In The Game of Chess (Sofonisba Anguissola), how is the Portrayal of Women Playing Chess of the Composition elucidated?
The extravagant, “queenly attire” the three Anguissola sisters wear serve as indications that Sofonisba Anguissola did not paint this scene to recreate a specific event of chess playing between the sisters. The luxurious costume Anguissola dresses her sisters in draws the connection back to the domestic traditions of embroidery or weaving, but by portraying this group immersed in an activity completely different from the normal skills that were vital to a girl's education during this time period, Anguissola shows these young women in a new realm.The Game of Chess features an all-female group. New chess rules were in place in Italy by the time of the creation of Anguissola's painting, changing the hierarchy of power so that the queen held most importance out of all chess pieces. Anguissola includes her sisters and maidservant in this composition but excludes her younger brother, Asdrubale. The fully female cast is unlike many of the sixteenth-century artworks featuring games of chess that preceded it, like Giulio Campi’s The Chess Game or Lucas van Leyden’s Chess Game. Chess was part of the humanistic education and was considered an excellent intellectual exercise for a human; in contrast the card and dice games, which were forbidden to women, but they were based on luck and not on intelligence. Anguissola's work acts as a "self-celebration of women's accomplishments and talent" in how it challenges past "exclu[sions of] women from the representation of chess and an intellectual pursuit."According to an old tradition, the chess alluded to a Battle of the Amazons. In his poem from 1550 entitled Scacchia Ludus (or The Game of Chess), the Cremonese poet and bishop of Alba, Marco Gerolamo Vida, sometimes called the queen virgo and sometimes amazon and said that it can move in any direction. The queens had the possibility of being resurrected from a pawn. In the final section Vida mentions a battle between two queens, in which the white queen dies and rises again. At the end the black queen checkmates the white. The battle painted by Anguissola alludes to the search for a conquering woman. With this the chessboard becomes an allegory and the true queens are the two Anguissola sisters, then spend their life virtuously, taking part in an educational exercise.
Giulio Campi Marco Gerolamo Vida The Chess Game Sofonisba Anguissola Lucas van Leyden