Primo visto, Primavista, Prima-vista, Primi-vist, Primiuiste, Primofistula, or even Primefisto,[1] is a 16th-century gambling card game fashionable c. 1530–1640.

[2] Opposing claims to this theory include the fact that the earliest known reference to the name Primo visto appears in Greene's "Notable Discovery of Coosnage" published in 1591, more than half a century after the name Primero was in common use.

John Minsheu, an English linguist and lexicographer, claims that Primero and Prima vista (hence Primo visto) were two distinct card games - "That is, first and first seen, because he that can shew such an order of cardes first winnes the game", although he gives but one set of names and just one reason for their names[3] Robert Nares in his book "A Glossary" states that the circumstance of the cards being counted in the same way, with the "Six" reckoned for eighteen and the "Seven" for twenty-one, seems to determine that Primo visto was the same as Primero, or even possibly a later variation of the latter.

A brief poem by the French Humanist Mellin de Saint-Gelais written in 1525 describes Francis I of France, Pope Clement VII and Emperor Charles V (the combatants in the Italian War of 1521–1526, a struggle for the possession of Italy) playing a hand of "Prime" (a game similar to Primero and to the "Flux").

[6] That seems to indicate that the game of Primo visto, and consequently Primero, is probably older than many historians have been able to determine and may date to the beginning of the 16th century or even further back in time.