Sydney Anglo makes the following brief description in a footnote in his book (the good stuff is always in footnotes): "This very large format Fechtbuch is dated 1623 and is entirely pictorial. It is, in the main, dependent on earlier, readily-identifiable manuscript traditions including that represented by Augsburg Codex Wallerstein I.6.4.2 (see above n. 49), but it includes a remarkable section (ff 141-3) in which almost nude wrestlers strangle each other with looped kerchieves. The contests are extremely violent and several of the wrestlers have blood gushing from nose and mouth." (Anglo, p348 n.87)
Anglo's analysis is off on this, but the actual manuscript is even more interesting: it appears to be a beautifully-sketched and painted copy of Ludwig VI von Eyb's treatise of 1510. More properly, I should say that it appears to be an entry in the same manuscript tradition that spawned both Eyb's work and the earlier Codex 5278 (also at the Austrian National Library or ONB), since even those two treatises taken together cannot account for all of its contents, but the unique plays are unquestionably related to the rest. This group of manuscripts is connected in some way to those of Fiore dei Liberi, though at the present time it remains unclear whether they were originally copied from Liberi's treatise or if they are instead derived from the same older tradition that Fiore himself studied (that of Johannes Suvenus).
The art itself is quite removed from the earlier sources, probably because they had so little artistic value in themselves. Most of the figures painted wear bright Landsknecht garb, including German weapons and armor. In some sections such as the grappling, they wear simpler grey jumpsuits instead (and occasionally sprout belts when techniques require them), presumably to avoid confusing the body position. The figures stand on a simple patch of ground, lightly shaded with a few plants growing on it, and shadows indicate when a foot is on the ground rather than in the air. (This scheme falls apart somewhat in the plays of wrestling on the ground, since for some reason the artist elected to preserve the arrangement of earlier manuscripts and so a few figures appear to be executing pins while performing headstands--no doubt a master-level technique.)
Sorting through the scans I arrive at the following breakdown:
- 1r - title page
2r-8r - spear, spear and sword
9r-59r - longsword
60r-69r - poleaxe
70r-140r - grappling (up to 128r from Eyb)
141r-143r - people strangling each other with sashes
144r-145r - armored figures from Bellifortis
146r-193r - armored fencing (mostly from Eyb)
194r-203r - longsword vs. dagger from Eyb
204r-205r - dagger
206r - dagger and buckler image from Bellifortis
207r-252r - dagger mostly from Eyb
253r-260r - longshield from Eyb
261r-285r - mounted fencing, cavalry vs. infantry
286r - mounted lance vs. rifle
287v-288r - spread of mounted skirmish in tournament?
289r-293r - mounted fencing
294r-307r - representation of a sword dance (pointed out by Roger Norling)
While this treatise is unfortunately textless like the 5278, Ludwig von Eyb's entry includes extensive text and in this way provides a valuable counterpart to the 10799. Barbara Kappelmayr and Andreas Meier have kindly transcribed it for us, and it is available as a PDF from the Gesellschaft für pragmatische Schriftlichkeit. To match up the text with the images, see the Wiktenauer article on Eyb.
Color scans of the Codex 10799 are available for free on the ONB website. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way of downloading a PDF of the images, so you'll probably have to do what I did and spend a few hours loading each image and saving it. You can access the image gallery by going to the Catalog entry and clicking the "Digitalisat" link. On the plus side, the images are delightfully-high resolution.
The Wiktenauer article for this manuscript is now online, though I haven't decided how or if I will be updating Ludwig von Eyb's article based on this manual.
