From the exhibition
Great Leaders Playing Card
Eugène Moreau, French, active 19th c. · 1871
This French playing card from Eugène Moreau presents ten historical figures arranged in a circular composition: Descartes (1596), Pascal (1623), Washington (1732), Cromwell (1599), Bacon (1561), Bossuet (1627), Leibniz (1701), Papin (1647), Pierre le Grand (1672), and Lafontaine (1721). The spade suit and gilded ornamental borders—wheat sheaves and a twisted rope—frame portraits rendered in precise engraving. Such "cartes héroïques" served dual purposes: functioning as standard playing cards while educating players about celebrated minds across philosophy, science, literature, and statecraft. This format reflects nineteenth-century French enthusiasm for biographical collections and the democratization of knowledge through accessible, reproducible imagery.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com CC0