Tractatus de scachis mistice interpretatus de moribus per singulos hominu[m] status

Jacobus, de Cessolis, active 1288-1322, Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection (Library of Congress) · 1505 · [Viennae : Per Joannem Winterburg, 1505] · 9 pictures

A 1505 Viennese printed treatise by Jacobus de Cessolis, issued by Johann Winterburg, that reads chess pieces as moral guides for every social rank, aimed at a general lay and clerical readership. Its woodcut figures are small framed standing men in plain medieval dress, each with a tool or emblem beside an ornamental vine border, set beside dense black-letter text columns with large decorated initials; a designer could borrow the framed vignette layout, the stylised foliage, and the simple emblem-holding poses.

Chess · Early works to 1800

Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division · No known copyright restrictions · More from this library