Destrier (from which the Modern English spelling derives). The word is also found in medieval Provençal (as "destrier") and Italian (as "destriere", "destriero"). These forms themselves derived from the Vulgar Latin "equus dextarius", meaning "right-sided horse" (from "dextra", "right hand", the same root as "dexterous" and "dexterity"). This may refer to it being led by the squire at the knight's right side (or led by the right hand) or to the horse's gait, (possibly leading with the right). The word "destrier" does not refer to a breed, but to a "type" of horse: the finest and strongest warhorse. These horses were
Young Knight in a Landscape was rector of the fortress of Methoni, in Greece, during the Ottoman siege of 1500. His family would have commissioned the painting as a tribute to his memory, as, being the only Venetian survivor of the siege, he had been accused of cowardice. Taken by the Ottomans to Constantinople, he was beheaded there on 4 November 1501. The painting was sold by the heirs of the American collector Otto Kahn after his death and bought by Heinrich Thyssen in 1935. Young Knight in a Landscape Young Knight in a Landscape, or Portrait of a Knight, is a painting by the