The Knightly Art of Battle

This is an extravagantly illustrated and engrossing exploration of the art of medieval fighting. This volume offers an intriguing look into the world of late medieval martial arts, from wrestling to swordsmanship and to the subtle tricks that could be employed when jousting on horseback. Using exceptional pen drawings (with gold leaf highlights) the book features some of the most interesting abstracts from Fior di Battaglia (The Flower of Battle), a manuscript by the renowned Italian fencing master Fiore dei Liberi depicting the knightly arts of fighting. The copy in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, created in the early 15th-century, is the finest and most complete manuscript to survive. Offering detailed visual documentation of Fiore's techniques coupled with the author's genius for explaining sophisticated methods of offense and defence, the manuscript provides a comprehensive record of the skills by which men lived and died in the Middle Ages.