Rare épée de cérémonie à une main et demi,... - Lot 60 - Pierre Bergé & Associés

Rare épée de cérémonie à une main et demi, Stocco da cerimonia, Venise vers 1600-1620. A Rare State hand-and-a-half Bearing-sword, Stocco da cerimonia, Venetian, circa 1600-1620. With earlier long blade tapering to a sharp narrow point, cut with a pair of narrow fullers divided by a low medial ridge ending just behind the point, each struck with a mark on both sides below the hilt, heavy gilt-bronze hilt cast in relief, the designs partly inverted and intended to be viewed both carried or sheathed, comprising a pair of arched long quillons decorated over the sides with panels of scrolling foliage, with guilloche panels along the inner edge, large terminals moulded in two stages with domed gadrooned tops, at the centre of either face a scrolling plan of strapwork involving a swagged small mask, globular pommel decorated with clusters of fruit raised within scrolling flowers, enclosed by addorsed half-figures arched in high relief over the sides, original leather-covered grip formed in two stages bound with three decorated gilt-bronze collars, and in untouched condition, the hilt retaining much original gilding: in its wooden scabbard covered in plum velvet and with three late 18th century giltbrass mounts cast in low relief, the scabbard almost certainly replaced for the continued ceremonial use of sword, probably in the early 19th century. L. overall: 124.5 cm - L. blade: 101 cm - W.: 20.8 cm. The blade type dates from circa 1500-1530. The decoration of the hilt dates the sword to the late 16th or early 17th century, a period in which swords of this type were increasingly produced to be born on ceremonial occasions as symbols of Office. The use of a pre-existing blade would have been a matter of natural expediency and on the evidence of surviving examples an apparently common practice. The hilt of the present sword compares with that of a Venetian Bearing-sword made for a member of the prominent Venetian Pisani family, in the Musée de l'Armée, Paris (J 04958), see B