Della Cavalleria Das ist - 1624AD

 Salvete Omnes,

Bavarian Digital Library 1624 copy

we will just link the grand equestrian work of German Renaissance - Della Cavalleria Das ist from 1624 - by Georg Engelhard 
Löhneysen. There exists a bit smaller, per number of pages, manuscript with hand-drawn plates from 1578, held by the Austrian National Library. 

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Ecuyer and landowner  by the end of the 1500, Goerog Engelhard served  various dukes of the Welf family, from Saxony to  Brunswick.
Eventually  he bought a printing press , installed it in his estates and started producing his own works through 1625, when they got destroyed during the 30 Years War.
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and from  his very book come these two plates with  six richly presented saddled war horse of Hungarian, Ottoman Turkish and Polish types.

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more Lohneysen to come

Valete

Hungarian Hussars from Esztergom

 Salvete Omnes,

there is a group on Facebook titled 'Szlafrokow Romowy' (for reenactors , historians, and aficionados interested in the Old Poland and her neighbours costumes and attires) and Tomasz Rejf, one of the members of the group and an avid XVII century reenactor and researcher, has provided this link to the British Museum scan of a drawing (pen and ink, and watercolor) by Jacob Hoefnagel, Flemish artist, showing the vista of the Hungarian city of Esztergom circa 1595AD.

In that picture, in the right hand corner there are three hussars or lancers astride fine prancing horses and with all that finery that made Hungarian and Polish winged  hussars so picturesque, each with a different hussar lance. 

Wiki Commons has a scan of a print that was based, mast likely, on the Hoefnagel's drawing.

enjoy studying the images 

Valete

Ps

Happy Thanksgiving - :) 

Old Drawings ...

Many years ago when B.Clinton was US president and in Poland there was comrade Alexander Kwasniewski presiding from the Warsaw's Belvedere Place, I did a series of drawings of Polish noblemen on horseback, or rather some horses with their riders pretending to be Polish riders.
Historically correct they were not and definitely on the fantasy side, yet I had lots of fun drawing them using various Pigma micron pens and watercolors. I did clean the drawing and changed the color of the Background with GIMP and PS.

This image is supposed to show one over-armed szlachcic (nobleman) of the early XVII (17th) century.

He is wearing a Hungarian style 'magierka' (headgear), a type of hat very popular with Polish nobility between 1560-1640s (more or less), a short 'zupan' (zhupan a riding coat of ancient Iranian - Sarmatians, Scythians - nomads provenance), and riding boots where the heel was of iron and shaped like horseshoe (R. Brzezinski writes about this Polish footwear in his Osprey's book – Polish Winged Hussar). The stirrup suppose to be of a Polish type, based on the Tatar stirrups – most Polish riding gear was based in the Caspian-Pontic steppe traditions.
Under his left leg he is carrying a pallasch (a Polish Palasz) a fearsome broadsword that had its origins with the Sassanian, Turkic, and Islamic knightly traditions. I drew a Tatar looking sabre that was usually carried under the bow case. He is carrying a 'nadziak' in his right hand, a fearsome weapon indeed.
Bow case ( 'sajdak' or 'sahajdak' in Polish) is a fantasy piece, the same with saddle, although it is very loosely based on the original saddles of the time period. Horse tack is a bit fanciful but especially towards the end of the 1600s Polish horse tack became more Oriental (Tatar and Turkish). The horse tail (tug or kutas) or 'bunczk' (bunchuk) hanging from the horse's neck was adopted early in the 1500s by the Polish horsemen, and was often dyed red and adorned with colorful silk cords, gold, silver and precious jewels.
By the way a big or small mustache was a must for a Polish nobleman - His Royal Majesty King Jan III Sobieski, Prince and Marechal du France Prince Jozef Poniatowski, and Conqueror of the Soviet Russia Marshal Jozef Pilsudski are the most famous examples of that continuous fashion that lasted from the early medieval Poland until the mid 1990s. Even today it is the part of traditional Polish male appearance, although not in fashion that much with the young bucks.