Highlights from the print collection
An introduction to the print collection of the Royal Collection
‘Charles I and Henrietta Maria playing cards’
published by Jaspar Isaac, Paris, c.1630RCIN 601934
Of the many albums of prints assembled by Cassiano dal Pozzo, the 'Dutch Drolls' (a title assigned in the eighteenth century) is the most unusual, containing a striking variety of entertaining prints of subjects ranging from itinerant figures to anthropomorphic landscapes to sexual politics. 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.