A PAIR OF 32-BORE GERMAN WHEEL-LOCK PISTOLS (PUFFER) STOCKED IN THE MANNER OF THE SO-CALLED 'MASTER OF THE CASTLES'

NUREMBERG, LATE 16TH CENTURY

Details

A PAIR OF 32-BORE GERMAN WHEEL-LOCK PISTOLS (PUFFER) STOCKED IN THE MANNER OF THE SO-CALLED 'MASTER OF THE CASTLES'
Nuremberg, late 16th Century
With two-stage barrels swamped at the muzzle and with damascened decoration on a blued ground (now faded) throughout their length in silver and gold (now worn, more heavily on one pistol than the other) comprising scrollwork and standing classical men-at-arms, on the breech the stamped maker's initials 'FM', a trefoil between (Neue Stckel 7964), flat locks struck with the same mark and damascened with scrollwork in silver and gold (worn), small wheels each with domed gilt copper-alloy cover cast and pierced with flowers and foliage involving a female mask and covering a steel plate, sliding pan-covers engraved with a male mask and released by a pierced button, pivoting safety-catches, and flat cocks, ebony-veneered full stocks terminating in a large ball pommel below a gilt copper-alloy collar cast with flowers and foliage in relief, the balls each with five concave faces separated from each other by gilt copper-alloy mouldings and with large circular gilt copper-alloy cap cast in relief respectively with the head and shoulders of a man and a woman, each in late sixteenth-century costume, the surface of the stocks inlaid with engraved staghorn lines enclosing shaped mother-of-pearl panels, some pierced, finely engraved with masks, rosettes, and sportsmen, mostly armed and mounted, accompanied by hounds in pursuit of running game after designs by Virgil Solis (1514-1562), and in front of the trigger-guards with two standing Turkish Janissaries, the background filled with tendrils, acorns and ball-flowers in white and green staghorn and mother-of-pearl (the inlay with minor losses and restoration), engraved horn fore-end caps, iron baluster triggers, iron trigger-guards with central moulding, and iron-tipped wooden ramrods, the forward ramrod-pipes of staghorn engraved with a mask and reinforced by an iron band (the latter missing on one pistol)
19 in. (50.2 cm.) (2)

Provenance

Rothschild inv. no. AR98.

Literature

H. Schedelmann, Die Grossen Bchsenmacher, Brunswick, 1972, p. 30, pl. 52.

Lot Essay

The number of surviving firearms stocked in the manner of the 'Master of the Castles' (so called because of the castles which often feature in the decoration) suggests that they were produced in a large workshop, and as many bear Nuremberg marks on their locks or barrels, and in a single case on the stock as well, it is almost certain that this was in that city.

Other firearms attributed to this unidentified master are to be found in many major collections including the Bargello, Florence (inv. nos. R/64 and M. 235); the Odescalchi Collection, Rome (inv. nos. 11 and 12); the Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor (inv. nos. 104 and 130-132); the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (inv. no. M 1082-1910); the Hermitage, St. Petersburg (inv. nos. 6611 and 6613); and the Collection of the Princes of Liechtenstein, Schlo Vaduz (inv. no. 3822).

The Turkish Janissaries in the inlay, reflecting the endemic wars against the Turks in Eastern Europe, probably draw on the woodcuts of the Nuremberg artist, Jost Amman (1539-1591), or his contemporaries (see C. Blair, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor, Arms, Armour and Base-Metalwork, Fribourg, 1974, pp. 319-322).

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