I serched the forum for Claudio Corte, Federic Grisone, and Cesare Fiaschi; I only found a mention of one of the worst pages from Grisone (and a recent mention by me of Claudio Corte).
Italian old sources (XVI Century) are the deep roots of more famous Frech High scool of Pluvinel and so on, and Italian original books can be found online, but they are very difficult to read, both for language and for very old style characters. So, I thought that a first step to let them al little more known is their transcription and digitalization; now, the first book is completely transcripted into italian wikisource, here:
Il cavallarizzo, by Claudio Corte, 1562. Work is going on about transcription of the book by Cesare Fiaschi,
Trattato dell'imbrigliare, atteggiare e ferrare cavalli, very interesting for many drawings of ancient bits and horseshoes and for unusual use of music into High Scool training for rythm.
Now, even if transcripted, old Italian is really difficult, and I too sometimes am very confused about. More, my English is very poor, and I can think, speak and write "at liberty" in English, but I find extreme difficulty when I try to translate carefully a text from Italian into English. So, the best I can do is to give you some flashes about the content, and - if some of you is deeply interested about - I could too translate some little bits of those books into "modern Italian", if this can help.
Just a mentio to the fact that Corte knows that Dressage at liberty is possible, and describes it a little into one of the last chapters of his book.
Quote:
Ancor che questo paia impossibile è però vero; & io ho visto ginetti maneggiar in questo modo da se stessi, senz'huomo à cavallo.
[Even if it seems impossible, nevertheless it is true: I saw horses performing High scool movements by themselves, without a man on the saddle;
http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Il_cavall ... apitolo_64 ]