On July 19, 2025, Joshua Wiest launched a Giovanni dall’Agocchie Form Competition. I had greatly enjoyed the last one I participated in, and so I decided to work on a submission!

The competition included two parts, one solo form and one paired form. I have no regular training partner currently, and so I focused on the solo form. I had actually known this one for a long time, and often performed it as a sort of warm-up, but never studied the text as deeply as it deserved.

Skip right ahead to the video if you do not want to bother with my analysis first!

Some elements of context

Giovanni dall’Agocchie published his treatise Dell’Arte di Scrima Libri Tre in 1572 in Venice, but he was a Bolognese master. The first book, dealing specifically with fencing, is often recommended to beginners because it focuses first and foremost on the single sword, with systematic explanations that provide a great introduction to older more complex treatises of Marozzo and Manciolino, for example.

Although the very existence of a continuous Bolognese school of fencing, as opposed to a succession of masters in the city, each promoting slightly different approaches, is debatable, it is undisputable that dall’Agocchie seems to share broadly the same vocabulary and some of the tactical and pedagogical ideas with previous Bolognese masters, and therefore separating these works entirely would be difficult.

The solo form appears early in the treatise, just after the description of individual guards and cuts. It is supposed to teach you how to step together with sword actions, from guard to guard.

The source

Here is the translation provided by the organizers:

• Step with your right foot towards your right side, and in this tempo, extend your arm, making a falso and a roverso sgualembrato that fall into Coda Lunga Stretta. Alternatively, you can also throw two roversi, making the first one a roverso tondo, following that with a roverso sgualembrato that ends in Coda Lunga Stretta.
• Now pass forward and towards your left side with your left foot, making a falso and mandritto sgualembrato that falls into Cinghiara Porta di Ferro Stretta.
• Pass forward with your right foot, turning a dritto tramazzone that falls into Porta di Ferro Stretta.
• Pass forward with your left foot throwing a falso and roverso sgualembrato and making your sword go into Coda Lunga Alta.
• Step forward with your right foot and in the same tempo turn a roverso ridoppio, making your sword stop in Guardia d’Alicorno.
• Without stepping, extend an imbroccata that stops in Porta di Ferro Stretta.
• Step backwards, and in one motion make a falso and roverso sgualembrato that brings your sword back into Coda Lunga Alta.
• Pass back with your left foot turning a dritto tramazzone which stops in Porta di Ferro Stretta.
• Then take one more step backwards with your right foot, throwing a tramazzone that ends in Cinghiara Porta di Ferro Stretta.
• Make a falso and roverso sgualembrato that fall into Coda Lunga Stretta. You will be back through the same procession of guards to where you started.

It is missing the beginning of the section, which I feel is important because it gives the starting position (pulling the Jherek Swanger translation on Wiktenauer):

Suppose you have your sword at your left side, in the act of laying hand upon it, and the heel of your right foot near your left one. Both your knees will be straight and not bowed, arranging yourself with as much grace as possible. Having done this, […]

Actually, I would even argue that the previous section is itself important too, because it gives advice on positions and motions that applies directly to the form:

Stepping in the guards: how it is done.

Gio: One steps with reason and art, and goes in all the guards to find the adversary. This can be done by beginning with either foot, on the diagonal or having one foot drive the other forward, according to the time and the need. Nonetheless, stepping with a pace neither large nor small is of greater utility, because thereby you can both advance forward and retire back without bodily discomfort, always accompanying the hand with the foot. But you must be advised that the forward leg must be a bit bent at the knee, and its foot must point straight toward the enemy; and the rear leg will be a bit curved and with its foot somewhat on the diagonal, in such a manner that every movement will be full of grace. And so much for the fourth heading.

Interpretation

Structure

While it is much simpler than the assalti found in Marrozo and Manciolino, it is interesting to note that this form still works according to the same general structure:

• walk forward to the opponent (here using CLS, CPdFS, PdFS, CLA)
• fight with him (Alicorno, PdFS)
• retreat backward (CLA, PdFS, CPdFS, CLS)

This gives a possibly more precise meaning to ‘walking in the guards’; the guards that we are walking back and forth in here are the two variants of coda lunga and the two variants of porta di ferro. The high guards are not actually fully explored here: we are missing, at the very least, guardia di testa, guardia di faccia and guardia di intrare.

Therefore, to me, the whole middle part (roverso ridoppio, imbroccata, falso and roverso) is the fighting portion, and probably the only one where speed is actually critical. The rest of the form is about keeping correct low guards through the cuts and steps, which is not as easy as it appears!

Cutting to strette

In all the “walking” portions delineated before, the text only uses strette guards which are low but with the point towards the opponent. For instance here is how the main coda lunga variants are described:

Coda lunga stretta is that which is done with the right foot forward, and coda lunga alta with the left foot, always holding the sword outside of the right side with the arm will extended and near the knee on the outside, and with the point aimed at the enemy.

