Highlights

Description

The arrangement of chess, nine men's morris and trictrac (backgammon) on the outer and inner sides of a game box was quite common in the 16th century. The contrasting colour play of shimmering mother-of-pearl, dark-backed horn and coloured and bright-white ivory creates an extremely luxurious finish on this example. Typical of the German Renaissance are the depictions ranging from scenes from the Old and New Testaments to Greek mythology, hunting scenes and all kinds of mythical creatures. For this board, graphic designs of well-known contemporary Nuremberg artists were used as models.