3-021-715 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Tournament at Florence in honour of the Marriage of the Crown Prince of Italy, 1868. View of '...the tournament given by Prince Amadeus, Duke of Aosta, second son of King Victor Emmanuel, in honour of the marriage of his brother...Prince Amadeus rode into the lists, followed by his squires, and by the 160 Italian noblemen and gentlemen who were to figure in the tournament. The dresses were of the most magnificent description, and the horses, with scarcely a single exception, were very fine animals, perfectly trained. The young Duke of Aosta, the leader of this gallant body, looked a most graceful cavalier. His costume was exactly copied from a picture of Antonio del Pollaiolo in the Uffizi...The...Neapolitan troop, was perhaps the best got up; its thirty-two members being divided into four troops with four distinct costumes, faithfully reproduced from the pictures of the Middle Ages, having respectively black, red, white, or grey and lilac doublets; red, white, or grey and lilac caps. Each of these four troops performed on horseback a regular quadrille, though to waltz and galop music; and they really did it admirably...all the four troops - Florentine, Lombardo-Venetian, Turinese and Neapolitan...executed a quadrille before the Royal box'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.