Manopoulos Renaissance Metal Chess Set Blue Bronze 36cm Turquoise Board

After the dark Middle Ages, Europe was influenced by great nostalgia for classical antiquity. Literature, philosophy, art, science, architecture and politics were reformed by the revival of interest in the values of the Greeks. The word Renaissance literally means rebirth, as a deep desire of mankind to recover from the darkness. The value of the human life and the extraordinary genius of human brain were restored by rediscovering the spiritual legacy of ancient Greece.

The figures are gracefully thin and symbolically decorated, according to the slender aesthetics of the period. The King and the Queen reflect a more individualistic view of man, the Knight combines influences of an increased awareness of nature while the Rook represents a revival of classical learning.

The Renaissance period was a cultural awakening in the art world. Advances in perspective and the depiction of human anatomy resulted in a trend of increasing naturalism in Renaissance sculpture, in which human and animal figures were depicted with startling life-likeness