Gothic Ivories Project | Folding chess board and tables board (backgammon) (Exterior)

From left to right, anti-clockwise, starting at the bottom
Outside (chess)
Lower panels: knights on horseback jousting; knights in armour; helms with lambrequins; suns; trees.
Right side panels: three male musicians playing wind instruments including the shawm; couple holding hands; lady wearing a conical hennin; trees; flowers. Couple dancing.
Upper panels: Garden of Love; courting couples (meeting of lovers); lady with a hawk on her wrist; hanging purse?; couple holding hands; male servant holding a bowl with food. Table with food and ewer; couple holding hands; female servant with a dog and holding the train of a lady's dress; couple conversing.
Left side panels: male and female figures dancing in fancy dress (moresca); jester; bearded men brandishing falchions; etc.

Inside (backgammon)
Lower panels: couple playing chess; fountain; courting couple (meeting of lovers); sun. Offering of the heart; man holding a whip (?); hanging purse; trees surrounded by a woven fence; lady playing the harp; man playing a shawm; sun.
Right side panels: stag hunt; hunters on horseback; hunter on foot holding a spear; hunters blowing horns; hares running into their holes; dogs pursuing a stag.
Upper panels: Hawking scene; kneeling lady taking a dead bird from a hawk; hawks flying. Waterfowl hunt in marshlands; river; dogs; birds; lady swinging a lure for hawks; trees.
Left side panels: men fighting with swords; courting couples. Men practising stone and stave throwing; courting couples; ladies wearing conical hennins.
Eight central panels with foliated decoration and a medallion in the middle (lion, camel, eagle, swan, hawk, pelican (?), stag, greyhound). Empty shields in the corners. Intarsia work. Crosshatched background.

Koechlin 1924: Northern France or Flanders (?), 2nd half of the 15th century.
Nuttall 2010: Southern Netherlands for the ivory and Spain (Granada?) for the intarsia, c. 1460-1470. She argues that the games board was made in the Netherlands, using tarsia tiles imported from Spain.
Museum's opinion 2012: Italy, 15th century.

Attribution
Unknown

Reverse
Carved on both sides.

Comments
Intarsia work is also found on the outer edge of the board, the inner frames, the central spine and the hinge plates. on the backgammon side, the borders are pierced with holes for pegs used in scoring (probably later; the corner shields probably incorporated metalwork coats of arms (P. Nuttal 2010). Still according to Nuttall, the dance depicted is called the 'moresca'.

Provenance
Carrand collection: bequeathed by Louis Carrand (d. 1888) to the Museo del Bargello in 1888.

Bibliography
G. Sangiorgi, La Collection Carrand au Bargello (Rome, 1895), pl. XIII.
I. B. Supino, Catalogo del Regio Museo nazionale di Firenze (Rome, 1898), p. 246, no. 155.
E. Gerspach, 'La Collection Carrand au musée national de Florence', in Les Arts 32 (August 1904), pp. 30-31.
F. Malaguzzi Valeri, La corte di Ludovico il Moro (Milan, 1913), I, pp. 525, 576.
H. J. R. Murray, History of Chess (Oxford, 1913), p. 757.
R. Koechlin, Les Ivoires gothiques français (Paris, 1924), I, pp. 467, 525; II, no. 1253, III, pl. CCX.
Bourgondische pracht: van Philips de Stoute tot Philips de Schone, ed. by R. van Luttervelt, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 28 July-1 October 1951.
H. and S. Wichmann, Chess: the Story of Chesspieces from Antiquity to Modern Times (New York, 1964), p. 299, pl. 80.
Grafica fiamminga e renana del quattrocento: mostra di incisioni da collezioni italiane. La raccolta delle stampe di Benedetto XIV di Andrea Emiliani, ed. by A. Omodeo, exhibition catalogue, Florence, Istituto Universitario Olendese di Storia dell'Arte, 31 May-29 June 1969.
G. Himmelheber, Spiele. Gesellschaftsspiele aus einem Jahrtausend (Kataloge des Bayerisches Nationalmuseums München, XIV) (Munich, 1972), p. 40.
T. Müller, 'Ein Spätgotischer Moriskenfries aus dem Piemont', in Arte minores. Dank an Werner Abegg, ed. by M. Stettler and M. Lemberg (Bern, 1973), p. 204.
M. Camille, The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire (London, 1998), p. 124.
A. Sanvito, Scacchi e tavole da gioco nella Collezione Carrand (Florence, 2000), pp. 10-18.
Il Medioevo europeo di Jacques Le Goff, ed. by D. Romagnoli, exhibition catalogue, Parma, Palazzo della Pilotta, 2003, p. 174, no. 60.
Le Triomphe de l'amour: Eros en guerre. Une Histoire amoureuse de l'humanité, ed. by E. Duperray, exhibition catalogue, Avignon, Musée Pétrarque, 2004, pp. 116-117, no. 83.
La Storia del Bargello. 100 Capolavori da scoprire, ed. by B. Paolozzi Strozzi and C. Danti (Milan, 2004), pp. 162-163 (M. G. Vaccari).
C. Lemoine, 'Gli scacchi del Bargello', in Franco Maria Ricci 14 (2006), pp. 119-136.
Luca Pacioli, matematico ed economista, exhibition catalogue, Florence, Gabinetto dei Disegni e Stampa degli Uffizi, 2007.
Charles le Téméraire (1433-1477). Faste et déclin de la cour de Bourgogne, edited by S. Marti, T.-H. Borchert, G. Kerk, exhibition catalogue, Bern and Bruges, 2008, p. 300, no. 124.
P. Nuttall, 'The Bargello gamesboard: a north-south hybrid', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CLII, no. 1292 (November 2010), pp. 716-722.
P. Nuttall, 'Dancing, love and the 'beautiful game'. A new interpretation of a group of fifteenth-century 'gaming' boxes', in Renaissance Studies 24 (2010), pp. 118-141.

All images on this website are made available exclusively for scholarly and educational purposes and may not be used commercially.