This collection of essays examines the vogue for games and game playing as expressed in art and literature in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Focusing on games as a leitmotif of creative expression, these scholarly inquiries are framed as a response to two main questions: how were games used to convey special meanings in art and literature, and how did games speak to greater issues in European society? In chapters dealing with chess, playing cards, board games, dice, gambling, and outdoor and sportive games, essayists show how games were used by artists, writers, game makers and collectors, in the service of love and war, didactic and moralistic instruction, commercial enterprise, politics and diplomacy, and assertions of civic and personal identity. Offering innovative iconographical and literary interpretations, their analyses reveal how games“played, written about, illustrated and collected“functioned as metaphors for a host of broader cultural issues related to gender relations and feminine power, class distinctions and status, ethical and sexual comportment, philosophical and religious ideas, and conditions of the mind.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I. Chess and Luxury Playing Cards
- 1. “Mad Chess” with a Mad Dwarf Jester
- 2. Changing Hands
- Jean Desmarets, Stefano della Bella, and the Jeux de Cartes
- Part II. Gambling and Games of Chance
- 3. “A game played home”
- The Gendered Stakes of Gambling in Shakespeare’s Plays
- 4. “Now if the devil have bones,/ These dice are made of his”
- Dice Games on the English Stage in the Seventeenth Century
- 5. The World Upside Down
- Giuseppe Maria Mitelli’s Games and the Performance of Identity in the Early Modern World
- Part III. Outdoor and Sportive Games
- 6. “To catch the fellow, and come back again”
- Games of Prisoner’s Base in Early Modern English Drama
- 7. Against Opposition (at Home)
- Middleton and Rowley’s The World Tossed at Tennis as Tennis
- Part IV. Games on Display
- 8. Ordering the World
- Games in the Architectural Iconography of Stirling Castle, Scotland
- 9. The Games of Philipp Hainhofer
- Ludic Appreciation and Use in Early Modern Art Cabinets
- Index
- List of Illustrations
- Fig. I.1 Ambrogio Brambilla, “Il piacevole e nuovo giuoco novamente trovato detto pela il chiu” (The pleasant and new game recently found called skin the owl) [Game of Skin the Owl], 1589
- Fig. I.2 Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, Il giuocatore, from Le ventiquattr’hore dell’humana felicità (The twenty-four hours of human happiness), 1675
- Fig. I.3 Georges de La Tour, The Cheat with the Ace of Clubs, c. 1630–34
- Fig. I.4 Coryn Boel (after David Teniers the Younger), Two Monkeys Playing Backgammon, 1635–68
- Fig. I.5 Lubin Bauguin, Still Life with Chessboard, 1630
- Fig. 1.1 Giulio Campi, Partita a scacchi (The Game of Chess), c. 1530–32
- Fig. 1.2 Liberale da Verona, The Chess Game, c. 1475
- Fig. 1.3 Knight and a lady playing chess, 1330–40
- Fig. 1.4 Schematic of Queen’s chess moves
- Fig. 2.1 Stefano della Bella, fifteen of thirty-nine playing cards (and one title card) from the Cartes des rois de France (Game of French Kings), 1698 (fourth state, first state c. 1644)
- Fig. 2.2 Stefano della Bella, thirteen of fifty-two playing cards (and one title card) from the Jeu de la géographie (Game of Geography), 1698 (fourth state, first state c. 1644)
- Fig. 2.3 Stefano della Bella, thirteen of fifty-two playing cards (and one title card) from the Jeu des fables (Game of Fables), 1698 (fourth state, first state c. 1644)
- Fig. 2.4 Stefano della Bella, title card and thirteen of fifty-two playing cards from the Jeu des reynes renommées (Game of Famous Queens), 1698 (fourth state, first state c. 1644)
- Fig. 2.5 Stefano della Bella, nine studies for the Jeu des reynes renommées (Game of Famous Queens), c. 1644
- Fig. 2.6 Stefano della Bella (after) and Pierre Mortier (published by), wrapper and booklet of explanatory text for the Jeu des reynes renommées (Game of Famous Queens), c. 1721 (1st ed. c. 1692)
- Fig. 5.1 Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, Gioco importantissimo del fornaro, banco che mai falisce (The most important game of the baker—the bank which never fails) [Game of the Baker], 1692
- Fig. 5.2 Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, Signora gola tira tutto (Mrs. Glutton takes all) [Game of Gluttony], 1699
- Fig. 5.3 Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, Gioco gustoso della Simona e Filippa, compagne fedeli (The tasteful game of Simona and Filippa, faithful companions) [Game of Simona and Filippa], 1695
- Fig. 5.4 Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, La cucagna nuova, trovato nella porcolandria l’anno 1703 da seigoffo quale raconta esservi tutte le delitie e chi dessidera andarvi gli ariva prestissimo con il pensiere con tutta facilita e finalmente qui chi sempre vive
- Fig. 6.1 Schematic of prisoner’s base playing ground
- Fig. 6.2 Francis Willughby’s depiction of a prisoner’s base playing ground. A to C is a post or bar serving as base for one team. B to D serves as base for the other. The chains of connected Os represent teams of players holding hands. M is the prison for
- Fig. 7.1 Title page of A Courtly Masque: the Device called, The World Tossed at Tennis, 1620 .
- Fig. 8.1 View of the south facade of James V’s Palace and Bowling Green at Stirling Castle
- Fig. 8.2 Ornamented playing cards. Top row, from left to right: Le Diable (the Devil); Le Fou (the Fool), both from Jean Noblet’s deck; The Fool from the Visconti-Sforza deck. Bottom row, right to left: The King of Falcons, from the Stuttgart Playing Card
- Fig. 8.3 Schematic of the south, east, and north facades of the royal apartments at Stirling Castle
- Fig. 8.4 Sculptures from James V’s Palace at Stirling Castle. Reading clockwise: top row, left to right: Devil in bay 3, south facade; Boy throwing a ball in bay 4, south facade; Lady with floating scarf in bay 15, north facade. Bottom row, right to left:
- Fig. 8.5 Statue of the Fool in bay 7, east facade of James V’s Palace at Stirling Castle
- Fig. 9.1 The Pomeranian art cabinet, Berlin, 1610–17
- Fig. 9.2 The Gustavus Adolphus art cabinet, Uppsala, 1625–31
- Fig. 9.3 A combined draughts game (left), a Game of the Goose (right), and a “Tower game” (the eight spandrel ovals), Berlin
- Fig. 9.4 Game of the Goose, Uppsala
- Fig. 9.5 Two of Hainhofer’s Kronbrautspiele
- Fig. 9.6 Tafelspiel, Uppsala
- Fig. 9.7 Jacob van der Heyden, two women and a man playing a ball game on a table, 1608.
- Fig. 9.8 Nicolas de Larmessin II, Habit de tabletier (dealer in fancy turnery, chessboards, etc.) from Les costumes grotesques, 1695
- Fig. 9.9 Matthias Gerung, Die Melancholie im Garten des Lebens (detail), 1558
- Fig. 9.10 Singwürfel (singing dice), Uppsala
- Fig. 9.11 Vexierkartenspiel, Uppsala
- Fig. 9.12 Tourniquet (roulette), Uppsala.
- Fig. 9.13 Unknown game, Uppsala
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