Gran Simulacro dell'Arte e dell'Uso della Scherma ("Great Representation of the Art and Use of Fencing") is an Italian fencing manual written by Ridolfo Capo Ferro da Cagli and printed in 1610. It treats the use of the single rapier, as well as in conjunction with the cloak, dagger, and rotella shield. Though Capo Ferro's treatise is often praised by modern fencing historians, it was neither comprehensive nor particularly innovative and does not seem to have been terribly influential in its own time.
Publication History
Gran Simulacro dell'Arte e dell'Uso della Scherma was first printed in Siena in 1610 by Salvestro Marchetti and Camillo Turi. It was reprinted in Siena in 1629 by Ercole Gori, who had the plain backgrounds in twenty-seven of Schiamirossi's original illustrations replaced with intricate depictions of scenes from the Bible and Greek mythology; this version was reprinted in Bologna in 1652 by G. Longo. A third Siena printing was made in 1632 by Bernardino Capitelli, who omitted all of the introductory material and truncated the descriptions of the plays; he also created new illustrations based on those of the first edition but scaled down to half size.
Capo Ferro's treatise was translated into English in 2004 by Jared Kirby under the title Italian Rapier Combat: Ridolfo Capo Ferro's 'Gran Simulacro' and printed in London. Nick S. Thomas authored and published a new English translation in 2007 under the title Rapier: The Art and Use of Fencing by Ridolfo Capo Ferro, and in 2011 Tom Leoni authored a translation entitled Ridolfo Capoferro's The Art and Practice of Fencing: A Practical Translation for the Modern Swordsman and published by Freelance Academy Press.
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