The Chess Game

The story of The Chess Game

Three sisters sit at a chessboard under an oak tree while a servant leans in to see who is winning. The oldest, on the left, has just taken a piece and looks straight out at you to make sure you noticed. The youngest, in the middle, is laughing openly at the loser. Sofonisba Anguissola painted her own sisters in Cremona in 1555, when she was in her early twenties, and the painting is in the National Museum in Poznań, Poland. It is the earliest picture we know of that shows well-born women simply enjoying themselves at home, and the artist went on to serve as a painter at the Spanish court.

On a wall, this is a warm, sociable painting. The dominant colors are the sisters' brocade dresses in russet, gold, and burgundy against dark green foliage, with a pale blue landscape opening up behind them. It suits a dining room, a family room, a game room, or a study, and it works with traditional, old-world, and collected-over-time interiors. We offer it up to the Medium at 24 × 16 in, which is the size that lets you read the faces and the board, and the Small at 18 × 12 in is right above a side table or in a pair with another Renaissance portrait.

For company, Vigée Le Brun's Self-Portrait with Her Daughter is the other great painting of family affection by a woman at court. Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine shares the century and the quiet self-possession, and Arcimboldo's Summer was painted in the same Mannerist decade with a very different sense of humor. More from Sofonisba Anguissola.

Printed in our studio from a public-domain photograph of the Poznań canvas, with the warm, slightly darkened varnish of the original left in place.