Giovanni Battista Pignatelli
Giovanni Battista Pignatelli (c. 1525 – before 1600) was a Neapolitan nobleman and riding master.[1]: xix He influenced the development of alta scuola, or classical dressage, both in the Italian peninsula and in France. Life and workPignatelli was born in about 1525, into a Neapolitan noble family originally from Calabria. He was a pupil of Giannetto Conestabile. While some modern sources report him also to have studied under Federico Grisone – also a nobleman of Naples – or Cesare Fiaschi of Ferrara, there is no documentary proof that he did so.[1]: xviii Pignatelli taught in Naples, where gentlemen came from all over Europe to learn the art of riding. His teaching was innovative: he was among the first to teach the style called a la brida, which was not as severe as the traditional Baroque Spanish a la jineta style.[1]: xxi Among his pupils were Salomon de La Broue, who spent five years under him, Antoine de Pluvinel, who studied with him for six years,[2]: 257 and de Pluvinel's patron the Chevalier de Saint-Antoine.[3] Pignatelli continued to teach into his old age, but by 1588 his "extreme age" prevented him from doing so.[2]: 254 He died before the end of the century.[1]: xix Influence and receptionUnlike his many of his contemporaries or successors – Grisone, Fiaschi, Pasquale Caracciolo, Claudio Corte, Pirro Antonio Ferraro, Giovanni Paolo d'Aquino, Paolo de' Pavari – who published treatises on various aspects of horsemanship, many of which were soon translated and circulated through much of Europe, Pignatelli never had any work published. A manuscript of his treatise on the veterinary care and treatment of the horse in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris was described in 1838. It was divided into three hundred and seventy-six chapters,[4]: 391 and included sections on cures for parasites and disease, on bridling and on horse management.[4]: 392 A manuscript with the title L'arte veterale is conserved in Verona; a transcription was published in 2001.[1]: xxxi Through his influence on de La Broue and de Pluvinel – who became riding-instructor to the king of France and in 1594 started the first riding academy in the country – Pignatelli shaped the development of the art of classical dressage, which diffused through Italy and France, but also to England, to the German-speaking world, to Scandinavia, and eventually to the Iberian peninsula.[1]: xxii [2] In 1576 Prospero d'Osma, who had been a pupil and a collaborator of Pignatelli, was commissioned by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, to prepare a report on the state of Queen Elizabeth's royal stables; d'Osma later opened a riding school in the Mile End district of London.[1]: xxiv [5]: 160 References
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