JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 1000

I came to this post backwards. My primary interest was the frontispiece portrait of the author of a 1539 book on wrestling, showing the somewhat long-in-tooth author with scraps of tuffy hair and a coy knowing grin–an unusual portrait, presented by the master Lucas Cranach.  I looked further into the book and discovered that the well-illustrated document pictured varieties of wrestling moves, all demonstrated to students by the author, who most of the time was shown with this knowing grin, gripping and flipping and immobilizing his younger subjects. What slowly came into my head while looking at this book was how concise and instructive the images were, and that the whole was a great tutorial on wrestling motion, and the presentation of instruction on specific motions in general. 

Prior to the invention of photography, printed works on how humans should move in a given way and for a given task are uncommon and, generally, somewhat complex. The image I have in my head is the epochal work of the somewhat forgotten Etienne Marey, who in the 1870’s created what was essentially the world’s first “slow motion” device¹. One iteration of Marey’s apparatus was basically a long series of ganged cameras recording a motion for a simple task at a given time frame and presented on a continuous strip of photographic paper, sort of like a motion picture with the camera speed set at three frames per second. The resulting images were phenomenal and showed people for the first time the exactness of all manners of simple motions–motions that no longer looked so “simple” once all of its aspects could be studied from captured photographic evidence.  Even the act of hopping over a small stool or bending to pick up a bucket of water were enormously revealing in a way like Robert Hooke’s Micrographia displayed the great detail and complexity of the seemingly simple fly.  Perhaps the most famous of Marey’s series of images was that of a galloping horse, which also for the first time revealed what exactly the horse’s legs were doing and proving that almost every painter in the history of art represented the galloping horse incorrectly. But Marey doesn’t actually fit the mold of directing the motions of people for a particular instructional purposes, though he does of course photographically reveal hundreds of actions that led to a revolutionary understanding of the body-in-motion.  This is why I’ve chosen him as the limiting point for this category. (And just for the record I’m not sure when the first book on the movement of animals–not including hunting/trapping books–comes into being.)

Early works directing people on how to move are not terribly common. There are general works on table manners, the appearance at royal courts, religious ceremonies, maneuvers for armies in combat, sword fighting, parades for triumphs and adulations, funeral rites, and so on. 

For this first installment I’d like to look at two ends of the spectrum for displaying motion instructions clearly. The first is a book by Fabian von Auerswald, whose Ringer kunst: funf und Achtzig Stücke², published in 1539 in Wittenberg, is one of the earliest books printed on the art of wrestling.  It was printed by Hans Lufft³,the man who

was also responsible for printing Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible a few years earlier. 

I like the images in this book, elegantly produced by Lucas Cranach–they also present the more-elderly author (frequently shown with a sly grin) demonstrating his wrestling moves to his students. Overall it seems to me that it was an excellent (if not fluid) presentation of how to direct body motions.

Not so quite as direct, or simple, or lucid, or useful, is Raoul Feuillet’s publication of Pierre Beauchamp’s Orchesography⁴ , a work published first in 1700  (and then in English in 1706) and dedicated to instructing people on the movements of the dance.  It was a good idea, though more useful to folks in the future than for his contemporaries.  The book was a spatial geography of dance–the motion (feet and arms, both) was written in a similar fashion as musical notation, though not nearly as clearly.  The dancer was to hold the book and view the steps as they would be from above, holding the book always (!) pointed towards the “upper end” of the dance room.  (There were separate and complicated instructions showing how this was to be accomplished–imagine trying to perform the steps in a series of twirls, and keeping the book pointed “true north” so to speak.  Not easy.)

As it turns out the work by Feuillet/Beauchamp may have been more important as a piece of dance archaeology because it was so terribly detailed; it may not have been an exemplar of teaching people how to dance, but it certainly was an iconic publication in recording the intricacies of dances that may otherwise have been lost to time. 

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Notes:

1. I should also say that Marey was influenced by the work of Eadweard Muybridge’s photographs of motion—whom he credited of
course—and who I think expanded upon and exceeded those achievements.

2. The entire book located here; the translator writing here on
the philosophical/linguistic aspects of the book.

3. Beginning in 1534–the Luther Bible was printed in vast numbers by Luftt
(and appeared in the millions over the years) and others; the same can
not be said of the Auerswald book, which appeared in a small edition and
is quite rare today. It was in this edition that (in addition to much else) is found in Romans 3:28 the controversial “alone”: “thus, we hold, then, that
man is justified without the works of the law to do, alone
through faith”

4. The full title:  Orchesography; or, The art of dancing by characters and demonstrative
figures. Wherein the whole art is explain’d; with compleat tables of
all steps us’d in dancing, and rules for the motions of the arms,
&c. Whereby any person (who understands dancing) may of himself
learn all manner of dances. Being an exact and just translation from the
French of Monsieur Feuillet. By John Weaver, dancing master.