A 20-BORE TUSCO-EMILIAN SNAPHAUNCE SPORTING GUN

Details

A 20-BORE TUSCO-EMILIAN SNAPHAUNCE SPORTING GUN

BY THE ZANOTTI FAMILY OF LUGO, DATED 1787

With shortened octagonal sighted barrel with double line engraving on the upper angles and chiselled in relief at the breech with a demi-figure, engraved tang, border engraved rounded lock decorated with scrolling foliage terminating in a serpent-head and chiselled in relief on the tail with a cherub's mask, the inside of the lock-plate dated and engraved with initials 'C.Z', figured half-stock (reduced from full) carved with foliage, profile heads, monsters and female busts, iron mounts chiselled and pierced with monsters, scrollwork, female demi-figures, portrait busts and standing Classical figures, large pierced escutcheon, iron sling loops, turned ramrod-pipes, and horn-tipped ramrod with worm
36¼in. (92cm.) barrel

Lot Essay

The initials C.Z engraved on the inside of the lock-plate stand for Cassiano Zanotti, the name of the head of the family which originated in Firenzuola and settled in Lugo between Bologna and Ravenna. It appears the family worked as a team and it is therefore probable that the initials were adopted as a form of trade mark. See Nolfo di Carpegna, 'Notes on Central Italian Firearms of the Eighteenth Century', part II, J.A.A.S., vol. III, No. 1, pp. 14-15, and plate XXII, A & B (for a gun, dated 1789, with an almost identical lock in the Musée de l'Armée, Paris)

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