A young man sits at a chessboard, chin in hand, staring at the pieces as if the floor had just dropped away beneath him. Across the table his opponent leans back, calm and amused. It is the Devil, and the stake is the young man's soul. Behind the player stands an angel, silent and sorrowful. Moritz Retzsch's The Chess Players (c. 1831) is a small panel that has had an unusually long afterlife, first as a popular engraving and later as the painting everyone calls "Checkmate". Quick facts Artist: Friedrich August Moritz Retzsch (1779–1857) Date: c. 1831 Medium: Oil on panel, about 32 x 39 cm Collection: Private collection (sold at Christie's in 1999) Notable fact: Also known as "Checkmate" or Die Schachspieler ; it circulated widely as a print and became the subject of a famous chess legend Moritz Retzsch, The Chess Players, c. 1831. Oil on panel. Private collection. Image via the Sapiens Verbum print shop. The Painter of Faust Retzsch spent h...

A young woman hangs in the upper center of the canvas between an upward-gazing angel and a persuasive Satan below. Scales, blessed souls, and a thrash of the damned fill the rest of the air. In Octave Tassaert's Heaven and Hell (1850), moral choice is not private. It is a public spectacle with an audience of angels and demons. Quick facts Artist: Octave Tassaert (1800-1874) Date: 1850 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: Cleveland Museum of Art (1980.287) Notable fact: Painted amid mid-century French political turmoil; the central woman has been read as France choosing between ideals Octave Tassaert, Heaven and Hell, c. 1850. Oil on fabric. Source: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Accession 1980.287. Open Access / Public Domain. Print available from the Sapiens Verbum shop. Composition as Verdict Tassaert places the woman where your eye must travel: heaven above, hell beneath, decision in between. The angel reads hope; Satan smiles invitation. Saint Michael's s...