CAMPI, Giulio
(b. ca. 1508, Cremona, d. 1572, Cremona)

The Chess Players

1530s
Oil on canvas, 90 x 127 cm
Museo Civico, Turin

In northern Italy, during the sixteenth century, chess and sometimes cards were accepted as appropriate courtly pastimes, and often shown as allegories of love, with amorous and aristocratic players. Giulio Campi's Chess Players, with its subtle play of gesture and expression, is an example of Lombard genre paintings.