Two men and a woman playing cards at a table, one man pressing his nose toward the woman's forehead, from a series of ten scenes of musicians and couples dancing, drinking, playing music, and playing cards

Art Historical Context

This lively engraving by Virgil Solis, a prolific 16th-century German artist from Nuremberg, captures a cheeky moment from daily life: two men and a woman huddled over a card game at a table, with one man playfully pressing his nose to her forehead. Created around 1535–62, it belongs to a series of ten small prints (just 2 5/16 x 1 7/8 inches) depicting musicians, dancing couples, drinkers, and gamers—intimate vignettes of leisure and revelry in Renaissance Europe. Solis, renowned for his intricate reproductive engravings inspired by contemporaries like Albrecht Dürer, mastered the burin to carve fine lines into copper plates, allowing detailed textures like rumpled clothing and expressive faces to emerge in black-and-white. These affordable prints democratized art, circulating widely in books and collections, offering glimpses into social customs where card-playing symbolized flirtation, gambling, and camaraderie amid the era's growing urban pleasures. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department (Bequest of Phyllis Massar, 2011), this piece reflects the Northern Renaissance's delight in genre scenes, blending humor with humanity to entertain and educate viewers on the joys—and cheekiness—of everyday life.