Ordini di cavalcare, et modi di conoscere le nature de cavalli, di emendare i loro vitii, & d'ammaestrargli per l'uso della guerra, & giovamento de gli huomini: con varie figure di morsi, secondo le bocche, & il maneggio che si vuol dar loro

Two parts in one volume, 4to (220x170 mm). [12], 163, [1]; 70, [2 blank], [12] pp. Collation: †6 A-I8 K10; a-k4, l2. Leaf i4 is a blank. Printer's device on both title pages and 40 full-page illustrations in the text. Woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces. Italic type. Part two opens with a separate title page Scielta di notabili avvertimenti, pertinenti a' cavalli, distinti in tre libri. Contemporary limp vellum, inked title on spine. Two small stains on the first title page, otherwise a very good, genuine copy with wide margins.
First 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, 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.
Very little is known about the life of this Neapolitan scholar, horseman, breeder, and dressage instructor. Born into a noble family, Grisone probably spent all of his life in Naples, where around 1530 he founded a riding academy.
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.