The Book of Chess

Jacobus de Cessolis

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This book about the game of chess and the ranks of society is the fourth German, second Strasburg edition. The woodcuts are based on the ones found in Günther Zainer's Augsburg edition. The text is divided into books, the first touches on the origins of chess and the reasons for its invention; the next two books explain how the pieces represent different ranks of society. The different social classes are then made the subject of anecdotes and illustrations. The fourth book concerns the game itself.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art