[Illustration: ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. THE GENTLEMAN. FROM THE TAROCCHI PRINTS (E Series) Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4 inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] [Illustration: ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. CLIO. FROM THE TAROCCHI PRINTS (S Series) Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4 inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston] However great their beauty and however strong the fascination which they exert, they have a rival in the series of fifty instructive prints, which, for many years, were miscalled the _Tarocchi Cards of Mantegna_. Tarocchi cards they are not, and of Mantegna’s influence, direct or indirect, there would seem to be no trace whatsoever. They are of North Italian origin and are the work, in all probability, of some anonymous Venetian engraver, working from Venetian or Ferrarese originals, about 1465--contemporary, therefore, with the Florentine engravings of the _Prophets and Sibyls_. Forming, apparently, a pictorial cyclopædia of the mediæval universe, with its systematic classification of the various powers of Heaven and Earth, they divide themselves into five groups of ten cards each. First we have the ranks and conditions of men from Beggar to Pope; next Apollo and the nine Muses; then the Liberal Arts, with the addition of Poetry, Philosophy, and Theology, in order to make up the ten; next the Seven Virtues, the set being brought up to the required number by the addition of _Chronico_, the genius of Time, _Cosmico_, the genius of the Universe, and _Iliaco_, the genius of the Sun. The fifth group is based on the Seven Planets, together with the Sphere of the Fixed Stars and the Primum Mobile, which imparts its own revolving motion to all the spheres within it; and enfolding all the Empyrean Sphere, the abode of Heavenly Wisdom. Much wisdom and many words have been expended upon the still unsolved riddle as to which of the two sets, known respectively as the E series and the S series (from the letters which appear in the lower left-hand corners of the ten cards of the _Sorts and Conditions of Men_) may claim priority of date. Both series are in the Fine Manner, the outlines clearly defined, the shadings and modelling indicated with delicate burin strokes, crossed and re-crossed so as to give a tonal effect. These delicate strokes soon wore out in printing, and the structural lines of the figures then emerge in all their beauty. It may seem absurd that one should admire impressions from plates obviously worn, but the critic would do well to suspend his condemnation, since the Tarocchi Prints present many and manifold forms of beauty--in the early impressions a delicate and bloom-like quality; in certain somewhat later proofs, a charm of line which recalls the art of the Far East. [Illustration: ANONYMOUS NORTH ITALIAN, XV CENTURY. THE SUN. FROM THE TAROCCHI PRINTS (E Series) Size of the original engraving, 7⅛ × 4 inches In the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston]