Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Sarmatian with a lasso - a sketch

Ushta os,
in this post on my blog I quoted a passage from Flavius Josephus' writings about the Alans raiding across the Caucassus Mountains the kingdoms of Armenia and Media Atropatene during I century AD.


Here I sketched, with a ball pen, a warrior astride a galloping horse with a lasso already in a swinging montion and at his side a long sword slung  from a second belt-loops with a scabbard slide (Asian invention brought to Europe by the nomads), about to cast his rope...I worked the drawing a bit with GIMP (GIMp Painter)
By the way, nowadays I use as my operating system the Linux Mint 11, and thanks to the maestro David Revoy's instructions the digital painting (with GIMP-PS & GIMP-Painter and MyPaint) has just become even more of a joyful pursuit.

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   Some more good news for all the enthusiasts of the history of horsemanship - on archive.org I found a nice copy of 1854 publication of the 1430s manuscript (in Paris, France) by philosopher-king of medieval Portugal Dom Duarte (Edward of Portugal). The thick volume (in original XV century Portuguese) contains the most famous horsemanship treatise - Livro da ensinança de bem cavalgar toda sela . [starts of page 497 of the original publication]

 Almost 10 years ago the definitive English translation, by the Preto family team of father and son,  of the entire ''Bem Cavalgar' was published [I am happy to have a hardcover of that edition]. Prior to that happy moment scholar Sidney Anglo had quoted profusely from the manuscript in his ground-breaking work ''The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe.''


Do enjoy your study of Bem Cavalgar - :)