Two Chess Players

Two Chess Players, 1542, in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, is among the most unusual subjects in Bordone's output — a secular genre scene of two men engaged in a chess game, with no mythological, religious, or allegorical pretext. Pure genre painting of this type was relatively rare in Venetian art before the seventeenth century, and this work places Bordone alongside the few Italian painters willing to treat contemporary leisure as a subject worthy of major pictorial treatment. Chess was a game of the educated and wealthy in the sixteenth century, associated with intellectual merit and social refinement. The painting may encode portraits of specific individuals identifiable to its original audience.

The two players are positioned across the chess board, the game's geometry providing the composition's spatial and psychological structure. Bordone uses the contrast between the players' concentrating faces — absorbed in the game — and the rich textures of their costumes to balance intellectual and material interest. The chess pieces are rendered with careful precision.