Gioachino Greco | Presentation manuscript of Trattato gioco de scacchi, Rome, 1620

Gioachino Greco 

Trattato gioco de scacchi [...] Diviso in sbaratti & partiti. Presentation manuscript with title page, dedicatory epistle addressed to Monsignor Corsini (4 pages), prefatory address ("A i lettori", 3 pages), instructions on playing chess by memory ("Regole da tenersi per imparar a giocare di memoria all' nobilissimo gioco de scacchi", 7 pages), followed by notes on games (94 leaves), epistle dated 12 February 1620, 4to (220 x 165 mm), bound in contemporary limp vellum gilt with centrepiece of the Corsini arms with a Cardinal's hat, one diagram lost through acid burn of paper, silk ties lacking

The recipient of this manuscript was presumably Ottavio Corsini (1588–1641), who was appointed titular archbishop of Tarsus by Pope Gregory XV in 1621.

Gioachino Greco (1600–1634) is often considered to have been the first professional chess player. He was born in Celico, close to Cosenza in Calabria, and first attracted attention in Rome in 1619. In the years that followed he travelled between the great Western European capitals - Paris, London, Madrid - playing chess for money and garnering patronage through the judicious presentation of manuscripts to prominent courtiers with an interest in chess. In the mid-1620s he travelled from Madrid to the West Indies, where he died in 1634. His works circulated only in manuscript during his lifetime and were first printed in England in 1656 (lot 37). A later French version of Greco's work was remarkably influential, being widely translated and appearing in some 41 editions. Greco is credited with inventing the Sicilian Wing Gambit and the From Gambit.

The current manuscript is one of the earliest presentation manuscripts produced by Greco, and it comprises a collection of chess openings that was presented to a member of the Corsini family, one of the great Florentine dynasties. It is one of four such manuscripts recorded by Murray (A History of Chess (1913), p.828, no. 1). The provenance of this manuscript has long been muddled by a conflation of the original dedicatee and the later library stamp of the Casa Minutoli Tegrimi in Lucca (the collection of Conte Eugenio Minutoli Tegrimi was dispersed in 1871).

PROVENANCE:

Casa Minutoli Tegrimi (ink stamp); Baron von der Lasa, 1818-1899, purchased Berlin, 1884 (bookplate and manuscript annotations)

LITERATURE:

Murray, p.828, no. 1