Rapière à branches et pommeau avec un décor... - Lot 211 - Pierre Bergé & Associés

Rapière à branches et pommeau avec un décor torsadé, Italie vers 1620. A well-formed Italian rapier with gadrooned swept-hilt, circa 1620. With long slender tapering blade stamped "ORTOLAMIO" at the forte within the narrow fuller running over almost the entire length of both sides, border-engraved ricasso struck with a mark on both sides and resembling that of the bladesmith Thomas de Ayala (the blade probably associated), robust iron hilt of rounded bars decorated with bold gadrooned ornament, with down curved rear quillon swelling towards the tip, a pair of arms, the rear arm joined at its head by both the base of a ring-guard and the base of a long branch looping at a diagonal to join the mid-point of the knuckle-guard, the ring-guard filled with a pierced sprung-in plate, inner-guard of three plain bars looping from the heads of the arms to join the knuckle-guard at its midpoint and converged to form a single bar, large pommel rising to a prominent button, and later grip bound with copper wire. L. overall: 129.5 cm - L. blade: 114.5 cm. For a discussion on the mark on the blade, see NORMAN, A.V.B, Wallace Collection Catalogues, European Arms and Armour Supplement, 1986, p.125, A 532. An Italian rapier with a swept-hilt decorated in a very similar manner to the present example is also in The Wallace Collection (A 602). Norman in his study of 1980, The Rapier and Small-Sword, 1460-1820, mistakenly gives the origin of A 602 as "probably North European" (plate 54), having corrected himself in 1986 (Op.Cit. sup.). The dagger offered as the following lot is a close match to the present rapier.