Ordini di cavalcare et modi di conoscere le nature de' cavalli, di emenadare i lor vitii & d'ammestragli per l'uso della guerra. [followed by:] Scielta di notabili avvertimenti perntinenti a' cavalli

2 parts in one volume, 8vo (212 x 150 mm). [12], 163, [1]; 70, [2 blank], [12] pp. Collation: †6 A-I⁸ K¹⁰; a-k⁴ l². Contemporary limp vellum, manuscript title on spine (slightly worn and stained). Bookblock and flyleaves partially detached from the binding. The second  part, Scielta di notabili avvertimenti, pertinenti a' cavalli distinti in tre libri, has its own title page. Woodcut printer's device on both title pages, historiated initials, head- and tailpieces and 40 full-page illustrations in the text. Italic type. Slightly browned in the middle of the volume and slightly stained on the blank upper margins of some leaves, otherwise a very good, genuine copy.

Second seventeenth-century edition of this very successful treatise on horses and horsemanship that lays the foundations of modern indoor and outdoor riding. First published at Naples in 1550, it was reprinted over twenty times by the end of the 16th century and translated into all the major European languages. Federico Grisone was the founder of the Neapolitan school of horsemanship in 1530, whose teaching, thanks mostly to present work, spread quickly throughout Europe. Grisone's pupils Giovanni Battista Pignatelli and Claudio Corte exported his techniques to the courts of London and Paris, where they were picked up and developed by the famous French horsemen Salomon de la Broue and Antoine de Pluvinel. The first part contains full-page illustrations of various types of bites, with indication of their name and use (pp. 114-163), as well as two different types of riding (pp. 50 and 77). The second part deals with the anatomy of the horse and the proper treatment of the most common maladies afflicting the horse; to represent those diseases there is a full-page woodcut illustration of a horse.

Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\TO0E\108785. Huth, p. 7; Mennessier de la Lance, I, pp. 581-582; Dejager, pp. 158-177; C.G. Fox, The Fairman Rogers Collection on the horse and equitation, 352.

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