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A Fine Pair Of Tusco-Emilian 38-Bore Snaphaunce Belt Pistols (2) image 1
A Fine Pair Of Tusco-Emilian 38-Bore Snaphaunce Belt Pistols (2) image 2
Lot 298*

A Fine Pair Of Tusco-Emilian 38-Bore Snaphaunce Belt Pistols
One Signed 'Brento' And Dated 1763

27 November 2019, 10:00 GMT
London, Knightsbridge

£6,000 - £8,000

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A Fine Pair Of Tusco-Emilian 38-Bore Snaphaunce Belt Pistols
One Signed 'Brento' And Dated 1763

With slender two-stage barrels each decorated with engraved panels of scrollwork at the rear of the breech, in front of the turned girdle, and at the muzzle, shaped tangs engraved with foliage on a hatched ground, rounded locks (one inscribed and dated on the inside) chiselled in relief with scrolls, a mask, a demi-figure, profile heads, a bird's head, and, on each pan-cover, a dog's head, the heads of the retaining bolts each chiselled with a cherub-mask (one bolt and one top jaw replaced), moulded figured full stocks (some repairs and restorations) partially carved in relief with scrollwork against a punched ground, the fore-ends each with a demi-figure, chiselled and pierced steel mounts decorated in low relief with scrollwork, monster-heads, demi-figures, and portrait busts, spurred pommels with pairs of demi-figures blowing trumpets, the escutcheons with coronet above and grotesque mask beneath, chiselled triggers each issuing from a bird's head, and wooden ramrods each with iron-mounted horn tip (some scattered surface pitting, one belt hook missing) (2)
27.7 cm. barrels

Footnotes

Provenance
Gustav Didderich, Philadelphia
Christie's London, Antique Arms and Armour, 16 December 2002, lot 194

Exhibited
Loan Exhibition of European Arms and Armor, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 3 August-27 September 1931, cat. no. 310 (illustrated)

For information on the gunmakers of Brento, see Nolfo di Carpegna, 'Notes on Central Italian Firearms of the Eighteenth Century', part I, The Journal of the Arms & Armour Society, Vol. VII, No. 2 (June 1971), pp. 18-19: 'Notes of the Firearms of the Tosco-Emilian Apennines', Arms and Armor Annual, Vol. 1, 1973 (R. Held, ed.), pp. 229-231

Additional information

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