo (1568–1638), was born in Florence, and was trained as a painter by Bartolommeo, whom he followed to Madrid. He worked a great deal for Philip III. and Philip IV., and his best pictures are those he executed for the former monarch as decorations in the Prado. Examples of his work are preserved at Toledo, at Valladolid, at Segovia, and at several other Spanish cities. For many years he laboured in Madrid as a teacher of his art, and among his pupils were Giovanni Ricci, Pedro Obregon, Vela, Francisco Collantes, and other distinguished representatives of the Spanish school during the 17th century. He was also author of a treatise or dialogue, De las Excelencias de la Pintura, which was published in 1633.
CARDUCCI, GIOSUÈ (1836–1907), Italian poet, was born
at Val-di-Castello, in Tuscany, on the 27th of July 1836, his
father being Michele Carducci, a physician, of an old Florentine
family, who in his youth had suffered imprisonment for his
share in the revolution of 1831. Carducci received a good
education. He began life as a public teacher, but soon took to
giving private lessons at Florence, where he became connected
with a set of young men, enthusiastic patriots in politics, and in
literature bent on overthrowing the reigning romantic taste by
a return to classical models. These aspirations always constituted
the mainsprings of Carducci’s poetry. In 1860 he became professor
at Bologna, where, after in 1865 astonishing the public
by a defiant Hymn to Satan, he published in 1868 Levia Gravia,
a volume of lyrics which not only gave him an indisputable
position at the head of contemporary Italian poets, but made
him the head of a school of which the best Italian men of letters
have been disciples, and which has influenced all. Several other
volumes succeeded, the most important of which were the
Decennalia (1871), the Nuove Poesie (1872), and the three series
of the Odi Barbare (1877–1889).
Carducci had been brought into more fraternal contact with the aims of the younger generation by the efforts of Angelo Sommaruga who became, about 1880, the publisher of a group of young unknown writers all destined to some, and a few to great, accomplishment. The period of his prosperity was a strange one for Italy. The first ten years of the newly constituted kingdom had passed more in stupor than activity; original contributions to literature had been scarce, and publishers had preferred bringing out inferior translations of not always admirable French authors to encouraging the original work of Italians—work which it must be confessed was generally mediocre and entirely lifeless. Sommaruga’s creation, a literary review called La Cronaca Bizantina, gathered together such beginners as Giovanni Marradi, Matilde Serao, Edoardo Scarfoglio, Guido Magnoni and Gabriele d’Annunzio. In order to obtain the sanction of what he considered an enduring name, the founder turned to Giosuè Carducci, then living in retirement at Bologna, discontented with his fate, and still not generally known by the public of his own country. The activity of Sommaruga exercised a great influence on Giosuè Carducci. Within the next few years he published the three admirable volumes of his Confessioni e Batlaglie, the Ça Ira sonnets, the Nuove Odi Barbare, and a considerable number of articles, pamphlets and essays, which in their collected edition form the most living part of his work. His lyrical production, too, seemed to reach its perfection in those five years of tense, unrelenting work; for the Canzone di Legnano, the Odes to Rome and to Monte Mario, the Elegy on the urn of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the ringing rhymes of the Intermezzo, in which he happily blended the satire of Heine with the lyrical form of his native poetry—all belong to this period, together with the essays on Leopardi and on Parini, the admirable discussions in defence of his Ça Ira, and the pamphlet called Eterno Femminino regale, a kind of self-defence, undertaken to explain the origin of the Alcaic metre to the queen of Italy, which marks the beginning of the last evolution in Carducci’s work (1881). The revolutionary spirits of the day, who had always
