In our last post, we looked at the arrival of the Iberian horses into Italy and particularly Naples.  There horseman tried to develop exercises and training patterns to duplicate the lightness, energy, and natural collection of the Iberian horses with their own horses.

As the Italian horsemen pursued these goals, they developed a system of training based on using exercise patterns in a logical, systematic, and progressive matter to obtain goals over time.  This time period also saw the introduction of the printing press and the first riding books appeared in Italy.  Fredrico Grisone was first  Ordini di cavalcare (1550), the first printed work on the art of training horses for war, Grisone simply refers to himself as “Gentil'Huomo Napoletano” (Neapolitan Gentleman).  The book was popular and had many reprintings so other horsemen of the time published books with bits, horse care, and exercises.  Cesare Fiaschi from Ferrara published in 1556 and other famous still extant books came out within ten years of their books.  These included big name Italian horseman such as Claudio Corte and the very important La Gloria del Cavallo, glory of the horse by Pasquale Caracciolo.  

Giovan Battista Pignatelli first in Rome, in the service of the Orsini family and then of the Grand Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, then in Naples, where he is said to have retired at an advanced age to teach equestrian art to numerous pupils - including his most illustrious French pupils, Salomon de La Broue and Antoine de Pluvinel did not write a book but was enormously influential because those two French students carried the Italian training system home with them.

They did more than imitate the Italian masters; they refined their techniques and, crucially, softened their philosophy. In the late sixteenth century, Italy—and specifically Naples—was the epicenter of European horsemanship. French nobles, lacking domestic institutions of similar quality, flocked there to learn the art. At the time, these riding schools were organized as academies of arms and letters, where students were taught not only riding and fencing but also the rudiments of mathematics, music, and dance.

Equestrian art held a vital place in the education of the nobility. Until the French Revolution, the position of Écuyer remained a title of nobility, attainable only by those ennobled by a male line of military service. There was a constant exchange of equestrian knowledge between Naples and France. The Spanish occupation of Naples, combined with the presence of Iberian horses, established the region as the highest rank of equestrian education. 

The Renaissance was more than just the art of Botticelli, Raphael, or Michelangelo; it was a process of redefining the human experience and creating a new model of society. In short, it was the invention of the modern individual: the effort to transform, through culture, the medieval knight into the courtly gentleman.

Pignatelli and his students brought the Renaissance ethos to horsemanship, and they spread the Italian training system throughout Europe through teaching, training and books. Here are a couple of images from books of Pignatelli students. First Pierre La Noue

And another from Antoine de Pluvinel   Here is a video which explains this time of the Italian school and Pignatelli and the flow and transformation of information and to the French school.    https://youtu.be/y8wMFGsgQgA