CARRERA, Pietro. Il Gioco de gli Scacchi, diviso in otto libri [with discourses by G.B. Cherubino and M. Tortelli], Militello, per Giouanni de' Rossi da Trento, 1617, 4°, FIRST EDITION, title with chess board in woodcut and on verso the coat-of-arms of the dedicatee, Francesco Branciforte, Marchese di Militello, 2 woodcut diagrams, 10 x 8 chessboard on K8 recto (some dampstaining of preliminaries), contemporary calf, spine gilt in 6 compartments with raised bands (joints cracked). [VDL Geschichte I, 370; Schachlitteratur 445; KB 388; Brunet I, 1599: "un des plus recherchés parmi ceux qui ont été ecrits sur le jeu des échecs"]

Details

CARRERA, Pietro. Il Gioco de gli Scacchi, diviso in otto libri [with discourses by G.B. Cherubino and M. Tortelli], Militello, per Giouanni de' Rossi da Trento, 1617, 4°, FIRST EDITION, title with chess board in woodcut and on verso the coat-of-arms of the dedicatee, Francesco Branciforte, Marchese di Militello, 2 woodcut diagrams, 10 x 8 chessboard on K8 recto (some dampstaining of preliminaries), contemporary calf, spine gilt in 6 compartments with raised bands (joints cracked). [VDL Geschichte I, 370; Schachlitteratur 445; KB 388; Brunet I, 1599: "un des plus recherchés parmi ceux qui ont été ecrits sur le jeu des échecs"]

Lot Essay

Provenance: Tetschner Bibliothek (stamp on title); Joannes Joseph S.R.J. Comes de Thun (bookplate and shelf-mark).

A priest of Mileto, Pietro Carrera (1560-1630) also wrote works on the history of Sicily. His chess book is regarded as weak in analysis and slightly archaic in character but methodical and of great importance for the history of chess in the later 16th- and early 17th-century. Carrera invented an enlarged 10 x 8 board with two new pieces, the Campione and the Centaure, an idea which did not win acceptance (see illustration).

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