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Photo: AP

Drawing of chess puzzles: Penned around 1500 by Luca Pacioli.

Leonardo da Vinci may have helped illustrate a Renaissance treatise on chess — a page that was found in the library of an aristocratic family in Gorizia, northern Italy, researchers say. The manuscript was penned around 1500 by Luca Pacioli, a mathematician and friend of Leonardo. The treatise, De Ludo Schaccorum — Latin for “Of the Game of Chess” — includes more than 100 chess problems that challenge the player to reach checkmate in a certain number of moves. The sole copy of the treatise was found in 2006 among 22,000 volumes collected by the Coronini family in their palace in Gorizia, on Italy’s border with Slovenia. After a year of research, Milan-based architect and sculptor Franco Rocco concluded that Pacioli enlisted Leonardo’s help to draw the pieces.

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