Libro de los juegos
The book is divided into three parts reflecting this: the first on chess (a game purely of abstract strategy), the second on dice (with outcomes controlled strictly by chance), and the last on tables (combining elements of both).
[3] Alfonso also describes a game titled "astronomical chess", played on a board of seven concentric circles, divided radially into twelve areas, each associated with a constellation of the Zodiac.
One notable entry is todas tablas, the equivalent of the Anglo-Scottish game of Irish, which some scholars have argued has several similarities to modern backgammon including an identical starting position and the same rules for movement and bearing off, albeit the accompanying image has a different opening layout.
[13] Having multiple artisans working on the Libro de juegos would have been a typical practice for medieval chanceries and scriptoria, where the labor of producing a manuscript was divided amongst individuals of varying capacities,[14] for example the positions of scribe, draftsman, and apprentice cutting pages.
But in addition to performing different tasks, various artisans could have labored at the same job, such as the work of illustration in the Libro de juegos, thereby revealing a variety of hands or styles.
The figures' robes display a Byzantine conservatism, with their modeled three-dimensionality and allusion to a Classical style, yet the iconic hand gestures are reminiscent of a Romanesque energy and theatricality.
Although the figures are seated with their knees and torsos facing front, their shoulders and heads rotate in three-quarter profile toward the center of the page, the chess board, and each other.
The faces reveal a striking specificity of subtle detail, particular to a limited number of miniatures throughout the Libro de juegos, perhaps indicative of a particular artist's hand.
These details include full cheeks, realistic wrinkles around the eyes and across the brow, and a red, full-lipped mouth that hints at the Gothic affectations in figural representation coming out of France during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
At times, the figural depictions are hierarchical, especially in scenes with representations of Alfonso, where the king is seated on a raised throne while dictating to scribes or meting out punishments to gamblers.
Yet a contemporary atmosphere of Spanish convivencia is evoked by the inclusion nobility, rogues, vagrants, young and old, men, women, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish characters.
[20] As Arab contact with the West expanded, so too did the game and its various permutations, and by the twelfth century, chess was becoming an entertaining diversion among a growing population of Europeans, including some scholars, clergy, the aristocracy, and the merchant classes;[21] thus, by the thirteenth century, the iconography and symbolism associated with chess would have been accessible and familiar to Alfonso and his literate court culture, who may have had access to the private library, and manuscripts, of Alfonso, including the Libro de los Juegos.
[23] Further, the iconographic linkage between chess and kingship in the Western tradition continued to evolve and became symbolic of kingly virtues, including skill, prudence, and intelligence.
This emphasis also had the effect of reducing the universality of his translated works and original academic writings, as Latin was the lingua franca in both Iberia and Europe; yet Alfonso never desisted in his promotion of the Castilian vernacular.
The arts and sciences prospered in the Kingdom of Castile under the confluence of Latin and Arabic traditions of academic curiosity as Alfonso sponsored scholars, translators, and artists of all three religions of the Book (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) in his chanceries and scriptoria.
[27] Clerical and secular scholars from Europe turned their eyes to the Iberian Peninsula as the arts and sciences prospered in an early Spanish "renaissance" under the patronage of Alfonso X, who was continuing the tradition of (relatively) enlightened and tolerant convivencia established by the Muslim emirate several centuries earlier.
[28] As an inheritor of a dynamic mixture of Arabic and Latin culture, Alfonso was steeped in the rich heritage of humanistic philosophy, and the production of his Libro de los Juegos reveals the compendium of world views that comprised the eclectic thirteenth-century admixture of faith and science.
