Chess player's novella

Liberale da Verona was a manuscript illuminator of exceptional quality who also worked as a panel painter, and his Chess Player's Novella panel derives from the tradition of cassone painting that illustrated literary narratives for Florentine and north Italian wedding commissions. The chess novella — possibly drawn from Boccaccio or a similar vernacular collection — was the kind of courtly love narrative suitable for the interior of a marriage chest. Liberale's training as an illuminator gave him an unusual command of small-scale narrative detail unusual in panel painters who had not worked in the manuscript tradition.

Liberale's illuminator background is evident in the miniaturist precision of the chess pieces, the textile patterns on the players' clothing, and the architectural setting rendered with the same careful penwork as his Siena cathedral choir books. The figures' faces carry a slightly archaic refinement that distinguishes Liberale from his contemporaries in Verona.