Case : 138
HofΓ€mterspiel (Court-office Game), one
of the earliest card games on record preserved in its entirety with all
forty-eight cards intact, is a major 15th-century medieval handmade deck
commissioned by Ladislaus the Posthumous, king of
Hungary and Bohemia and Duke of Austria from 1453 to 1457. It was found among
the great collection of art treasures of Archduke Ferdinand II of Tirol in
castle Ambras, Austria, together with
another called Ambraser Hofjagdspiel. The 48 cards of the deck, are decorated in silver and gold leaf. The
four suits of this set depicting court functions are represented by means of
four heraldic colours: each suit sign carries the coats
of arms of four kingdoms: France, Germany, Bohemia and Hungary. These ranking by social
hierarchy reminds us of the first group of cards in Mantegna Tarot. The
presentation of suit with the illustrations which depict many different
professions in a hierarchy or social order. This deck supports the theory that
the trumps is the fifth suit of tarot deck. In all four suits the I
features a fool, Narr, or its female equivalent Narryn. In some respects, the
four Narr and Narryn cards have something in
common also with the illustration of the trumps
in the Minchiate Tarot and other Visconti-Sforza decks.