This collection of essays examines the vogue for games and game playing as expressed in art and literature in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Focusing on games as a leitmotif of creative expression, these scholarly inquiries are framed as a response to two main questions: how were games used to convey special meanings in art and literature, and how did games speak to greater issues in European society? In chapters dealing with chess, playing cards, board games, dice, gambling, and outdoor and sportive games, essayists show how games were used by artists, writers, game makers and collectors, in the service of love and war, didactic and moralistic instruction, commercial enterprise, politics and diplomacy, and assertions of civic and personal identity. Offering innovative iconographical and literary interpretations, their analyses reveal how games“played, written about, illustrated and collected“functioned as metaphors for a host of broader cultural issues related to gender relations and feminine power, class distinctions and status, ethical and sexual comportment, philosophical and religious ideas, and conditions of the mind.

Robin O'Bryan is an art historian specializing in issues related to popular culture in Italian Renaissance art. Her essays have appeared in journals including Art Bulletin, Source, Preternature, and The Medal, as well as in a recently published anthology.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: A Passion for Games Robin O'Bryan Part One: Chess and Luxury Playing Cards 1 "Mad Chess" with a Mad Dwarf Jester Robin O'Bryan2 Changing Hands: Jean Desmarets, Stefano della Bella, and the Jeux des Cartes Naomi Lebens Part Two: Gambling and Games of Chance 3 "A game played home": the Gendered Stakes of Gambling in Shakespeare's Plays Megan Herrold 4 "Now if the devil have bones, These dice are made of his": Dice-games on the English Stage in the Seventeenth Century Kevin Chovanec 5 The World Upside Down: Giuseppe Maria Mitelli's Games and the Performance of Identity in the Early Modern World Patricia Rocco Part Three: Outdoor and Sportive Games 6 "To catch the fellow, and come back again": Games of Prisoner's Base in Early Modern English Drama Bethany Packard 7 Against Opposition (at Home): Middleton and Rowley's The World Tossed at Tennis as Tennis Mark Kaethler Part Four: Games on Display 8 Ordering the World: Games in the Architectural Iconography of Stirling Castle, Scotland Giovanna Guidicini 9 The Games of Philipp Hainhofer: Ludic Appreciation and Use in Early Modern Art Cabinets Greger Sundin BibliographyIndex