Bonaventura, the other Radaelli

In the history of modern fencing, the name Radaelli is inextricably linked to Giuseppe Radaelli, inventor of the famous method of sabre fencing, which naturally leaves his older brother and master, Bonaventura, largely forgotten. In an effort to remedy this neglect, this article shall summarise all the available information on the latter. In addition to shining a light on Bonaventura for his own sake, we can also deepen our understanding of his most famous student.

Bonaventura Radaelli was born around 1822, and he first appears in the public press as a teenager in September 1838, singled out for the skill he demonstrated at a fencing exhibition at the Teatro alla Canobbiana (now the Teatro Lirico) in Milan alongside various amateurs and the local fencing masters Giovanni Villalonga, Fortunato Citterio, and Antonio De Andrea.¹ He does not reappear in the press for several years after this event, but it is clear that his talent for fencing was nurtured during this time, as by 1846 it had become his profession, running his own fencing hall at Via Ciovasso 1651.²

Our best guess as to who Bonaventura's master was up to this point is provided in the memoirs of Manfredo Camperio, who in the mid-1840s started taking lessons from Milanese master Giovanni Battista Rossi only a month before the latter's death. Camperio continued his training under Rossi's successor, the young Bonaventura Radaelli, taking one or two foil lessons every day and spending most of his evenings at the fencing hall.³ Bonaventura being chosen as Rossi's successor suggests that he was a student of the late master, or at the very least trained in a similar method.

While it is difficult to say for sure what that method looked like, there is some evidence that links Bonaventura to the renowned master Alberto Marchionni. When Marchionni republished his landmark treatise on the mixed school in 1864, a Maestro Radaelli of Milan (most likely Bonaventura) is listed as having supported its republication by purchasing five copies of the book, a strong indication that he was an advocate of the mixed school.⁴ Thus one can trace a connection with Giuseppe Radaelli's 'half-Italian' foil method which would appear in Del Frate's publications of the 1870s, a method likely inherited from Bonaventura and the northern Italian fencing scene of the 1840s.

Looking beyond the world of fencing, given the turbulent political situation in Lombardy in the late 1840s and Manfredo Camperio's engagement with other Italian patriots, the Radaelli brothers were likely exposed to a fair amount of revolutionary sentiment due to the oppressive Austrian rule. The political unrest reached a boiling point in early 1848 and resulted in (among many other revolts throughout Italy) the Five Days of Milan, which saw Milanese revolutionaries temporarily drive Austrian authorities out of the city. Bonaventura is mentioned by Camperio as being present with him on 21 March, and he likely took part in the siege of the Palazzo del Genio on that day.⁵ Thus when Giuseppe took up arms in the Monferrato cavalry in 1859, the patriotic example had already been set by his brother a decade prior.

Following the revolt, Bonaventura continued to find steady employment as a fencing and gymnastics master, teaching at his own hall as well as local secondary schools such as the Collegio Longone and the Collegio Calchi-Taeggi. His private hall moved between various places around Milan, but by 1866 he had settled at Monte di Pietà 9, where he would remain for the rest of his career and where his brother Giuseppe would return to in 1868.⁶

The friction between the brothers that had caused Giuseppe's departure from Milan twelve years earlier seems to have no longer been present, and the success of their renewed partnership allowed the Radaelli hall to take on a new level of popularity in Milanese society. The Radaelli hall became almost a cultural phenomenon, hosting yearly banquets which were attended by various members of Milan's high society. After one such banquet, Il Secolo described the hall in particularly glowing terms:

Bringing together noblemen, artists, professionals, and merchants, it is a school which, aside from the other beneficial results, offers an excellent means of union and camaraderie between the different social classes.⁷

While it was Giuseppe who received veneration from the Radaellians in the subsequent decades, in Settimo Del Frate's 1868 and 1872 publications they both receive credit for the method which bore their name, although Giuseppe receives a special mention for his role in spreading it to the military.⁸ We are given no clues as to why Bonaventura's part within the development of the Radaelli method was later downplayed; perhaps his lack of presence in military circles meant he was unknown to the students of the Fencing Master's School who espoused Radaellian fencing in subsequent decades, or perhaps this downplaying was a deliberate measure to bolster Giuseppe's image.

In 1873 the Radaelli hall achieved a marked rise in popularity after it absorbed the members of Ezio Galli's hall which closed earlier that same year.⁹ Giuseppe's reputation within the Ministry of War had similarly continued to climb, having recently been appointed inspector general of the fencing schools for the entire army. Giuseppe was now at the peak of his career, while Bonaventura's was at its end. From 1870 on the annual directory Guida di Milano stops listing Bonaventura among the city's fencing masters and is replaced by his brother, and references in the press to the 'Radaelli brothers' steadily become rarer. By the end of the 1870s Bonaventura has disappeared from the scene, likely a signal of his retirement.

