The Thibault Project
The Painted Thibault Project
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Bringing you the most impressive fencing art in history the way it deserves
2nd stretch goal reached in 26 days, 2 hours, and 25 minutes!
1st stretch goal reached in 8 days, 1 hour, and 14 minutes!
Main goal reached in 2 days, 4 hours, and 3 minutes!
STRETCH GOAL: $25,000 $18,750 $12,500 (245% funded)
$30,712.50
pre-orders
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This project has two goals!
To publish Girard Thibault’s spectacular illustrations in as close to their original size as possible — to do this, we need at least 100 pre-orders.
To fund the purchase and digitization of complete, painted Thibault illustrations to release on Wiktenauer, and then find them homes with fencers who will love them. (Jump to section)
𝐒ᴛʀᴇᴛᴄʜ 𝐆ᴏᴀʟ! With 150 pre-orders, we can include the scans of all the painted prints as an appendix in the book, and we can order additional painted prints to scan and redistribute!
𝐒ᴛʀᴇᴛᴄʜ 𝐆ᴏᴀʟ! With 200 pre-orders, we can add more bonus content to the book, including preparatory sketches and prints from Thibault’s artists, and some quality-of-life improvements to the book itself. And, of course, order even more painted prints that we couldn’t afford before!
This book is a reference and study tool for Girard Thibault’s colossal treatise of 1628-30, Academie de l’Espée. Its 110 pages include all 57 original engravings at 85% of their original size — 405×585 mm (23×16 in) for the 45 landscape illustrations, and 405×280 mm (11×16 in) for the 12 single-page illustrations — printed on high-quality paper and bound in a lay-flat binding so there is no central gutter to hide details.
Expected delivery: April 2026
Get 5% off two (2) copies. This book is a reference and study tool for Girard Thibault’s colossal treatise of 1628-30, Academie de l’Espée. Its 110 pages include all 57 original engravings at 85% of their original size — 405×585 mm (23×16 in) for the 45 landscape illustrations, and 405×280 mm (11×16 in) for the 12 single-page illustrations — printed on high-quality paper and bound in a lay-flat binding so there is no central gutter to hide details.
Expected delivery: April 2026
Get 10% off five (5) copies! This book is a reference and study tool for Girard Thibault’s colossal treatise of 1628-30, Academie de l’Espée. Its 110 pages include all 57 original engravings at 85% of their original size — 405×585 mm (23×16 in) for the 45 landscape illustrations, and 405×280 mm (11×16 in) for the 12 single-page illustrations — printed on high-quality paper and bound in a lay-flat binding so there is no central gutter to hide details.
Expected delivery: April 2026
Painted Prints
Digitizing the most beautiful version of Thibault’s prints for Wiktenauer
While the bare, unfinished prints are already amazing works of art, the most beautiful are the ones that have been finished by a professional painter.
Perhaps the most spectacular of all is a book that was fully painted in 1629 by David Bailly and gifted to Henri II de Bourbon, Prince of Condé; Bailly was a friend of Girard Thibault and involved in designing some of the prints themselves, and was also son of Dutch fencing master Pieter Bailly. Many other painted prints exist, executed with varying degrees of skill and artistic merit by mostly unknown artists (professional book-painters rarely signed their work, but Bailly was primarily a portraitist so he was accustomed to doing so).
Unfortunately, all of these painted books seem to be in private hands and none have been scanned for public use. When they appear for auction, they tend to cost in the neighborhood of $50–100,000 for a complete book, and even a single painted print sold separately tends to cost $1,000–1,500.
When I decided to try to print a reproduction of all of Thibault’s enormous illustrations at something close to full size, I knew that acquiring a complete set of these painted prints to publish was impossible, so I set out to find the clearest unpainted scans I could. In the course of this search, I reached out to Gérard Six, a French fencing master who I was told had provided scans to a previous Thibault book. This lead the project in an entirely new and unexpected direction.
He didn’t have the scans I wanted, but what he did have — and offer to sell me — was eight original painted prints. His asking price was almost too good to be true, and I happily accepted. With those scans in hand, I soon purchased four more prints from other sellers (for somewhat higher prices), and ended up with twelve in total.
I started to hatch a plan.
Book 2, Table 10, engraved by Adriaen Matham after 1620 and printed in 1626–30 in the Elzevier workshop; the bottom version comes from a complete book painted by David Bailly in 1629.
For the past few years, Wiktenauer has been slowly expanding into the 17th century. Part of why it’s going so slow is that we’re now venturing into territory that hasn’t been explored or mapped out nearly as well as the 14th–16th centuries, and as a result, our mission is shifting more and more into developing new resources rather than just collecting and cataloging existing ones.
These twelve prints are another step in that direction, and will be used to improve access to Thibault’s art for everyone. While unfinished prints from fencing treatises are used extensively on Wiktenauer, we prefer the finished ones when they’re available for two reasons: on an educational level, they’re an important part of art history and raise awareness of the reality of how engravings were intended to be used and views, and on a functional level, they’re usually easier to understand and visually process on smaller screens like phones and tablets.
Below, you can purchase one of these prints of your very own. Each one is a unique piece of history, created by craftsmen of another age — paper-makers, engravers, printers, and painters — and passed down through 400 years to arrive in my hands, and soon into yours. I’m averaging out the cost of all the engravings, and the price is still better than I’ve ever found online (thanks largely to Gérard’s generosity): $400.
