ALFONSO X EL SABIO

Libros del axedrez dados et tablas.

ALFONSO X EL SABIO.

Libros del axedrez dados et tablas. Date: 1283.

Size: 28 x 40 cm. 99 leaves (198 pages).

This work in itself is an historic and artistic monument, which has been unedited for more than 700 years. Faced with the importance and complexity of this work, our editorial joined forces with the Patrimonio Nacional de España (Spanish National Heritage) and the prestigious editor Luis Arana in order to reproduce this work, whose codex may be found in the Escorial Monastery.

El libro del axedrez dados et tablas, by Alfonso X el Sabio, completed in 1283, a year before the death of the King, was carried out on parchment with a format of 28 x 40 cm. It is made up of 200 leaves (99 straight and turned exactly), written and illustrated in colour and with gold leaf, with a profusion of scenes. In total, due to there being some pages without illustration, there are 150 miniatures in a good state of conservation.

This edition is the first complete facsimile and colour edition, and is accompanied by a complementary volume in which historic, artistic and chess studies are featured, besides the complete transcription of the text, all this by prestigious professors and academics. This work appears as a monument of symbolic hermetic literature of the era, turned by means of game into the genuine transmitter of knowledge who travel from the far East and are lost bit by bit in each transmission.

Excellent and unique piece of work in its gender and in the history of chess, completed seven hundred years ago, it documentally introduces the game of chess into Europe and confers it the range corresponding to a game of kings and noble and intelligent people.

-Our edition: Valencia, 1987. From the copy kept in the Biblioteca del Real Monasterio del Escorial. Coedited with Patrimonio Nacional and the editor Luis Arana.

-Edition: 2.000 copies numbered by notary.

-Binding: hand dyed goatskin.

-Presentation case including facsimile and study.

-Specially made paper aged, imitating vellum.

-150 illustrations illuminated with gold leaf and in full.

-Study of 393 pages in Spanish and English: Introduction by Manuel Gómez de Pablos (President of National Heritage). Study by Luis Vázquez de Parga (Academic of the Royal Academy of History, and former head of the manuscripts section of the National Library), Ana Domínguez Rodríguez (Senior Lecturer of the Department of the History of Art at the Complutense University of Madrid), Ricardo Calvo (International Chess Master, Researcher in History of Chess), Mechthild Crombach (Doctor of Hispanic Philosophy at the University of Bonn, Lecturer at the University of Heidelberg).

OUT OF PRINT.