Belle et très rare rapière italienne signée,... - Lot 209 - Pierre Bergé & Associés

Belle et très rare rapière italienne signée, exécutée dans le goût espagnol pour un jeune aristocrate, par Frañ Maria Rivolta in Milano alla Corona, Milan vers 1670. A fine and very rare signed North Italian cup-hilt rapier in the Spanish taste, perhaps for a youth, by Frañ Maria Rivolta in Milano alla Corona, circa 1670. With slender blade of flattened hexagonal section changing to flattened diamond section over its upper third, signed by the bladesmith "DE FRANCISCO" and "RVIZ EN TOLEDO" in stamped letters within the short fullers on the respective sides, the fullers enclosed by clusters of minute punch marks and capped by a cross mark, small iron hilt of slender rounded bars with button terminals, including long straight quillons cut with bands of leaves in low relief and spiralling between the fluting at the outer sections, the knuckle-guard en suite, globular pommel, slightly compressed, rising to a prominent button and cut with a diagonal alternating pattern of flutes and bands of leaves, the pattern en suite with both the bars, the collars of the grip and with the rompe puntas forming the rim of the cup-guard, the latter fitted with concave guardapolvo chiselled with a pierced design of scrollwork contrasting against its original red fabric liner, the cup-guard signed in full around the plain roundel at its base, "FRAÑ MARIA RIVOLTA IN MILANO ALLA CORONA", finely chiselled with concentric bands of symmetrical pierced scrollwork carrying a series of eight large vacant ovals about the middle, and with its original grip reinforced by slender iron bands over patterned fine wire and set between a pair of decorated collars. L. overall: 112.5 cm - L. blade: 102.5 cm. Signed Spanish and Italian rapier hilts are rarely found in private ownership and the present example is among possibly no more than four extant (and a dagger hilt) which record the work of Milanese makers. Another, by the same maker and signed in a very similar manner to the present hilt is in the von