Il Fior di Battaglia
Il Fior di Battaglia is a fencing and wrestling manual produced around 1410, likely in Italy, for martial instruction and noble readers. Its pages show pen-and-ink figures in paired combat poses, each numbered panel framed beside a short passage of handwritten Italian text in red-initialed columns. A designer might take from them the clean, sequential staging of action in small grids, with figures reduced to simple gestural lines.
