A lady takes a bow
There's a new illustration in the gallery on the topic of Women Fighting Men. You won't find this one in the book — it was drawn for the May issue of MAI magazine (the one with Shannon Lee on the cover).
Working on this one reminded me of something that I didn't have enough information to include, although it fitted the theme perfectly. Years ago a friend told me that he had come across some amazing rules for conducting fights to settle disputes between men and women in medieval Germany. I remember him showing me copies of the illustrations that accompanied the detailed descriptions. At the time I understood that the book from which they originated was illustrated by Dürer and my friend was working on a collaborative translation; but now I suspect that I may be combining two different works because Dürer's fechtbuch is rather well-known and I don't think it includes such things. I've never seen the finished result, if indeed it ever was finished (the person concerned has since died). But I should chase it up because the rules were very odd indeed — for example, very specific about the different (and unequal) types of weapon each could have, and that one of the combatants (I forget which, but I think it was the man) was obliged to stand in a pit. I'm not making this up. If I can find the details there may well be a second illustration, a part ii to this topic.