This is actually much lower than people like, generally, especially if they’ve done any rapier like me. Of course the adjective “near” is not entirely precise. If I want my hand to be almost touching my knee, I need to adjust my whole posture so that the feet are further appart, the front leg more bent, the body leaned forward. However, this comes in contradiction with the pace being “neither large nor small”. Further information can be taken from Marozzo, who is the only one providing both text and illustration:

Cap. 138. Of Coda Lunga e Stretta

Let thy scholar stand with the right leg foremost, with the sword and the target well out, and see that his right hand be well outside his right knee with the thumb turned downwards as may be seen in the figure.

Note he also uses the knee as a reference, but the illustration clarifies that the proximity is not quite up to the point of touching it or being level with it.

Manciolino has the same point of reference at the knee regarding porta di ferro stretta:

[9] Of the narrow iron gate guard.

The sixth guard is called “porta di ferro stretta”. In which the body must be arranged diagonally in such fashion that the right shoulder (as is said above) faces the enemy, but both the arms must be stretched out to encounter the enemy, so that the sword arm is extended straight down in the defense of the right knee, and so that the sword fist be near and centered on the aforesaid knee.

My understanding is that these guards are formed with a straight arm and the hand low enough that the thigh and knee are covered. This means at least below the natural waist, and since the tip must be directed to the opponent it also implies a pronounced angle at the wrist, something between 45 and 90 degrees. Adhering to these positions lays interesting constraints on the cuts: indeed a cut at full extension generally happens only with an almost fully extended wrist.

It is interesting to consider variations of the form where one does not cut to strette guards. I have found two that are particularly attractive, in the sense that I have found myself falling into them naturally and had to intentionally avoid them:

• The first is to make every cut to a larga guard instead of a stretta
• The second is to cut to high positions, closer to faccia and intrare, instead of porta di ferro and coda lunga

Either of these variations are easier to perform than the original, in my experience. In the first you just cut through to the ground, giving you more room to power the falsi, and you can go through full extension. In the second you can basically remain at full extension and do almost everything from the wrist. They are both wrong, in the sense that they do not match the text, but they let you do everything more fluidly or more quickly

Two problematic cuts

Most of the cuts make perfect sense to go from one guard to the next. There are only two that I have found more difficult to interpret than the others.

The first problematic cut is the second stramazzone (the first retreating one). It originates from a position on the right. We know that stramazzone are wheeling cuts, and they are often performed wheeling on the left, but in this particular instance I think it’s better to wheel on the right. This is actually very obvious when one does the first variation above, cutting to larga. Wheeling on the left takes up another action to bring back the sword to that side. This is not something I am entirely confident of, but I love the flow that it gives for the two consecutive stramazzone.

The second problematic cut is the roverso ridoppio. It is a rising cut from the left, that much we know for sure, but here it is done from a guard on the right. This leaves several options:

• do it very steep, straight up from coda lunga
• get the tip back to the right, then cut
• get the whole hand and sword back to the right, then cut
• do kind of a reverse stramazzone, wheeling upwards from coda lunga

The first one is so direct and short it should almost count as only a guard transition. The next two involve getting into some other guard before the cut (the second less so than the third, though, which pretty much goes to underarm). I have selected the fourth, which ends up being both fluid and making a believable cut, when we are in the ‘fighting’ portion of the form.

The steps

The section just before the actual form is perhaps the most helpful here, although ‘neither big nor small’ is a bit under-specified, as usual in fencing texts! The guards themselves set some constraints on how small the step can be. In order to bring the hand low enough there needs to be some body lean and this is more stable and comfortable when the legs are about as far appart as a natural step.

The author specifies that you should get back where you have started. In terms of the count of steps, it is not a problem, however forward and backward steps are not always equal. Also, there is a specific description of the first two steps as being off line, first to the right, then to the left. I have found it hard to do the same going back; it is quite unnatural because you would have to go off the line and land on a straight leg. As it is left unspecified in the original, I have chosen to just go straight back.

The performance

I have chosen to use the sharp Danelli sword that was the result of my Lovino project. Although it is perhaps not the sort of sword that we typically associate with the Bolognese school, it is actually completely appropriate: Milan and Bologna are not so far away to make any difference, and Lovino’s text is dated to ca. 1560-1580.

Here is what I ended up with:

Things I am happy with:

• included the two first offline steps, first right then left, as specified in the text
• feet positions are mostly all correct (front foot to the opponent, back foot pointing off line)
• I get back almost exactly to where I started
• my hand correctly rises and falls when doing cuts. I’m not doing everything from the wrist! Except the stramazzone, obviously
• many of my guards are well formed: tip pointed at the face, hand lower than the waist, covering the knee

Things I should work on:

• rythm: I have tried to build in some sort of acceleration towards the middle, but it does not show very well and it just made the first and last cuts slower and less crisp. Perhaps a better way to include that aspect would be to cut and step full speed but just pose longer in guards
• my versions of porta di ferro stretta have the hand too high, and possibly too far to the left. In the side view I also let the tip sink lower than I meant to on the first instance, probably in anticipation of the following falso
• I messed up the hand / foot coordination in the fighting portion. As per the text, I should step into alicorno, then thrust without stepping, whereas here I’m reaching alicorno mid-step, and thrusting as I finish the step. It works, of course, it is quite fast, but that is not how the text describes it. There might be a solution working up a feint of a thrust before the roverso ridoppio, which covers the first half of the step

Might have to make another attempt!