DOI Artikel:
Kilian, Joanna: Locus amoenus, Delightful Place: the courtly return to nature in sixteenth century Northern Italian painting
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18947#0032
3. Sofonisba Anguissola,
The Chess Gamę, 1550,
Muzeum Narodowe,
Poznań, detail
(Phot. Teresa
Żółtowska-Huszcza)
inscribed on the grave discovered by the inhabitants of the land of happiness
in Poussin’s painting Et in Arcadia Ego.1 * * * 5 6 Each of the women portrayed by
Anguissola personifies a successive stage in human life, from childhood to old
age, and the chess gamę was a metaphor for the transformations of human fate
(ill. 3).h This courtly gamę, with the appearances of lightness, elegance and
freedom, became a kind of discussion about finał matters. Games and pastimes
in the villas of northern Italy, superficially trivial, became an expression of
philosophy, reflecting the major interests of the era.
One of the essential duties of a genteel woman and man in the 16th century
was the playing of musie together in company, considered by Baldassare Castiglione
as part of the education of the noble born. In Venetian culture of the
Cinąuecento, music-making was a passatempo, a way of spending free
1 The chess gamę likewise symbolizes vanity in Paris Bordone’s painting The Chess Players
(ca. 1555), oil on canvas, 112x 181 cm, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz. The players
are depicted with a loggia in villa scenery in the background. The chess pieces are conveyed in
a strange perspective, seeming to fali from the table. This conspicuous detail is a metaphor
of death; cf. M. F. S. Hervey, The Life Correspondence and Collections of Thomas Howard, Earl
of Arundel, Cambridge 1921, no. 42; M. Canova, Paris Bordon, Venice 1964, p. 54; J. L. Schefer,
Scenographie d’nn tableau, Paris 1968; Augusto Gentili, “De costumi degPhuomini et degli offitii
de nobili’: I giocatori di scacchi, la fonte, 1’allegoria”, in Paris Bordon e il suo tempo, Treviso 1985,
pp.125-132.
6 E. Sears, The Ages of Man. Medieval Interpretation of the Life Cycle, Princeton 1980, p. 25,
p. 151.
26
The Chess Gamę, 1550,
Muzeum Narodowe,
Poznań, detail
(Phot. Teresa
Żółtowska-Huszcza)
inscribed on the grave discovered by the inhabitants of the land of happiness
in Poussin’s painting Et in Arcadia Ego.1 * * * 5 6 Each of the women portrayed by
Anguissola personifies a successive stage in human life, from childhood to old
age, and the chess gamę was a metaphor for the transformations of human fate
(ill. 3).h This courtly gamę, with the appearances of lightness, elegance and
freedom, became a kind of discussion about finał matters. Games and pastimes
in the villas of northern Italy, superficially trivial, became an expression of
philosophy, reflecting the major interests of the era.
One of the essential duties of a genteel woman and man in the 16th century
was the playing of musie together in company, considered by Baldassare Castiglione
as part of the education of the noble born. In Venetian culture of the
Cinąuecento, music-making was a passatempo, a way of spending free
1 The chess gamę likewise symbolizes vanity in Paris Bordone’s painting The Chess Players
(ca. 1555), oil on canvas, 112x 181 cm, Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz. The players
are depicted with a loggia in villa scenery in the background. The chess pieces are conveyed in
a strange perspective, seeming to fali from the table. This conspicuous detail is a metaphor
of death; cf. M. F. S. Hervey, The Life Correspondence and Collections of Thomas Howard, Earl
of Arundel, Cambridge 1921, no. 42; M. Canova, Paris Bordon, Venice 1964, p. 54; J. L. Schefer,
Scenographie d’nn tableau, Paris 1968; Augusto Gentili, “De costumi degPhuomini et degli offitii
de nobili’: I giocatori di scacchi, la fonte, 1’allegoria”, in Paris Bordon e il suo tempo, Treviso 1985,
pp.125-132.
6 E. Sears, The Ages of Man. Medieval Interpretation of the Life Cycle, Princeton 1980, p. 25,
p. 151.
26