Regole di molti cavagliereschi essercitii (Federico Ghisliero)

Regole di moltio cavagliereschi essercitii
"Rules of Many Knightly Exercises"
Title page
Author(s)	Federico Ghisliero
Dedicated to	Antonino Pio Bonello Ranuccio Farnese
Place of origin	Parma
Language	Italian
Genre(s)	Fencing manual
Publisher	Erasmo Viotto
Publication date	1587
Pages	190
Treatise scans	Digital scans (1587) B&W photocopy (1587) B&W photocopy (1587)

Regole di moltio cavagliereschi essercitii ("Rules of Many Knightly Exercises") is an Italian fencing manual written by Federico Ghisliero and printed in 1587. It covers the use of the rapier, both single and with secondary weapons, as well as the spear and mounted fencing.

Publication History

Regole di moltio cavagliereschi essercitii was published in Parma in 1587 by Erasmo Viotto. In all but one extant copy, it is dedicated to Ranuccio Farnese; curiously, the copy in the British Library is instead dedicated to Antonino Pio Bonello, with both a different (shorter) dedicatory chapter and the title page and beginning of the first chapter adjusted accordingly. Both dedications are dated 22 April 1587, and it's unclear how or why this difference came about or how many of each version of the book were produced.

Ghisliero's book is unusual in that space for illustrations was left when the text was printed, but no printed illustrations were created. Instead, illustrations were drawn in by artists after the printing was complete. For this reason, no two copies of the book have precisely the same artwork or the same number of illustrations (though the illustrations in all copies apart from the one in the Folger Shakespeare Library are substantially similar and probably came from the same master template). It's unclear if Ghisliero intended to have printed illustrations but couldn't afford to commission them in the end, or if the scheme was intentional and buyers paid extra for each illustration added.

A manuscript copy of indeterminate date is preserved in the Museo dell'Arte Marziale in Botticino, Italy, which might be the presentation manuscript for the book and the template for the illustrations (or might be a later copy of a completed book). Its illustrations are executed entirely in pen, rather than pen and watercolor like the printed copies.

Gallery

Title pages

Title page (Farnese)

Title page (Bonello)

Illustrations

Most of these illustrations come from the copy held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, but to demonstrate the diversity of illustrations, examples from the copy held by the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna (have been included where they differ noticeably.

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Figure 4 (alt)

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Figure 12 (alt)

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Additional Resources

The following is a list of publications containing scans, transcriptions, and translations relevant to this article, as well as published peer-reviewed research.

• Anglo, Sydney (1994). "Sixteenth-century Italian drawings in Federico Ghisliero's Regole di molti cavagliereschi essercitii." Apollo 140(393): 29-36.

Copyright and License Summary

For further information, including transcription and translation notes, see the discussion page.

Work	Author(s)	Source	License
Images		Bibliothèque nationale de France
Transcription	Nicola Boyd	Index:Regole di molti cavagliereschi essercitii (Federico Ghisliero)