author

Ercole Santucci Perugino

Best known for a rare 1614 dance manual, this elusive Italian writer offers a vivid window into courtly movement, manners, and teaching in the late Renaissance. Very little is known about the person behind the name, which only adds to the book’s historical intrigue.

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Mastro da Ballo

Mastro da Ballo

by Ercole Santucci Perugino

About the author

Ercole Santucci Perugino is known for Mastro da Ballo, a dance manual dated 1614 and associated with Perugia. Surviving references treat him as an Italian dancing master or author of dance instruction, and the name “Perugino” is commonly understood as linking him to Perugia, either by birth or residence.

What makes Santucci especially interesting is how little else can be confirmed about his life. Modern library and reference records connect him almost entirely to this single work, which has been valued by later scholars because it preserves detailed material on steps, deportment, and choreographies from an important moment in Italian dance history.

For readers today, Santucci’s appeal lies in that mix of mystery and usefulness: he is a shadowy figure, but his book remains a concrete guide to the social world of early 17th-century dance. Through Mastro da Ballo, he still speaks clearly as a teacher concerned with elegance, structure, and the practical art of moving well.