14 Inch Renaissance Red Chessmen

STORYTELLING

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 human life and the extraordinary genius of the human brain were restored by rediscovering the spiritual legacy of ancient Greece.

The Chessmen

The figures of these chess pieces 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 increased awareness of nature while the Rook represents a revival of classical learning.

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