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Details
GIANUTIO, Horatio. Libro nel quale si tratta della maniera di giuocar'à Scacchi. Turin: Antonio de Bianchi, 1597.
4° (239 x 180mm). Woodcut arms on title, woodcut illustrations of the pieces and board on A1-4, 12 woodcuts of chess problems at end, woodcut borders throughout. (Browned throughout, some waterstains, old repairs to several inner margins, hole in k3 slightly affecting a few letters.) Old flexible boards (rubbed, chips to spine). Provenance: D. Gaspare à S. Carlo Petrina 1693 (inscription on title; with an added note stating that at his death on 27 December 1742 the book was given to the monastery of the Consolation of the Blessed Virgin in Turin) -- Piero Francesco of Vercello -- Maynere (further inscriptions on title).
FIRST EDITION. Aimed at polite players rather than accomplished masters, Gianutio's work dealt with six openings favoured in Italy, the most space being devoted to the Two Knight's Defence. Hooper and Whyld (Oxford Companion to Chess p. 152) describe it as 'a slender volume of great rarity ... Gianutio throws light on the laws of chess then in use, describing the different forms of both the king's leap and free castling'. While soon superseded by the more extensive treatises of Salvio and Carrera, it is nevertheless highly significant as the first chess book produced by the late 16th-century Italian school. DeLucia p. 22; Murray, History of Chess p. 825; Van der Linde I, p. 368.
4° (239 x 180mm). Woodcut arms on title, woodcut illustrations of the pieces and board on A1-4, 12 woodcuts of chess problems at end, woodcut borders throughout. (Browned throughout, some waterstains, old repairs to several inner margins, hole in k3 slightly affecting a few letters.) Old flexible boards (rubbed, chips to spine). Provenance: D. Gaspare à S. Carlo Petrina 1693 (inscription on title; with an added note stating that at his death on 27 December 1742 the book was given to the monastery of the Consolation of the Blessed Virgin in Turin) -- Piero Francesco of Vercello -- Maynere (further inscriptions on title).
FIRST EDITION. Aimed at polite players rather than accomplished masters, Gianutio's work dealt with six openings favoured in Italy, the most space being devoted to the Two Knight's Defence. Hooper and Whyld (Oxford Companion to Chess p. 152) describe it as 'a slender volume of great rarity ... Gianutio throws light on the laws of chess then in use, describing the different forms of both the king's leap and free castling'. While soon superseded by the more extensive treatises of Salvio and Carrera, it is nevertheless highly significant as the first chess book produced by the late 16th-century Italian school. DeLucia p. 22; Murray, History of Chess p. 825; Van der Linde I, p. 368.
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