Animal Suits

The codex on the subject of hunting held in the collections of the Musée Condé in Chantilly may be a copy of the one owned by Frederick II of Swabia, an example of the sources he consulted when drafting his celebrated treatise on falconry, De arte venandi cum avibus. As raising livestock became the main source of meat, hunting was relegated to the status of noble pastime. It should therefore come as no surprise that a sovereign would draft a manual on the subject and reserve the capture of certain deer for himself (a hard-learned lesson for Robin Hood). In that same museum, the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry magnificently illustrates the courtly setting of this leisure activity. Two decks of playing cards with hunting themes from Stuttgart and Vienna are even more refined: they represent a pastime within a pastime. We offer these decks here to our readers to leisurely leaf through: a pastime within a pastime within a pastime.