Bernice said:
Hmm....... then there is the possibility that maybe the deck was also like an advertisment?
I thought both men & women 'gambled'. What a good way to get a political point (or agenda) across
Bee
A lot of the trivial artistic artistic work was heraldic painting. Sagramoro, Trionfi card painter in Ferrara, had been specialist for d'Este heraldic. As Trionfi cards also contained a lot of heraldic, he was predestined ALSO to paint Trionfi cards.
Generally we can compare the artistic work of 15th century to modern advertising. Heraldic (painting the family shield here and there) is very similar to the manner, how modern enterprises advertise with their logo.
When a family ordered to have a chapel filled with painting, then this definitely was a topic for art history now ...
... but in the concrete political situation this was "advertising" similar to the way, when an enterprize takes the sponsorship for a sport event nowadays. They wanted "Fame" ... nowadays the word would be "marketing".
And also "gambling" was used for marketing ... the reigning Signore had to lose money to win followers, a strategy, which especially was used, when he needed some men, willing to risk their life in an intended near war.
Lodovico Sforza was troubled, when he heard, that his young wife Beatrice d'Este did win a lot of money at the gambling table ... he saw the bad consequences of such behaviour. He wished to know precisely, against whom she did win and how much.
Life was okay, when she "lost", that wasn't a problem.