A RARE AUSTRIAN (KLAUSEN) ARCHER'S PAVISE

MID-15TH CENTURY

Details

A RARE AUSTRIAN (KLAUSEN) ARCHER'S PAVISE
MID-15TH CENTURY
Of wood, concave towards the back and of characteristic rectangular form with rounded top and raised central gutter hollowed out internally, tapering to a beak-like projection at the top, the outer face applied with gessoed (some loss) canvas painted with polychrome decorated with the Austrian Bindenschild (light red with a white fess) superimposed with scrolling foliage, at the top of the central gutter the heraldic arms in an escutcheon painted with the red cross of St. George on a white ground, and a six-pointed yellow (for gold) star on a blue/green field, the inner face covered with natural pigskin (some age-related defects), with an iron bar across the top of the medial channel to take the top of a supporting stake, and iron nails retaining fragments of the original central "Y-shaped handle
45 1/2in. (115.5cm.) high
This pavise is one of a series of approximately fifty-nine which up to 1871 survived in the Arsenal of Klausen, South Tyrol

Provenance

The Town Arsenal, Klausen, South Tyrol
Roy G. Cole Collection (Part II), Sotheby's, New Bond Street, 12 October 1970, Lot 261 (purchased by the vendor's late husband)

Lot Essay

Oswald Graf Trapp associated the heraldic emblems on the shields from the Klausen group with Landesfursten Herzog Sigmund den Munzreichen of the Tyrol (1427-1496). The St. George's shield became the emblem of the Swabian League, of which Duke Sigmund was a member. See Oswald Graf Trapp, "Klausener Tartschen", Zeitschrift fur Historische Waffen-und Kostumkunde, N.s. 3 (1929-31), pp. 156-166 (group II, Nr. 21)

A similar example was sold at Christie's, King Street, Fine Antique Arms and Armour and Books from the R.T. Gwynn Collection, 24 April 2001, Lot 59 (£29,375), and an identical example was sold by Sotheby's, The Hanover Sale, Schloss Marienburg, 5 October 2005, Lot 206 (€ 29,040)

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