Chess Players by Liberale da Verona in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2014

Title: The Chess Players

Artist: Liberale da Verona (Italian, Verona ca. 1445–1527/29 Verona)

Date: ca. 1475

Medium: Tempera on wood

Dimensions: Overall 13 3/4 x 16 1/4 in. (34.9 x 41.3 cm); painted surface 13 1/8 x 15 7/8 in. (33.3 x 40.3 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Maitland F. Griggs Collection, Bequest of Maitland F. Griggs, 1943

Accession Number: 43.98.8

This and its companion panel are from the front of a chest (cassone) and show two episodes from an unidentified story, or novella. In one, a youth is smitten by a maiden who appears at a window and seems to gesture for him to join her inside. In the other, they engage in an erotically charged game of chess where she is about to lose. Both were common themes in the amatory literature of the Renaissance. The figures’ bleached blond, frizzy hair was the height of fashion in fifteenth-century Siena. Liberale was a brilliant illuminator and worked on choirbooks in Siena between 1467 and 1476.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436884