The Leonard Chase Collection of Fencing Books, 16-19th cent

Item date: 16th - 19th century
Grant Value: £5,000
Item cost: £5,000
Item date acquired: 2012
Item institution: Wallace Collection
Town/City: London

A group of six carefully selected books. The principal volumes, all extremely rare, include Paride del Pozzo’s Duello (Venice, 1544), originally published in Naples not later than 1478, which was highly influential, especially on the work of the renowned Bolognese fencing master Achille Marozzo. Angelo Vizani dal Montone was a soldier whose important work on fencing was written around 1560 and only published posthumously, as the Trattato dello Schermo, in Venice in 1575. The Chase example is a slightly later edition, published in Bologna in 1588.  The Trattato introduced a number of techniques still employed in the modern sport of fencing, notably the extended lunge.  From the 18th century comes Guillaume Danet’s L’Art des Armes (Paris, 1766-67). Danet was a French fencing master whose teaching was considered the final word on combat with the smallsword, the duelling weapon of choice in the Age of Reason. 

This group of books from the Chase collection significantly enhances the rich material on fencing and swordsmanship available to researchers through the Library of the Wallace Collection.
 

Item Provenance
Collinge and Clark