Alessandro Salvio
Original title: Il Puttino
In Il Puttino, published in Naples in 1634, Alessandro Salvio tells of Leonardo and other chess masters. Encounters, rivalries and successes become a narrative about people for whom play was both an art and a test of personal dignity. The author acts at once as storyteller, poet, analyst of positions and participant in a literary dispute.
The first book concerns the nobility and significance of chess; the second combines accounts of players with verse; the third defends Salvio's writings in his controversy with Pietro Carrera and includes analysis of play. This structure shows how a master's reputation was made, how stories of victories were preserved and how chess analysis became an argument in a dispute between authors.
The edition covers these three books and the related original material. A fourth treatise separately reprinted within the same old binding is not included in this volume. Readers should distinguish Salvio's testimony from independently confirmed fact: praise, confidence and polemical sharpness form part of his own voice, which the book allows us to hear in all its complexity.
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