Giovanni Battista Pignatelli
{{Short description|Neapolitan nobleman and riding master}}
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{{Use British English|date=May 2017}}
{{Infobox academic
| name = Giovanni Battista Pignatelli
| image = Giovanni Battista Pignatelli.jpg
| alt =
| caption = Bas-relief of Pignatelli on his tomb (Archbishop Pignatelli, 1700s?)
| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{circa|1525}}
| birth_place =
| death_date = before 1600
| death_place =
| nationality = Neapolitan
| other_names = {{ubl|Giovan Battista Pignatelli|Giambattista Pignatelli}}
| occupation = Riding instructor
| known_for =
| notable_works =L'Arte Veterale
| notable_students = {{ubl|Salomon de La Broue|Antoine de Pluvinel}}
| footnotes =
}}
Giovanni Battista Pignatelli ({{circa|1525}} – before 1600) was a Neapolitan nobleman and riding master.{{r|arte|page=xix}} He influenced the development of alta scuola, or classical dressage, both in the Italian peninsula and in France.
Life and work
Pignatelli 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.{{r|arte|page=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.{{r|arte|page=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,{{r|jean|page=257}} and de Pluvinel's patron the Chevalier de Saint-Antoine.{{r|monica}}
Pignatelli continued to teach into his old age, but by 1588 his "extreme age" prevented him from doing so.{{r|jean|page=254}} He died before the end of the century.{{r|arte|page=xix}}
Influence and reception
Unlike 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,{{r|ant|page=391}} and included sections on cures for parasites and disease, on bridling and on horse management.{{r|ant|page=392}} A manuscript with the title L'arte veterale is conserved in Verona; a transcription was published in 2001.{{r|arte|page=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.{{r|arte|page=xxii|jean}}
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.{{r|arte|page=xxiv|max|page2=160}}
References
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Category:Classical horsemanship
Category:16th-century Neapolitan people