Aguilar, Pedro de
First edition, an important treatise on the art of the Gineta by the Spanish captain Pedro de Aguilar (1515 – 1580), copiously illustrated.
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4to, (206 x 155 mm). 5 ff., 84 ff., 4 ff. Recent stiff vellum, spine lettered in ink, slightly soiled. Cleaned, occasional restorations to edges and corners, sometimes extended, well away from text, a very tall copy.
The Tratado is modelled after the manuscript found in the Biblioteca Nacional de España (Mss/9046). There is little information on Aguilar, except that he was a Captain in the Spanish army.
The illustration comprises 39 full-page plates, most of them of bits and bridles, two of horses -one with a very interesting proverb below “Los ojos del señor engordan el Cavallo, y los lacayos y mozos de Cavallos, lo gastan y destruyen”, referencing that the men who take care of horses who are not their owners, wear and destroy it.
The gineta riding style used shorter stirrups and a much higher seat in the saddle than usual elsewhere in Europe, allowing tight and complex manoeuvring of the horse, with the rider being unchallenged by the carrying of weapons of armour. Of North African origin, it became a distinctive characteristic of Iberian horsemanship and was widely commented on by writers on the subject from the sixteenth until well into the eighteenth century. The name is thought to derive from the Berber tribe of the Cenete (Zanata), which came to Iberia from North Africa in the thirteenth century. For a general discussion, see Barbara Fuchs, Exotic nation; Maurophilia and the construction of early modern Spain (2009), pp. 89-101, 163-5.
According to OCLC we locate a single copy at Harvard in the United States.
Provenance: offered at Sotheby’s Music, Books, Children's and Illustrated Books, 2011, lot 25.
Palau 3625; Wilkinson, Iberian Books, 140.
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