Ross G Caldwell said:
It seems to be an allegorical interpretation of the 56 card pack (King, Queen, Knight, Page, pips 1-10). This is quite unusual, since I don't know of anybody using the 56 card pack by itself in the 16th century.
This is a pleasant discovery, since it sheds light on a theory of mine.
The Bolognese "tarocchini" uses a reduced pack of 62 cards. The cards 2-5 of all of the suits are not used.
However, the regular Bolognese pack, the Primiera, uses the same pattern as the Bolognese tarocchino, but uses the pips from 1-7 and twelve court cards. The Primiera drops the Queens, and counts Ace-7. Hence 40 cards.
My theory is that the same plates were used for the both the regular pack and the tarocco pack in Bologna, and the cards were taken for whatever pack was needed. If someone wanted a Primiera, they took the numbers 1-7 and 3 courts per suit. If someone wanted the tarocchino, they took the Ace, pips 6-10, and the 22 trumps. But they didn't use separate plates for each type of card deck.
I don't know if this is true - I haven't seen any plates from Bologna, and I haven't asked anyone about it who would know (Girolamo Zorli and Lorenzo Cuppi in Bologna are the two experts I know of).
But it seems as if Ringhieri is using the tarocchino Bolognese and merely removing the trumps from the pack for a "regular" game. If so, he may be an indication of playing habits in early 16th century Bologna, and before. It might be that a lot of people bought the "full" pack of 78 cards, and simply removed the cards they didn't need for a particular game.
Except for Ringhieri's game, games played with 56 cards are unknown.