Camillo Agrippa was a noted fencer

Fencing

Fencing, which is also known as modern fencing to distinguish it from historical fencing, is a family of combat sports using bladed weapons.Fencing is one of four sports which have been featured at every one of the modern Olympic Games...

, architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

, engineer

Engineer

An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...

 and mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

 of the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

. He is considered to be one of the greatest fencing theorists of all time.

Biography

Though born in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, Agrippa lived and worked in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, where he was associated with the Confraternity of St. Joseph of the Holy Land

Holy Land

The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...

 and the literary and artistic circle around Cardinal Alessandro Farnese.

He is most renowned for applying geometric theory and to solve problems in armed combat. In his Treatise on the Science of Arms with Philosophical Dialogue (published in 1553), he proposed dramasstic changes in the way swordsmanship was practiced at the time. For instance, he pointed out the effectiveness of holding the sword in front of the body instead of behind it. He also simplified Achille Marozzo

Achille Marozzo

Achille Marozzo was an Italian fencing master teaching in the Dardi or Bolognese tradition.Marozzo was probably born in Bologna. His text Opera Nova dell'Arte delle Armi was published in 1536 in Modena, dedicated to Count Rangoni, then reprinted several times all the way into the next century...

's eleven guards down to four: prima, seconda, terza and quarta, which roughly correspond to the hand positions used today in the Italian school. He is also regarded as the man who most contributed to the development of the rapier

Rapier

A rapier is a slender, sharply pointed sword, ideally used for thrusting attacks, used mainly in Early Modern Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries.-Description:...

 as a primarily thrusting weapon.

Agrippa was a contemporary of Michelangelo

Michelangelo

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...

, and the two were probably acquainted (or so Agrippa claims in his later treatise on transporting the obelisk

Obelisk

An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top, and is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon...

 to the Piazza San Pietro

Saint Peter's Square

Saint Peter's Square is located directly in front of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, the papal enclave within Rome .-History of St...

). Based on an inscription in a copy of Agrippa quoted in the last edition of the bibliographic dictionary

Dictionary

A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...

 by Jacques Charles Brunet

Jacques Charles Brunet

Jacques Charles Brunet was a French bibliographer.-Biography:He was born in Paris, the son of a bookseller...

, Manuel du libraire et de l'amateur des livres (1860–64), some of the copperplate engravings for the book were attributed to Michelangelo, but modern art historians believe the unknown engraver is more likely to have come from the school of Marcantonio Raimondi

Marcantonio Raimondi

Marcantonio Raimondi, also simply Marcantonio, was an Italian engraver, known for being the first important printmaker whose body of work consists mainly of prints copying paintings. He is therefore a key figure in the rise of the reproductive print...

.

There is evidence indicating that Agrippa's work may have been the inspiration for the Spanish school of swordplay (commonly referred to as Destreza

Destreza

La Verdadera Destreza is a Spanish system of fencing. The word "destreza" literally means "skill." However, the full name is perhaps best translated as "the true art."...

). Don Luis Pacheco de Narváez

Luis Pacheco de Narváez

Don Luis Pacheco de Narváez was a Spanish writer on fencing. He was don Jerónimo Sánchez de Carranza's student and later published a multitude of works based on the Destreza school of fencing. Some of his works were compendiums of Carranza's work while others were less derivative.He may be the...

 makes the claim that Don Jerónimo Sánchez de Carranza

Jerónimo Sánchez de Carranza

Don Jerónimo de Carranza is commonly called the "Father of Spanish Fencing" and he wrote his text Of the Philosophy of the arms, of its art and the Christian offense and defense in 1582 under the sponsorship of Don Alonso de Guzmán El Bueno, 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia.His work on Destreza, the...

 based his text on the work of Agrippa in a letter to the Duke of Cea in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 on May 4, 1618. This seems to be reinforced by a common use of geometry

Geometry

Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....

 in both systems.

Works by Agrippa

• Dialogo sopra la generazione di venti
• Nuove invenzioni sopra il modo di navigare
• Trattato di transportare la guglia in su la piazza di s. Pietro
• Treatise on the Science of Arms with Philosophical Dialogue
• Dialogo di Camillo Agrippa milanese del modo di mettere in battaglia presto & con facilità il popolo di qual si voglia luogo con ordinanze & batagglie diverse, 1585

External links

• Trattato Di Scientia d’ Arme,con un Dialogo di Filosofia - Treatise on the Science of Arms with Philosophical Dialogue. Online version in PDF
• Dialogo del modo di mettere in battaglia - Dialogo di Camillo Agrippa milanese del modo di mettere in battaglia presto & con facilità il popolo di qual si voglia luogo con ordinanze & batagglie diverse. Online Version
• http://www.iath.virginia.edu/rome/article.html - Leonardo Lombardi, "Camillo Agrippa's Hydraulic Inventions on the Pincian Hill (1574-1578)", in Waters of Rome, Occasional Journal (5), 2008.
• Ken Mondschein's English translation of Agrippa's Treatise on the Science of Arms.