04/11/2024
Women in Chess
Women in Chess Global FIDE Commission for Women's Chess Women in Chess Foundation Commission for Women Chess European Open and Women's Individual Chess Championships Niclas Huschenbeth Judit Polgar Alexandra Botez Anna Cramling
The Chess Game (or Portrait of the Artist’s Sisters Playing Chess) is an oil painting on canvas by the Italian Renaissance artist Sofonisba Anguissola from 1555. Anguissola was 23 years old when she painted it.
The painting is signed and dated on the edge of the chessboard, where Anguissola left this inscription: "SOPHONISBA ANGUSSOLA VIRGO AMILCARIS FILIA EX VERA EFFIGIE TRES SUAS SORORES ET ANCILLAM PINXIT MDLV" – "Sofonisba Anguissola, a virgin, daughter of Amilcare, painted from life her three sisters and a maid in 1555."
History
Giorgio Vasari visited Cremona, was a guest at the house of Amilcare Anguissola, and admired paintings of Amilcare's daughters. He wrote about The Chess Game: "I saw in Cremona this year, in the house of her father, a painting made with much diligence, depicting his three daughters playing chess, and with them an old maid, made with such care and ease that they appear alive, lacking only speech." This is the earliest document mentioning this painting, which hung for several years in the Anguissola family home.
The painting later made its way to Rome, along with a self-portrait at a spinet and two of Anguissola’s drawings (A Child Bitten by a Lobster and another unidentified drawing), in the possession of the humanist and collector Fulvio Orsini. It was then inherited by Cardinal Odoardo Farnese. The Chess Game reappeared in Naples after the Farnese inheritance passed to the Bourbons, and was eventually acquired by Luciano Bonaparte. It then changed owners again and is now part of the collection at the National Museum in Poznań, Poland.
Three engravings after this painting are known.
The painting has undergone significant overpainting.
Composition
In a pleasant garden setting, Lucia, the third-born Anguissola child, moves some chess pieces; in front of her is Minerva, the fourth-born, responding to her opponent’s move. She catches the attention of the youngest sister, Europa (the fifth-born), who observes and laughs. Minerva appears in a later painting (Portrait of the Anguissola Family), but as a teenager. The portrait of Europa may have been painted by Lucia Anguissola the following year. Europa Anguissola is also identifiable as a child in the pencil drawing An Old Woman Studying the Alphabet with a Laughing Girl, now in the Uffizi, where the maid is also present, although older than in The Chess Game.
Lucia is depicted in action, while the maid observes the scene. There is a noticeable difference in the physiognomy between the younger (wealthy) women and the older (humble) woman. The young Anguissola women wear jewels, embroidered dresses, and elaborate hairstyles. Minerva wears the same necklace as the Portrait of a Lady in Berlin, now identified as Bianca Ponzoni Anguissola – the mother of the three girls around the chessboard. The setting is a domestic one, surrounded by friendly figures, yet the competitive nature of a chess game is visible. In the garden grows an old oak tree laden with branches, symbolizing the solidity of family relationships. The background features a light blue landscape painted in a Flemish style.
Representation of Women Playing Chess
The extravagant "royal clothing" worn by the three Anguissola sisters indicates that Sofonisba Anguissola did not paint this scene to recreate a specific chess game event among the sisters. The luxurious costume in which Anguissola dresses her sisters connects to domestic traditions of embroidery or weaving, but by portraying this group engaged in an activity distinct from typical skills essential for a girl’s education at the time, Anguissola depicts these young women in a new realm.
The Chess Game features an exclusively female group. At the time of the painting’s creation, new chess rules in Italy altered the power hierarchy, giving the queen the greatest importance among chess pieces. Anguissola includes her sisters and their maid in this composition but excludes her younger brother Asdrubale. This all-female composition contrasts with many 16th-century artworks depicting chess games that preceded it, such as Giulio Campi’s The Chess Game or Lucas van Leyden’s Chess Game. Chess was part of humanist education and considered an excellent intellectual exercise for men, in contrast to card and dice games forbidden to women, which relied on luck rather than intelligence. Anguissola’s work acts as a "self-celebration of the achievements and talents of women," challenging the "exclusion of women from the representation of chess and intellectual engagement."
In ancient tradition, chess symbolized an Amazonian battle. In his 1550 poem Scacchia Ludus (or The Game of Chess), Cremonese poet and Bishop of Alba Marco Girolamo Vida sometimes called the queen a virgin and sometimes an Amazon, noting that she could move in any direction. The queens could be promoted from a pawn. In the final section, Vida mentions a battle between two queens in which the white queen dies and is resurrected. At the end, the black queen checkmates the white one. The battle depicted by Anguissola hints at the quest for a victorious woman, turning the chessboard into an allegory where the real queens are the Anguissola sisters, who live virtuous lives while engaging in an intellectual exercise.
