Did Leonardo da Vinci design a chess set?

Leonardo da Vinci, inventor extrodinaire, mathematician, weapons designer

and general all round polymath of 16century renaissance Italy .
Is there anything else to be written about this extraordinary man?
Well, perhaps there is. :

Since the discovery of Luca Pacioli's chess book about two years ago in a
private Italian library, and the realisation that he, (Leonardo) collaborated
with Pacioli on previous mathematical publications, (Leonardo helped him with
the difficult diagrams of complex Pythagorean and algebraic shapes.) This
raises the possibility that not only did Leonardo draw the chess piece diagrams
for him, but may have even designed the pieces!
The evidence for this last is very thin, but, it seems as if Leonardo must have
been a chess player at least, (his friendship with Pacioli, and the fact that
Pacioli enlisted Leonardo's aid with the diagrams more or less guarantees this).

Here is the press release announcing the discovery of the book :
It is with great pleasure that the Fondazione Palazzo Coronini Cronberg of Goriz
ia announces an important
discovery made in its library collections and related to the Renaissance history
and culture. The bibliophile and
book historian Duilio Contin has in fact discovered among the manuscripts and an
tique books gathered by
Count Guglielmo Coronini a document dating from the end of the 15th C and consid
ered lost for centuries: it is
the manuscript of the famous mathematician Luca Pacioli (1445c.-1517c.) called Ga
me of Chess, often
mentioned in bibliographical documents but never found. This manuscript called b
y the author De ludo
scacchorum ... and known as Schifanoia was dedicated to the marquise of Mantova, Is
abella dEste.
During his research commissioned by the Centro Studi of Aboca Museum of Sansepol
cro concerning
bibliographical studies on Pietro della Francesca and Luca Pacioli (both born in
the Tuscan town), Duilio Contin
had applied to the prestigious Fondazione Coronini Cronberg of Gorizia to examin
e the rich library containing
more than 22,000 volumes.
Only by chance Serenella Ferrari Benedetti, cultural co-ordinator of the Fondazi
one, drew Contins attention to
the anonymous manuscript on the game of chess, in which several scholars had bee
n interested, ignoring it was
Luca Paciolis most researched book.
The topic, the watermark surely belonging to the late 15C, the preciousness of t
he cover, the experience and the
intuition of the bibiophile provide a convincing evidence of the discovery. The
graphical characteristics of the
code, after a paleographical examination, would confirm the autography of Paciol
i. Also the language of the
manuscript according to Enzo Mattesini, professor of Italian Linguistics at the
University of Perugia and
expert on the vernacular used by Pacioli in other works would present characteri
stics which can be supposedly
considered peculiar to the famous figure.
One of the most distinguished mathematicians of his time, Luca Pacioli was born
in Borgo San Sepolcro
(Arezzo) around 1445 and died (perhaps in Venice) in 1517. He studied theology a
nd entered the Franciscan
Order in 1470. He taught commercial arithmetic and algebra in Perugia, Rome (whe
re he met Leon Battista
Alberti), Naples, Urbino, Venice; he was at the Court of Ludovico il Moro (1496-
1499), where he made friends
with Leonardo da Vinci, then he moved to Venice again. His main work, the result
of learned discussions at the
Milanese Court, is De Divina Proportione, a text of platonic inspiration finished
in 1497 and printed
afterwards in Venice (1509). Additionally he wrote a Summa de Arithmetica, Geomet
ria, Proportioni et
Proportionalit (dedicated to Guidobaldo da Montefeltro), and edited the works of E
uclid (published in Venice
in 1509).
The forty-eight papers of the Coronini Manuscript containing numerous practical
demonstrations of the game of
chess with the solution keys, are perfectly kept and the chess pieces are finely
drawn and coloured in black and
red; so finely as to make the discoverer cautiously suspect that it might be the
hand of another artist. In this
connection Contin points out that the manuscript was written around the year 150
0, the period in which Pacioli
and Leonardo da Vinci worked together.
It is known that during their stay in Milan they were friends and collaborated t
o each others works: in
Leonardos manuscripts in fact there are many traces of Paciolis lessons on The Ele
ments of Euclid, while
Leonardos touch is evident in some sketches of the magnificent drawings of the po
lyhedrons illustrating the
text of the Divina Proportione, published in Venice in 1509 together with two tr
eatises but written around 1498.
In 1499 when the king of France Louis XII invaded the Duchy of Milan, causing th
e escape of Ludovico il
Moro, Pacioli and Leonardo repaired, in December of the same year, to Mantova un
der the protection of
marquise Isabella dEste, to whom the manuscript is dedicated, then moved to Venic
e and finally to Florence.
At the moment Contin is continuing his studies on the story of the manuscript wh
ich arrived at the Fondazione
after Guglielmo Coronini, in 1963, had bought a collection of antique books from
a bookshop in Venice owned
by Giuseppe Malattia della Vallata, a Friulian poet and bibliophile.
Gorizia, December 20th, 2006
So, that just about covers the history/background part, so lets have a look at
one of these chess diagrams, which 'might' have been drawn by Leonardo.
The first thing to notice, is that the artist who drew the diagrams first drew a

line along the top and then down the left hand side and placed dots where the
downward lines would go, and then the same along the left hand side. (a left
hander perhaps?).
Then notice that the lines are drawn with a certain assurance, freehand, (you
try it, it's not so easy), is this the hand of an assured artist? Probably.
It is also 10-1 against Luca Pacioli being left handed, especially as he invente
d
double entry book keeping, and lefties are usually regarded as talented and
artistic, (I'm a leftie BTW)
What we see in the diagrams is a chess set with thin bases, then a short stem
with a bulge in it midway, followed by the top part which is called the piece
identifier, (or the bit which shows you what chess piece is on the square). We
shouldn't expect these diagrams to match the chess set in use exactly , just as
the chess diagrams of today don't look like the modern chess sets used in chess
clubs all over the world, (Staunton pattern)
Here is what I think the chess set in the diagrams might have looked like. This
is an Italian set of about 1800, but chess design moves slowly and accepted
ways persist for centuries in county provinces.
There isn't an exact equivalent of the knight or castle in the diagram, but this

set is later but in the same basic style. The pawn, king queen and bishop are
good matches to the diagram, even to the concave edge on the K+Q's collars
The thing to notice about the pawn is the acorn like top, this is definitely a
symbol used in chess at that time, shown here in this picture of three sisters
playing chess in 1555.a painting by Sofonisba Anguissola.
Note particularly, the acorns as castles (rooks) and the knights as horses heads

almost the same as in modern sets. The pawns cannot be acorns in this set as
the set is completely figural apart from the rooks.
It is also interesting to note that the elder sister is holding the 'red' queen
in
her left hand, clearly captured, while the nurse looks on from the right upper
corner, this is a painting with hidden meanings.
However, back to Leonardo and his chess set.
I am suggesting that the manuscript of this book of chess problems was the
first one made and then it was perhaps passed on to a professional to
reproduce, a professional scribe working for a commercial
book shop in the 15th century was paid by the job and not by the hour. His work
may have been
completed in a matter of days.
I can find no chess piece doodles amongst Leonardo's drawings, but it is more
than possible that the book was written in the evenings and the set (made and
designed earlier) was brought out to prove the chess diagram solutions.
These days chess grandmasters can play without sight of the board, but that
would be a rare skill then.
Leonardo was clever, but not that clever.
There are a few of these Italian sets about in various collections, most of them

only date back to the 19th century, but as I said earlier, these proven designs
tend to persist over time. Here are a few similar sets.
More to come, watch this space...