Barbasetti

Luigi Barbasetti
Born	21.02.1859 Cividale del Friuli
Died	31.03.1948 Verona
Occupation	Fencing master
Nationality	Italian
Alma mater	Scuola Magistrale di Scherma
Influences	Guiseppe Radaelli Masaniello Parise
Genres	Fencing manual
Language	Italian
Notable work(s)	Ehren-Codex (1898) Das Säbelfechten (1899) Das Stossfechten (1900)

Luigi Barbasetti was an Italian fencing master. He was educated in fencing in Rome and Milan, afterwards he was teaching in Trieste and finally opened his own fencing school in Vienna in 1894. Barbasetti established a very favourable school in the Austro-Hungarian Empire until he was expelled from Vienna in 1915 when Italy joined World War I. He continued his teaching in Paris and later on in Verona, where he died in 1948.

Barbasetti, was decisively influenced by his first fencing master Guiseppe Radaelli in Milan and completed his training as a fencing master at the Scuola Magistrale Militare di Roma under Masaniello Parise before moving on to Trieste, where contact with Austro-Hungarian officers and especially Erzherzog Franz Salvator von Österreich-Toskana should open the way for him to Vienna. At a fencing tournament in Prague in 1895, Barbasetti's private students immediately performed so well that Barbasetti was subsequently entrusted with restructuring fencing training at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt. Barbasetti's evolution of the Radaellan school of fencing spread rapidly throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire and had a decisive influence on the style of fencing at the beginning of the 20th century, even beyond the borders of Austria-Hungary, which is why he is often referred to as a reformer of fencing.