The Demons and the Angel: Chess in Art

“Wyrd oft nereth unfaegne eorl, thonne his ellen deah.” These words from the Old English epic Beowulf constitute valuable advice for any aspiring chess player: “Fortune tends to favour those who keep their nerve, unless they are already doomed.”

The narrative of Beowulf is predicated on heroism, the achievement of immortality through undying fame. There are no magic potions or Philosopher’s Stones. There is no all-embracing tutelage of a semi-divinity, such as the nymph Calypso in The Odyssey, who promises the eponymous hero enduring life, if only he will remain on her island refuge. Predictably, Odysseus declines the temptation, escapes to Ithaca from his gilded confinement and attains immortality by virtue of his heroic deeds, resourceful cunning and intelligence. The theme echoes the reputation of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, the favourite inspirational text of Alexander the Great. As Petrarch (1304-74) wrote:

“Giunto Alessandro alla famosa tomba
Del fero Achille, sospirando disse:
O fortunato, che si chiara tromba
Trovasti, e chi di te si alto scrisse!” 

“When Alexander reached the famous tomb of fierce Achilles, sighing he said: O happy man, who found one so illustrious to trumpet your name, and write so nobly of you for posterity!”

Beowulf’s fame derives from his victories over the demon Grendel, who terrorises the Norse warriors of the Royal Hall of Heorot, and Grendel’s equally demonic mother, who engages in frightful conflict with the hero at the bottom of a lake guarded by hideous reptiles and strange serpents.

These dark battles of Beowulf always remind me of the troubled, brooding mien of the carved pieces of the celebrated Isle of Lewis chess pieces, the oldest complete chess set in existence. From the frowning Kings down to the tense pawns, there is an atmosphere of danger and defeat emanating from these miniature warriors, to my mind reflecting the inevitable defeat of the Nordic gods, when the time comes for the ultimate losing conflagration of Ragnarok.

The Lewis chess pieces, most of which are in the British Museum, with a selection retained in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, are crafted from walrus ivory, a material known as “morse” (which I strongly suspect as being the inspiration for the Inspector Morse, Sergeant Lewis pairing.)

Opinions, of course, might vary on this speculation, but one thing is clear: the Lewis chess pieces can be described as significant works of art in their own right. Earlier Islamic pieces, which do exist in isolation, eschew depiction of the real. Their strictly abstract form makes it difficult to describe them as transcending their functional role as gaming pieces. A 2018 publication on the topic, Chess and other Games Pieces from Islamic Lands, by Deborah Freeman Fahid (Thames and Hudson) indicates that, far from being differentiated in representational fashion, Islamic pieces were distinguished by size, from the more valuable and larger major pieces, down to the diminutive and humble low value pawn.  In sharp contradistinction, even seen simply as works of art, the Lewis pieces are immensely valuable. In July 2019 a single newly discovered piece in the same style, a Warder or Rook, sold in auction for a staggering £735,000.

In a similar vein to the Lewis hoard, though in my opinion even more refined and elegant, are the so-called Charlemagne chess pieces, preserved (after various disappearances of individual items during the French Revolution) in the Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris. Fashioned from elephant ivory, rather than walrus, these pieces of a slightly more cosmopolitan south Italian provenance, are similar to the Lewis chessmen, especially in the design of the foot soldier pawns. Viking/ Norman influence is to be detected in both the Lewis and Charlemagne artefacts. However, in general the southern execution is more intricate, involving complex palace-like housing for the superior pieces and impressively lifelike depictions of war elephants. Needless to say, the Charlemagne connection is merely myth and legend, since these miniature works of art date from Sicily in the eleventh century, not to ninth century Aachen, the Carolingian capital further north. Hence the fable that they were gifts to The Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne from The Caliph Haroun Al Rashid in Baghdad, can be discarded as inflated ex post facto romanticisation.

A new book, Chess in Art, 1100-1900, compiled by Peter Herel Raabenstein (published by HereLove, Prague) takes the reader on a journey through almost a thousand years of portrayals of chess in works of art, from the chess book of the Spanish monarch Alfonso el Sabio (Alfonso the Wise) to Daumier’s chess players of the late 19th century. A second volume is promised for the twentieth century and beyond, which will surely feature the chess related artistic exploits of Marcel Duchamp, along perhaps with work from my good friends Barry Martin and Patrick Hughes, the most accomplished living artists also to be recognised as noted chess players.

Each artist covered in the book is furnished with a thumbnail biography. Despite an absence of more detailed critical apparatus, a theme which emerges strongly from the collection is the powerful representation of women in both aristocratic and bourgeois society as chess protagonists. A striking example is the portrayal by Sofonisba Anguissola of herself and her sisters playing chess, dating from 1555.

This social presence is significant, and is accentuated by the allegorical use of chess as a flash point between the sexes. It seems that the regrettable, if hopefully temporary, pivot towards chess as being a primarily masculine pursuit, arose from the professionalisation of the game, which commenced in earnest from the mid 19th century with the London International Tournament of 1851. Before the 19th century the chess landscape, according to the artistic record, appeared to be populated equally by both sexes.