It is not until 1886 that we find any indication of Bonaventura's existence, where he is mentioned as one of several people injured in a gas explosion at the Café Martini, of which was a daily patron.¹⁰ It was also here in September 1889 that his health took a sudden turn for the worse, as Corriere della Sera reported:

In a corner of the Café Martini, sitting, almost huddled, one could see for at least the last fifteen years, for many hours of the day and night, a fine Milanese character, with a short white beard, face always flushed bright red, lively little eyes, his lip expressing a smile sometimes observant and sometimes mocking.

The old guest of the Café Martini was the founder of a fencing school, Bonaventura Redaelli, who could boast of having given Italian fencing a special direction and many of its best students.

Twenty years ago Bonaventura lived together with his brother Giuseppe, also a fencing master and famous for having founded a new system, the mixed system which took his name.

All the students of Bonaventura remember with gratitude the dignity, the serenity of their master, and these students belong to the most noble of Milanese society.

Retiring from this career in 1866, he left his fencing hall to his brother Giuseppe, who died in 1879.¹¹

Redaelli, like so many artists who perhaps received more thorns than laurels in their careers, lived as a misanthrope; he spoke only if provoked, and did not wish to discuss fencing. If somebody started on that topic, he grabbed his hat and left the café.

He was obsessively against newspapers. He said that if he could rule with an iron fist, for at least ten years there would have been no newspapers, no musical theatres, no pianos.

Oh, the pianos, how they got on his nerves!

He complained that there was a tax on dogs and not on pianos, which he honestly believed were one of the causes of today's rising nervousness.

He was nervous, but healthy, very robust. At 68, when it came to speed, agility, walking endurance, and good appetite, he was leagues ahead of a young man.

Four nights ago he came, as usual, to the Café Martini, sat down and picked up a maligned newspaper.

A few moments later he was seen rubbing his eyes with his hands, then gazing at the newspaper and finally throwing it away saying in a discouraged tone: 'God, God, I can't see!'

His friends gathered around trying to console him, and then they accompanied him to his house.

The next morning Redaelli went to see Doctor Lainati, who found no lesions or other local material causes for his dimmed vision; however, he immediately understood that this was an incipient congestion which was going to complete its fatal process, and advised the poor Mr Bonaventura to go to bed.

From that moment Redaelli was a dead man. The darkness before his eyes became ever thicker, he was taken by dejection, desperation, delirium, and before the congestion took him, he died of despair.

Poor Redaelli.¹²

Bonaventura Radaelli died on 16 September 1889, disillusioned with the modern world and seemingly wanting nothing to do with the profession he dedicated his life to. Was this detachment a result of receiving too little recognition for his hard work? Had his love for the art been soured in a dispute with his brother, or rather was it the untimely death of Giuseppe that made fencing too painful to think about? It is understandably entertaining to imagine an old man sitting a café ranting about how pianos are the main cause of societal decay, but one cannot help but wonder what lay behind this tragic social withdrawal.

The last comparison to be made here between the Radaelli brothers lies in how they were finally put to rest. The remains of both are found at almost opposite ends of Milan's grand Cimitero Monumentale, with Giuseppe's remains placed in a simple ossuary and Bonaventura in a more elaborate funerary urn. Was this because Bonaventura had greater financial success in his career, despite the authority attained by his younger brother? Was perhaps Giuseppe's family more humble in the use of their money, while Bonaventura's family wished that he be given a more prominent resting place to show his social standing in life? The answers to the many questions posed here are well beyond our reach today, and unlike engraved stone of the Cimitero Monumentale, our vague impressions of who these brothers were outside the walls of their famous fencing hall are granted no such solidity.

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1 M. P., "Accademia di spada e sciabola all'I. R. Teatro della Canobbiana," Termometro mercantile e d'industria, 22 September 1838, 304.^↩
2 Utile giornale ossia guida di Milano per l'anno 1846 (Milan: Giuseppe Bernardoni di Gio, 1846), 609.^↩
3 Manfredo Camperio, Autobiografia di Manfredo Camperio, 1826-1899 (Milan: Riccardo Quintieri, 1917), 12.^↩
4 On the republication of Marchionni's treatise, see this article.^↩
5 Camperio, 37.^↩
6 Bonaventura's employment can be tracked through the annual issues of Guida di Milano, available here. On Giuseppe's departure from and eventual return to Milan, see Jacopo Gelli, Bibliografia generale della scherma con note critiche, biografiche e storiche (Florence: L. Niccolai, 1890), 168.^↩
7 "Banchetto," Cronaca, Il Secolo, 20 January 1870, 2.^↩
8 Settimo Del Frate, Istruzione per maneggio e scherma della sciabola (Florence: Tipografia, lit. e calc. La Venezia, 1868), xiii; Settimo Del Frate, Istruzione per la scherma di punta (Milan: Gaetano Baroffio, 1872), 1.^↩
9 "Banchetto Sociale," Cronaca, Il Secolo, 6 February 1873, 2.^↩
10 "Lo scoppio nel caffè Martini: Un morto - un ferito," Il Secolo, 17 March 1886, 3.^↩
11 Giuseppe actually died in 1882, and as mentioned above Bonaventura probably did not fully retire until after 1870.^↩
12 "Bonaventura Redaelli: Un altro tipo milanese scomparso," Corriere della Sera, 21 September 1891, 3.^↩