Chess, cooking, crime detection, musical performance, and automaton-building are five arts—as we may call them, lacking a better generic term—whose histories all intersected at Paris during the Age of Revolution. Specifically, the histories of these arts each presented at least one outstanding master, one model of excellence, at that particular place and time. The observation of this striking convergence serves as the point of departure for the present study. The first half of the study will sketch the careers of this cluster of standouts each in turn and place them historically, but not so much in the context of Paris during the Age of Revolution as in the context of the evolution of their respective arts. It begins with some chess players.