In the context of female representation in chess, an aspect which invites more thorough exploration is the work of Angelica Kauffman, whose painting “Composition”, employing a female figure contemplating a chess situation, adorns the ceiling of the lobby of The Royal Academy in London’s Piccadilly.

This allegorical figure symbolises one of the four vital elements of art. She reposes her head on her hand as if plunged into profound thought, and leans on the base of a column that supports a chessboard. The chess presence is overtly intended as a metaphor for intellectual and strategic cerebration, while the compass she holds in her hand alludes to the precision and accuracy required in the initial stages of creating an artwork. The female figure inhabits the frontier separating nature and human architecture, since Composition draws inspiration from both fields.

Angelica Kauffman’s tetralogy of roundel paintings collectively represents the four essential “Elements of Fine Art”: Invention, Composition, Design, and Colour. Together they clearly allude to Sir Joshua Reynolds’s theories from his Discourses on Art propounded in his lectures at the Royal Academy and published in 1788. Sir Joshua was a close friend of Kauffman, often referring to her in his notebooks as “Miss Angel.” She was a forceful personality in her own right, who once obliged a painting to be withdrawn from the Royal Academy on the grounds that it disrespected Reynolds. In 1787 she painted a portrait of Goethe, the main topic of a previous column in these pages.

Kauffman, herself, the most famous female artist of the Enlightenment, exhibited a penchant for representing powerful female figures, inspired by examples from the Italian Renaissance, such as Sofonisba Anguissola, who appears so prominently in the book Chess in Art. According to Professor Anna Lena Lindberg of Lund University, Sweden, in her 1995 article “Touching the Rainbow”, in The Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, Kauffman’s women “radiate both spiritual and physical vitality, in a way that, at least on the face of it, has a resemblance to, for example, Michelangelo’s athletic sibyl in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which Angelica Kauffman must have seen and studied, or to Artemisia Gentileschi’s history painting.” Kauffman was certainly attracted to Rome and passed away there at the age of sixty-six in 1807.

An 18th century audience would have been adroit in deciphering iconography and Kauffman’s works involve numerous symbols based on classical iconographic precedent. Interestingly, although such tradition may have resulted in some of the figures becoming male, Kauffman converted them all to female.

Her quartet of allegorical roundels, originally commissioned for the Royal Academy’s Council Room in the institution’s first purpose-built location in Somerset House, was later transferred to the ceiling of the entrance hall of the Royal Academy at Burlington House.

Kauffman’s chess painting is now one of the first items the visitor encounters when entering this Temple to Art, a fitting tribute to one of the only two female founding members of the RA.

Kauffman’s co-female founder was Mary Moser, coincidentally also of Swiss extraction. Johan Zoffany celebrated the launch of the RA with his Academicians of the Royal Academy where members are gathered around a nude male model, and this when prevailing mores excluded women from such gatherings in order to protect their modesty. With great ingenuity Zoffany honoured the contraband female contribution by including wall portraits of both Kauffman and Moser.

In a curious echo of the decline of female presence in chess, as the 19th dawned, no further female academicians were admitted until 1936!

An exhibition dedicated to Kauffman’s work had been planned for the RA this year from June 27 to September 20. Sadly, due to the ravages of the Coronavirus, her exhibition was cancelled. I hope that it can be restored at a later date. Interestingly, another near contemporary, Mary Delany, produced chess related silhouettes, and was the subject of a British Museum Women’s History Month blog in March of last year.

Chess itself can aspire to be an art form, not just in terms of the appearance of the game in paintings and in the artistic design of pieces, but also in the creation of beauty on the chessboard. Since chess is a struggle in which the opponent is constantly seeking to block, neutralise and frustrate your own plans, it might seem anomalous that artistic beauty can result from such a tangled combative maelstrom.

However, it is so.

This week’s game comes as close to being a work of art in itself, as it is possible to be. Characteristic features of beauty in chess are usually associated with heavy sacrifices of material and very long moves. In that respect, Petrosian’s final long diagonal queen move in this week’s game is archetypally aesthetic, geometrically stunning and visually powerful. The fact that it was enacted at the highest level of skill, in a game for the championship of the world, only enhances its lustre.

Beowulf and Achilles achieved immortal fame through their heroism, Odysseus by his intelligence and resourcefulness, Petrarch through his poetry, and Kauffman through her art. I like to think that such titans of chess, as Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov, Judit Polgár and Magnus Carlsen, to name but a few, will also do so, as long as chess continues to be played. In the case of the Grandest Masters of chess, through the cerebral battles of their miniature wars, just as heroic Achilles did on the martial battlefields of Troy and indefatigable Beowulf, slaying demons for eternal fame, according to the valorous Norse Code of the Scandinavian elite, etched forever in the grim visages of the Lewis chess warriors.

More about Chess in Art: History of Chess in Paintings 1100-1900 can be found at www.chessinart.com.