Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp Playing Chess

(shared from the Facebook page dedicated to Marcel Duchamp)
no copyright infringement intended

(Avangarda 20)

The Chess Play from Munich

Hans Mielich
Duke Albert V of Bavaria and his consort Anna of Austria playing chess
1552
Kleinodienbuch der Herzogin Anna von Bayern
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich
(http://idlespeculations-terryprest.blogspot.com/2011/03/patron-saint-of-chess.html)
no copyright infringement intended

Duke Albert V of Bavaria was a generous patron of the arts and an assiduous collector of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquities. The Duke appreciated the art of Hans Mielich who became his court painter. Orlando di Lasso was also a protege of the Duke.

The Duke was married to Archduchess Anna of Austria, and they both encouraged the development of Munich as city of arts.

(Hans Mielich)

Ludwig Deutsch: The Chess Game

Ludwig Deutsch, The Chess Game
oil on panel, 1896
private collection
(http://www.paintingsclassic.com/chess_game_paintings.html)
no copyright infringement intended

चतुरङ्ग (chaturanga), the ancestor of all chess-like games, is thought to have been developed around 1,600 years ago by an Indian philosopher. Since then it has spread across the globe, and evolved into several distinct forms, with China, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Europe all playing similar but distinct games throughout the middle ages. European chess underwent its most important development around 1475 when the capabilities of several of the pieces were changed. The fers became the most powerful piece on the board, combining the moves of the bishop and the rook, and was renamed the queen. Some of today's most familiar rules were also introduced then, such as castling, the two-square pawn advance, and en passant.

(http://plus.maths.org/content/practice-makes-perfect)

(Ludwig Deutsch)

Alfonso X the Wise: The Book of Games

The Game of Astronomical Tables
illustration from the Book of Games
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alfonso_LJ_97V.jpg)
no copyright infringement intended

El Libro de los Juegos (The Book of Games), known also as El Libro de acedrex, dados e tablas (The book of Chess, Dice and Tables) was written in the thirteen century. There was a king, Alfonso X the Wise of Castile, León, and Galicia who had commissioned it, and the book was completed in 1283: ninety-three leaves of parchment, integrating text and miniatures. Several Arabic sources had been compiled, their text translated into Castilian, and illustrations added to ease the understanding. Alfonso X remained known in history as a great king, a poet, a musician, a legislator, and an astrologist. The Alphonsus Crater on the Moon is named after him.

illustration from the Book of Games
(http://www.tabladeflandes.com/frank_mayer/frank_mayer144.html)
no copyright infringement intended

The book is a treatise of how to play three board games: the game of skill (chess), the game of chance (dice) and the game of skill and chance (backgammon). The final part of the book takes the board games to a higher level, giving them an astrological interpretation. Hundred and forty-four games are explained and illustrated in a functional structure based on the numbers seven and twelve, mirroring the King's interpretation of the Book of Revelation, which was modeling (so believed Alfonso) the universe of seven planets and twelve zodiacal signs.

illustration from the Book of Games
(http://www.tabladeflandes.com/frank_mayer/frank_mayer144.html)
no copyright infringement intended

The only known original is held in the library of the monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial. A 1334 copy is held in the library of the Royal Academy of History in Madrid. To make your task easier, here is a link to an English translation of the book:

http://jnsilva.ludicum.org/HJT2k9/AlfonsoX.pdf

NOTE: I used the info provided by Wikipedia and by the introduction to the English version of the book.


(Una Vida Entre Libros)

Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen: The Chess Players

Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen: Kurfürst Johann Friedrich von Sachsen in der Gefangenschaft beim Schachspiel mit einem spanischen Bewacher
(Elector John Frederick of Saxony in captivity playing chess with a Spanish guard)
oil on canvas, 1548
Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig
(http://www.tabladeflandes.com/frank_mayer/frank_mayer144.html)
no copyright infringement intended

I found the image above (a painting by Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen) in a short history of chess, authored by Frank Mayer. Actually the story told by Mayer was mainly about chess prohibition, along the centuries and across the monotheistic civilizations. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, each one in turn has tried to prohibit chess, but (fortunately) it was no way. Eventually everybody understood that playing chess was not at all a sin, far from that. And even some illustrious theologians, doctors of the church, became aficionados.   Santa Teresa de Ávila enjoyed this game. She mentioned chess in one of her writings (The Way of Perfection, Chapter 16, paragraphs 1 - 2; c. 1567) to illustrate the relationship between this game and ethics.

(http://www.tabladeflandes.com/frank_mayer/frank_mayer144.html)
source: http://www.ajedrezdeataque.com/
no copyright infringement intended

Is chess always innocent? Speaking about chess and chess players, there is a movie that is patiently waiting to be watched (by me). I have it on DVD: The Chess Players by Satyajit Ray. It's exactly about this, the innocence and fake innocence of chess. To my shame, I didn't find the time to watch it so far. But, on the other hand, chess is a play of patience, isn't it?

All this is fine, only I haven't said so far a word about the painting of Vermeyen. Instead, two friends of mine commented it at once. For one of them (Radu Ilarion Munteanu) the two personages were Carolus Quintus and Henry VIII. For the other friend (Horia Tudosie), the board game on the canvas could have been anything but chess. Actually both friends doubted that it was chess, due to the impossible position of the pieces on the board. It was making sense, thus I took a more careful look at the thing.

I discovered a closer view of the painting, focusing on the board:

Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen: Kurfürst Johann Friedrich von Sachsen in der Gefangenschaft beim Schachspiel mit einem spanischen Bewacher
close up
(Chess Artwork Project by Jonathan B. Crumiller)
no copyright infringement intended

The pieces look very Baroque (should I say even Rococo? anyway, Baroque or Rococo avant la lettre), and, though their position on the board seems to be kind of impossible, it is chess anyway.

Actually the close up is focusing also on the hands of the two men: two hands in dialog. A dialog of silence and of tension, and here we come to the personages. The fat one is not Henry VIII of England (though he looks like). It's John Frederick I the Magnanimous (Kurfürst Johann Friedrich der Altere), Elector of Saxony and the head of the coalition of Lutheran princes of Germany (the Schmalkaldic League). He remained known in history as the Champion of the Reformation. The painting shows him while in captivity: at the Battle of Mühlberg in 1547 he was defeated and taken prisoner. Charles Quintus considered the Elector a convicted rebel and sentenced him to death, then changed the condemnation into imprisonment for life. Eventually in 1552 he was released. So here on the canvas, the Elector is playing chess with his guard (a Spanish nobleman - only a nobleman could have guarded a Prince Elector). Is it an allusion to Charles Quintus (as Radu Ilarion Munteanu suggested)? It could be, after all, and the dramatic relations between the two could very well been symbolized by a chess game: a game with the pieces in an impossible position on the board, as the whole situation between Elector and Emperor was impossible to solve. Also Horia Tudosie is somehow right in his supposition.

Interesting is that in the Friedenstein Castle in Gotha there is another painting with the same title (and looking exactly the same). This time the author is  Anthonis Mor.

Anthonis Mor, Kurfürst Johann Friedrich der Altere von Sachsen spielt Schach mit einem spanischen Adeligen
oil on canvas
Friedenstein Castle in Gotha
(http://www.chessgraphics.net/saz11.htm)
no copyright infringement intended

Which of them is the original, and which of them the copy? We could speculate, of course, but frankly, I don't know the answer and possibly there is no answer in certainty.  What I think is that it goes what's always going in such matters: Philosphi certant.

(Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen)