Death Playing Chess
A knight plays chess against Death in the vault of Täby Church. Albertus Pictor and his workshop painted some thirty churches in the Lake Mälaren region, with biblical scenes, saints and warnings to the congregation.
The picture inspired Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, in which the knight plays chess with Death.
Albertus Pictor means roughly “Albert the Painter”. His real name was Albrecht and he came from the town of Immenhausen in Germany. From the 1460s he worked in Stockholm, where he married a painter’s widow and took over her late husband’s workshop. He died around 1509. As well as painting churches he also worked as a pearl embroiderer, making embroideries with pearls.
Albertus and his assistants painted the vaults and walls of a large number of churches in Uppland and around Lake Mälaren. Well-known examples are Härkeberga, Härnevi, Odensala, Solna and Täby. The paintings in Täby Church are dated to the late 15th century. It was a time when many medieval churches in Sweden were given brick stellar vaults, which were then decorated with pictures.
The scene of a man playing chess with Death is the best-known image in Täby. Death sits at the board opposite his opponent. The message is simple: everyone must eventually face death, and no one can win against it. The motif belongs to the same world of ideas as the Dance of Death, in which Death leads away people of every estate, king and peasant alike.
In the Middle Ages chess was a popular image of life and society. The pieces could stand for the different estates, and the game for humanity’s struggle. Playing against Death was a reminder that life is short and that one ought to think of one’s soul. Such images are often called memento mori, “remember that you must die”.
The paintings were done in lime paint on plastered surfaces. The lines are clear and the figures flat, and the palette consists mostly of red, green, yellow and black against the white lime. The style is simple but narrative. The pictures were meant to be easy to read for a congregation most of whom could not read text, and they often combine seriousness with humour.
After the Reformation attitudes to church images changed. Many medieval paintings in Sweden were limewashed over in the following centuries and only uncovered again during restorations in the 19th and 20th centuries. Albertus’s paintings are among the best preserved in the Nordic countries, and Täby Church is today a popular destination for anyone wanting to see medieval church art.
Ingmar Bergman was the son of a clergyman and as a child accompanied his father when he preached in churches in Uppland. He has said that the pictures in the churches made a deep impression on him. In the film The Seventh Seal of 1957 the knight Antonius Block plays chess with Death to gain time. Albertus Pictor himself appears in the film, painting a Dance of Death in a church. The film has made the Täby picture famous all over the world.