Chess in the arts

10th to 18th century illustrations accompanying books or manuscripts, such as this chess problem from the 1283 Libro de los juegos. , The Chess Game, 1555, National Museum, Poznań, Poland Palatine Chapel in the Norman Palace in Palermo you can admire the first painting of a chess game that is known to the world. The work dates from around 1143 and the artists who created the Muslim players were chosen by the Norman king of Sicily Roger II of Hauteville, who erected the church. The earliest known reference to chess in a European text is a Medieval Latin poem, Versus de scachis. The oldest manuscript containing this poem has been given the estimated date of 997. Other early examples include miniatures accompanying books. Some of them have high artistic value. Perhaps the best known example is the 13th-century Libro de los juegos. The book contains 151 illustrations, and while most of them are centered on the board, showing problems, the players and architectural settings are different in each picture. Another early illustrated text is the Book of the customs of men and the duties of nobles or the Book of Chess () which is based on the sermons of Jacopo da Cessole and was first published in 1473. The pieces illustrating chess problems in Luca Pacioli's manuscript On the Game of Chess (, c. 1500) are described as "futuristic even by today's standards" and may have been designed in collaboration with Leonardo da Vinci. After chess became gradually more popular in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, especially in Spain and Italy, many artists began writing poems using chess as a theme. Chess of love (), written by an unknown artist in the end of the 15th century, describes a game between Mars and Venus, using chess as an allegory of love. The story also serves as a pretence to describe the rules of the game. De ludo scacchorum (unrelated to the manuscript mentioned above) by , also created at that time, is a collection of gameplay advice, presented in poetic fashion. One of the most influential works of chess-related art is Marco Girolamo Vida's Scaccia ludus (1527), centered on a game played between Apollo and Mercury on Mount Olympus. It is said that, because of its high artistry, the poem made a great impression on anyone who read it, including Desiderius Erasmus. The first is Jan Kochanowski's poem Chess (c. 1565), which describes the game as a battle between two armies, while the second is William Jones' Caissa, or the game of chess (1772). The latter poem popularised the pseudo-ancient Greek dryad Caïssa to be the "goddess of chess". Other artists have drawn their inspiration from the life of players. Vladimir Nabokov wrote The Defense after learning about Curt von Bardeleben, while the musical Chess was loosely based on the life of Bobby Fischer. Some authors invented new chess variants in their works, such as stealth chess in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series or Tri-Dimensional chess in the Star Trek series. Another connection between art and chess is the life of Marcel Duchamp, who almost fully suspended his artistic career to focus on chess in 1923. Salvador Dalí and Man Ray were also chess players and both designed chess sets. The three artists played chess together, and one of the chess sets designed by Dalí is called Echecs (Hommage à Marcel Duchamp). Duchamp's 1910 painting The Chess Game depicts his brothers Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Villon playing chess in the garden of Villon's studio. Another Duchamp painting from the following year again depicts his brothers at the chess table. Duchamp wrote a book titled Opposition and Sister Squares Are Reconciled which was published in 1932. Man Ray and Duchamp are seen playing chess in René Clair's film ''Entr'acte. A book titled Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Chess'' was published in 2009. Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris were also chess players, and both made references to the game in their work. The design of Bauhaus professor Josef Hartwig's early 1920s chess set uses the shape of each piece to indicate its permitted movement. Artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Barbara Kruger, Damien Hirst, Gavin Turk, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Rachel Whiteread, Paul McCarthy, Tom Friedman, and Tracey Emin have also either designed chess sets or made works that reference the game. ==In literature==