Giuseppe Maria Mitelli

The younger Mitelli was best known for his prolific engravings, in a great variety of subjects, including scenes from grand epics to mundane page boards for games of chance using dice, Tarot cards, and an Iconophor with anthropomorphized alphabets.

Giuseppe studied or worked under Francesco Albani, Flaminio Torri, Guercino, and Simone Cantarini; he had a long career of over 60 years in Bologna.

This artwork consists of 62 cards in typical Baroque style and it is still today considered one of the highest examples of Mitelli's artistic production.

Mitelli placed his own self-portrait on the Ace of Coins and, to affirm the originality of his masterpiece, he added INV DIS & INT ("Invented, Drawn and Engraved").

[8] He drew an enraged Imre Thököly in oriental garb behind bars (though it is unlikely that Mitelli would ever have seen the Hungarian rebel and Ottoman sympathiser as a prisoner in person).

The Social Classes, all controlled by the Devil
An Academy of Dwarf Painters drawing a Hunchback Model.
Patent-Medicine Quack Hawking Snakes. [ 5 ]
Self-portrait of G. M. Mitelli, engraved on the Ace of Coins of his Tarot deck.
Doctors from various countries minister to the Dying Sultan.