You may intellectually understand how enormous these are, but you don’t really grasp it until they’re spread across your entire living room.
But not right away. First, I’ll send them to the paper conservator at a local business called Green Dragon Bindery to fix them up and make them durable enough to hopefully survive another four hundred years. I’ve already initiated this process. (If you’d like me to order additional conservation — beyond what’s strictly necessary — in order to get your print in the best shape possible, we’ll chat about what other services the conservator recommends after you’ve made the purchase; the prices are very reasonable and the full suite of treatments comes to about $150.)
Once conservation is done, I’ll send them to the Boston Public Library imaging studios to be digitized in partnership with the Massachusetts Digital Commonwealth program. These scans will be placed online on their portal, the Internet Archive, and the Thibault article on Wiktenauer, all under a public domain certificate allowing free re-use forever. Hopefully, over time, we’ll be able to get scans of more of these painted prints and eventually collect all 45.
After the digitization is complete, the prints will finally be mailed to buyers in enormous boxes (I can’t stress enough how big these things are — luckily, shipping costs are mostly based on weight.)
Scanning enormous prints required an enormous scanner
The Print Store
Limit one per customer until declared otherwise.
An original page created for Academie de l'Espée, the treatise of Girard Thibault d’Anvers.
This print was engraved by Nicolaes Lastman in ca. 1625, printed in the Elzevier workshop in Leiden between 1626 and 1630, and then painted by an unknown artist some time in the 17th century.
It’s unknown whether it was cut out of a fully-painted bound book or simply removed from an unbound copy.
Provenance information is not available.
An original page created for Academie de l'Espée, the treatise of Girard Thibault d’Anvers. It includes a dedication to Georg Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg.
This print was engraved by Andries Jacobsz Stock some time after 1613, printed in the Elzevier workshop in Leiden between 1626 and 1630, and then painted by an unknown artist some time in the 17th century.
It’s unknown whether it was cut out of a fully-painted bound book or simply removed from an unbound copy.
Provenance information is not available.
An original page created for Academie de l'Espée, the treatise of Girard Thibault d’Anvers.
This print was engraved by Egbert van Panderen, printed in the Elzevier workshop in Leiden between 1626 and 1630, and then painted by an unknown artist some time in the 17th century.
It’s unknown whether it was cut out of a fully-painted bound book or simply removed from an unbound copy.
Provenance information is not available.
An original page created for Academie de l'Espée, the treatise of Girard Thibault d’Anvers. It includes a dedication to Otto zur Lippe-Brake.
This print was engraved by Pieter Serwouters, printed in the Elzevier workshop in Leiden between 1626 and 1630, and then painted by an unknown artist some time in the 17th century.
It’s unknown whether it was cut out of a fully-painted bound book or simply removed from an unbound copy.
Provenance information is not available.
An original page created for Academie de l'Espée, the treatise of Girard Thibault d’Anvers.
This print was engraved by Crispijn van den Queborn after 1619, printed in the Elzevier workshop in Leiden between 1626 and 1630, and then painted by an unknown artist some time in the 17th century.
It was apparently cut out of a bound book by a later book-breaker.
Provenance information is not available.
An original page created for Academie de l'Espée, the treatise of Girard Thibault d’Anvers. It includes a dedication to Georg Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg.
This print was engraved by Boëtius Adamsz Bolswert after 1620, printed in the Elzevier workshop in Leiden between 1626 and 1630, and then painted by an unknown artist some time in the 17th century.
It’s unknown whether it was cut out of a fully-painted bound book or simply removed from an unbound copy.
Provenance information is not available.
An original page created for Academie de l'Espée, the treatise of Girard Thibault d’Anvers. It includes a dedication to Christian von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel.
This print was engraved by Andries Jacobsz Stock some time after 1613, printed in the Elzevier workshop in Leiden between 1626 and 1630, and then painted by an unknown artist some time in the 17th century.
It’s unknown whether it was cut out of a fully-painted bound book or simply removed from an unbound copy.
Provenance information is not available.
An original page created for Academie de l'Espée, the treatise of Girard Thibault d’Anvers.
This print was engraved by Egbert van Panderen, printed in the Elzevier workshop in Leiden between 1626 and 1630, and then painted by an unknown artist some time in the 17th century.
It was apparently cut out of a bound book by a later book-breaker.
Provenance information is not available.
An original page created for Academie de l'Espée, the treatise of Girard Thibault d’Anvers.
This print was engraved by Johann Gelle between 1614 and 1625, printed in the Elzevier workshop in Leiden between 1626 and 1630, and then painted by an unknown artist some time in the 17th century.
It’s unknown whether it was cut out of a fully-painted bound book or simply removed from an unbound copy.
Provenance information is not available.
An original page created for Academie de l'Espée, the treatise of Girard Thibault d’Anvers.
This print was engraved by Crispijn de Passe some time after 1612, printed in the Elzevier workshop in Leiden between 1626 and 1630, and then painted by an unknown artist some time in the 17th century.
It’s unknown whether it was cut out of a fully-painted bound book or simply removed from an unbound copy.
Provenance information is not available.
An original page created for Academie de l'Espée, the treatise of Girard Thibault d’Anvers.
This print was engraved by Willem Jacobsz Delff, printed in the Elzevier workshop in Leiden between 1626 and 1630, and then painted by an unknown artist some time in the 17th century.
It’s unknown whether it was cut out of a fully-painted bound book or simply removed from an unbound copy.
Provenance information is not available.