Luxury Renaissance Chess Set - Red

The Story

After the dark Middle Ages, Europe was influenced by great nostalgia for classical antiquity. Literature, philosophy, art, science, architecture and politics were reformed by the revival of interest in the values of the Greeks. The word Renaissance literally means “rebirth”, as a deep desire of mankind to recover from the darkness. The value of the human life and the extraordinary genius of human brain were restored by rediscovering the spiritual legacy of ancient Greece. The Renaissance period was a cultural awakening in the art world. Advances in perspective and the depiction of human anatomy resulted in a trend of increasing naturalism in Renaissance sculpture, in which human and animal figures were depicted with startling life-likeness

The Chessmen

The figures are gracefully thin and symbolically decorated, according to the slender aesthetics of the period. The King and the Queen reflect a more individualistic view of man, the Knight combines influences of an increased awareness of nature while the Rook represents a revival of classical learning. Renaissance had its undoubted protagonists: Knights have been evolved from the iron-masked soldiers of the Middle Ages to the idolized heroes of higher nobility. Through Europe they were named Knights, Sirs, Musketeers or Guardians and were portrayed as the ideal men. With their own code of honor, knighthood‘s ideals of virtue was immortalized in history through Renaissance literature and romance.

Size: 14 x 14 x 2 inches

King's Height: 3.5 inches