Flos Duellatorum ("The Flower of Battle", Pisani Dossi MS) is an Italian fencing manual authored by Fiore de'i Liberi and dated 10 February 1409.[1] The original was long believed to have been lost during World War II, but it is now known that it remained in the collection of the Pisani Dossi family in Italy.[2] Novati described this manuscript as an unbound collection of leaves, covered with a cardboard folder with a marbled paper cover.[3] It consists of approximately 35 folia and possesses two different prefaces, one in Renaissance Latin and a second in Middle Italian. The body of the text includes four to six illustrations per page, each with only a brief couplet or quatrain to explain it. This manuscript is typically referred to as either the Novati or Pisani Dossi.
The Pisani Dossi MS was published in facsimile by Francesco Novati in 1902, making it the only version of Fiore de'i Liberi's manual whose images are considered public domain. However, it is unclear how accurate this facsimile is, as evidence suggests that Novati may have hired an artist to create a tracing of the original manuscript rather than reproducing it directly.[4] This would have provided ample opportunity for errors to creep into the images, and might also account for the significant divergences from the artistic style of the Getty and the Morgan.
Provenance
The known provenance of the Pisani Dossi MS is:[5]
- Completed by Fiore de'i Liberi on 10 February, 1409. Though it was dedicated to Niccolò III d'Este, there is no evidence that it ever passed into his library.
- before 1663 – belonged to Schier de' Prevosti da Valbregaglia, passed into the library of the Sacchi da Bucinigo family (purchased before 1902, Carlo Alberto Pisani Dossi).
- before 1902-present – in the private collection of the Pisani Dossi family.
Contents
As the foliation of the manuscript is not available, the first page of the introduction is presumed to be 1r.
Gallery
These images are sourced from Francesco Novati's 1902 edition of the manuscript. The Pisani Dossi MS itself has recently resurfaced in Italy, but is not available for study. A few pages appear to be shuffled in Novati's facsimile, and this has been corrected as much as possible here. (This subject will be revisited when new scans of the manuscript become available.)
Additional Resources
- dei Liberi, Fiore; Rubboli, Marco; Cesari, Luca. Flos Duellatorum. Manuale di Arte del Combattimento del XV secolo. Rome: Il Cerchio Iniziative Editoriali, 2002. ISBN 88-8474-023-1
- Novati, Francesco. Flos Duellatorum, Il Fior di Battaglia di Maestro Fiore dei Liberi da Premariacco. Bergamo: 1902.
- Rapisardi, Giovani. Fiore de' Liberi Flos Duellatorum - in armis, sine armis equester et pedesta. Gladitoria Press, 1998.
- Zanutto, D. Luigi. Fiore di Premariacco ed I Ludi e Le Feste Marziali e Civili in Friuli. Udine: D. Del Bianco, 1907.
References
