Beschreibung:

Joseph Hoechstetter (trans.), FEDERICO GRISONE (fl. 1532-1550). Fridrichen Grisonis; Neapolitanischen Edelmans Ordnungen zum Reittern , illustrated manuscript on paper [Germany (?Augsburg), second half 16th century (perhaps c.1570)
Joseph Hoechstetter (trans.), FEDERICO GRISONE (fl. 1532-1550). Fridrichen Grisonis; Neapolitanischen Edelmans Ordnungen zum Reittern , illustrated manuscript on paper [Germany (?Augsburg), second half 16th century (perhaps c.1570)] An early translation into German, hitherto-unrecorded, of the Neapolitan nobleman and riding master Federico Grisone’s famous 1550 treatise on dressage and horsemanship, Gli ordini di cavalcare, in a fine contemporary binding. PROVENANCE: (1) The script is consistent with a late 16th-century German production, though the watermark of the paper (a six-pointed star within a circle, beneath another star motif) has not been localised. (2) The inscription on f.1 reads ‘Sum ex libris Leonhardi Palleri’, possibly LEONHARD PALLER, citizen of Augusburg, whose marriage is recorded there in 1598. (3) MAURICE BURRUS, no 823. Purchased from Gumuchian, 1934. CONTENT: Introduction f.1; contents ff.2-6; blank f.7; glossary of terms ff.8v-9; Fridrichen Grisonis; Neapolitanischen Edelmans Ordnungen zum Reittern ff.10-112. The first translation into the German of 1566 by two Augsburg stable-masters, Veit Tufft and Johann Fröhlich, was deemed incomprehensible and superseded by the 1570 edition of Johann Fayser, who references his friendship with the present author, one Joseph Hoechstetter, in a later work (see Pia F. Cuneo, ‘Hippology and Horsemanship in Early Modern Germany’ in K. Enenkel and P. Smith (eds.), Early Modern Zoology (Leiden, 2007), pp. 345-6): it is possible that the two worked simultaneously on the translation of Grisone. Two illustrations of Grisone’s torni , training exercises in movement for the horses, are found on ff. 53 and 78. PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION AND CONDITION: 325 x 230mm. i + 112 + i, apparently COMPLETE, c.29 lines, ruled space: 230 x 150mm. Mid 16th-century north-Italian dark brown goatskin tooled in gilt and blind, sides elaborately decorated with outline foliate and floral tools within an arabesque roll-border and blind multi-fillet frame, spine with alternating single and double bands tooled with single fillet or cross-hatching, compartments tooled in blind, edges gilt and gauffered to a knotwork design, old paper label in upper compartment.