3-016-429 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

The Card Players, 1520. A woman flanked by two men seated around a circular table that occupies the foreground of the painting. On the table top, which has a print of fleurs-de-lys, are a number of small stacks of cards and piles of money. The woman, positioned frontally, points to the jack of spades while the young man on our left has the king of spades in his hand and looks at the other man who shows him the eight of spades. The scene takes place in an exterior that contains a limited number of elements, including a tree trunk, a rustic fence and an area of blue sky. It has been suggested that it is a possibly an allegory of love in which two men are rivals for the woman’s favours and in which the young man on the left has the advantage, indicated by the king of spades in his hand. The painting has also been read in a political key, in which the three figures could be Charles V on the left, Margaret of Austria, regent of the Low Countries, and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, ambassador of Henry VIII of England. This encounter would symbolise the pact between Charles and Henry against the French monarch.