Then just over a year ago it was revealed to be a fabled volume - the only surviving copy of De Ludo Schacorum by Luca Pacioli, the Franciscan friar and mathematician. De Ludo Schacorum, written in about 1500, is a collection of the sort of conundrums to be found today at the back of any up-market daily, in which the challenge is to get to checkmate in a set number of moves. In De Ludo Schacorum, also known as the Schifanoia (the “Boredom Dodger”), king, queen, bishop and knight are all represented by elegant and distinctive symbols. The foundation has invited the director of the Los Angeles-based Armand Hammer Centre for Leonardo studies, Carlo Pedretti, to make an independent assessment. All trace of De Ludo Schacorum was lost until 2006, when it was found among the 22,000-volume library of the late Count Guglielmo Coronini. read more

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