Historical Stalemate: Chess Book May Have Leonardo Illustrations (or Not)
Reported discoveries of lost works by Leonardo da Vinci are almost as common as, well, images of the Mona Lisa.
The latest attribution to be proposed involves the design for the illustrations in a chess book from around 1500. The book, “De Ludo Scachorum,” or “The Game of Chess,” is by Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan friar and Renaissance mathematician who was a friend and collaborator of Leonardo. One of the earliest chess books, it contains 114 diagrams of chess problems drawn in red and black.
Long thought to be lost or destroyed, it was discovered in 2006 in a 22,000-volume library in northeastern Italy that belonged to Count Guglielmo Coronini, who died in 1990.
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The latest attribution to be proposed involves the design for the illustrations in a chess book from around 1500. The book, “De Ludo Scachorum,” or “The Game of Chess,” is by Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan friar and Renaissance mathematician who was a friend and collaborator of Leonardo. One of the earliest chess books, it contains 114 diagrams of chess problems drawn in red and black.
Long thought to be lost or destroyed, it was discovered in 2006 in a 22,000-volume library in northeastern Italy that belonged to Count Guglielmo Coronini, who died in 1990.