Sea Dragon scroll for Leonarda Delchiaro
Order of the Sea Dragon scroll for Leonarda Delchiaro, awarded on 19 November 2023 by Abran and Anya at Holiday Faire.
Materials: Higgins Ink, gouache, Fine-tec liquid gold on pergamenata
Script: Rotunda
Text:
The fighter takes the field.
She sets measure with her opponent.
Swift and sure she begins the bout.
Her guard is true, her strikes precise.
Patient, strong, and relentless
Lady Leonarda Delchiaro
Stands out among the crowd
Therefore do we
Abran & Anya,
King and Queen of Atlantia
induct her into our
Order of the Sea Dragon.
and Award her Arms, to wit:
Done this 19th day of November A.S LVII
at Holiday Faire in Our Barony of Stierbach.
RESEARCH AND CONCEPT
Doing this scroll for a fellow fencer, this scroll was particularly special to me, and I wanted something that reflected the recipient's personality as much as possible. Thankfully, my research was fruitful and I had plenty of design elements to choose from. The recipient has an Italian Renaissance persona, so I tried to focus on late 16th century as much as possible.
The biggest variable for me was using perg instead of Bristol paper as the ground, since I had no idea how that would take to my calligraphy and illumination efforts.
DESIGN AND CALLIGRAPHY
Because the Sea Dragon is a fencing award, I wanted all of the major design elements to draw from north Italian fencing manuals, particularly my two favorites: the Gran Simulacro by Ridolfo Capoferro and La Scherma by Francesco Alfieri. Composition-wise, I wanted to keep visual interest away from the scroll text itself, and focus on detailed embellishments.
The design elements I chose had great vertical symmetry, so I put the text in a two-column format to maintain that symmetry throughout.
Since the books I'm drawing from were from the era of mass-printing, they use a Roman script for the titles and a very modern-looking humanist script for the remainder of the text. However, I wanted a bit more of a hand-written feel for this scroll, so I opted to use Rotunda script, which would've still been in use in late 1500s Italy.
ILLUMINATION AND DETAIL
Capoferro's very epic preface contains this portrait. I was particularly fond of the shading on the pillars and the weapons, and wanted to make that the first thing that drew attention on the scroll itself
My top border
I wanted the sword to be the center of attention here, so I added gilding and altered the shading from the exemplar to make it look like the rapier at the center was glowing and illuminating the rest of the weapons from its base.
Selecting an appropriate fencing plate for this was a bit of a judgement call for me, but I ultimately opted for something simple that clearly showed the face and body of at least one fencer, so that I could draw the recipient into the frame
Alfieri's Plate 3 fit the bill on multiple levels, because this also demonstrates a solid terza and quarta guard, which gives the figures strong lines and shadow shapes with a minimum of foreshortening
My depiction
The right-hand figure is based on the recipient, including outfit and hat drawn from photo exemplars. The left-hand figure notionally depicts me, with hat, doublet and sword being similar to mine.
FINAL DETAILS
I was happy to be able to add some little details based on the receipient's interests and personality
Top border detail derived from "Basket of Fruit" by Caravaggio. The recipient is a basket weaver, so I knew I needed to add a gilded basket into the scroll as a call-out to that.
The recipient's cat, drawn from photo exemplar
The recipient's Arms had not yet passed, but I included green and purple in this end-bar and throughout the scroll to reflect her colors.
FINISHED PIECE
