Board games from the city of Vijayanagara (Hampi ... - Gioco dell'Oca.

M. GRANADOS, REFLECTIONS ON THE ROLE OF BAROQUE GAMES TABLES 43
Board games – and correspondingly board-game tables – were considered important
enough to carry a representation of power and war. Board games like chess, morris,
draughts and backgammon always have been something special, which can be explained
by their function and symbolic meaning. The combination of chess and backgammon
(trictrac) is traditional and can be found in the earliest European board-game box of
around 1300 kept in Aschaffenburg in the Stiftsmuseum and on hundreds of later board
games and games tables. Chess as the noblest of all games is a symbol for strategy, the
world, and the idea of universal education. Backgammon is a tactical game as well, combined
with chance, and was seen as the “luck in war” – later on as a metaphor for luck
in itself. Traditionally board-game boxes also have a morris board, though in Eger this
space was occupied by carvings in relief. The gameboards of Eger are ‘Kunstkammer’
objects, as they are at the same time artificalia as well as artes mechanicae, implying the
mathematics of chess and draughts. In combination with the war allegories or pictures,
they also deliver a historical and political message; the same can be observed in the games
tables that allude to the wars against the Ottomans. All these games tables and board
games combine tactical games. Those games demand the player’s mind and intelligence,
unlike pure games of chance as some card and dice games. The games of these games
tables therefore are representative as they can be seen as a proof of the player’s intelligence
and tactical abilities. So it might seem logical that all representative games tables with
symbols of war use tactical games.
An example in Würzburg, by Carl Maximilian Mattern and Johann Wolfgang von
Auwera, proves the opposite: a gambling table of 1741 for cards or dice made out of
precious materials and with symbols of war (plate 4). Here, a games table for games of
chance is made of very precious materials, and thus becomes a representative piece of furniture.
On the tabletop, we find symbols of war again, this time of a more general character.
The tabletop is rectangular with flat corners. On each side there is an oval concave
money tray, the typical feature of a gambling table. The top is made out of glass with
under-glass paintings. In the middle of each side we find a cartouche of leaves and
rocaille ornaments, inside the cartouches male and female busts, the attributes identify
them as the four seasons. Mars and Bellona are sitting on the cartouches of the longer
sides, and on the shorter sides we find war trophies, like banners, drums and trumpets,
helmets, armors and various kinds of lances.The games table was made for the cabinet
of the prince bishop of Bamberg and Würzburg, Friedrich Carl von Schönborn. Carl
Maximilian Mattern got the commission for four games tables in the year 1741, and a
bill of 1742 for the four games tables has been preserved. The second games table, which
is lost, was a present from the prince-bishop Friedrich Carl von Schönborn to Emperor
Charles VII Albrecht in Frankfurt in the year 1742. It was completely identical with the
games table in Würzburg, but it is unknown whether the under-glass painting was the
same. The other two games tables of the commission and bill probably were less precious,
as they are not specifically described.
In this case, a game of chance was considered representative enough to be combined
with precious materials and war allegories. Card games and gambling were one of the
major activities at courts of the time, but still there always has been a moral objection