The painting is signed and dated on the edge of the chessboard, where Anguissola left this Latin inscription: SOPHONISBA ANGUSSOLA VIRGO AMILCARIS FILIA EX VERA EFFIGIE TRES SUAS SORORES ET ANCILLAM PINXIT MDLV – "Sofonisba Angussola virgin daughter of Amilcare painted from life her three sisters and a maid 1555."

The Game of Chess then turned up in Naples, after the Farnese inheritance had passed to the Bourbons, and it was eventually acquired by Luciano Bonaparte.

Minerva wears the same necklace as the Portrait of a Lady that is in Berlin and now identified as Bianca Ponzoni Anguissola – the mother of the three girls around the chessboard.

The picture takes place in a domestic setting, circled with friendly figures, but the competitiveness of a game of chess is also visible.

[2] The luxurious costume Anguissola dresses her sisters in draws the connection back to the domestic traditions of embroidery or weaving, but by portraying this group immersed in an activity completely different from the normal skills that were vital to a girl's education during this time period, Anguissola shows these young women in a new realm.

[3] Chess was part of the humanistic education and was considered an excellent intellectual exercise for a human; in contrast the card and dice games, which were forbidden to women, but they were based on luck and not on intelligence.

In his poem from 1550 entitled Scacchia Ludus (or The Game of Chess), the Cremonese poet and bishop of Alba, Marco Gerolamo Vida, sometimes called the queen virgo and sometimes amazon and said that it can move in any direction.

With this the chessboard becomes an allegory and the true queens are the two Anguissola sisters, then spend their life virtuously, taking part in an educational exercise.