Belle forte-épée de la Guerre de Trente ans,... - Lot 234 - Pierre Bergé & Associés

Belle forte-épée de la Guerre de Trente ans, pour un officier suédois au service du roi Gustave II Adolphe de Suède, Allemagne vers 1620-30. A fine German broadsword from The Thirty Years' War, for a Swedish officer in the army of King Gustavus II Adolphus, circa 1620-30. With double-edged hollow-ground blade tapering to a short point, lightly etched with ovals suspended between scrolling foliage at the forte and filled with the bust portrait of Gustavus II Adolphus, involving on one side the motto "PRO ARIS ET FOCIS" and on the other "SOLI DEO GLORIAS", narrow ricasso, large silvered-iron hilt profusely engraved with flowers, foliage and grotesque masks in the characteristic North German manner, predominantly on the flattened bars and on the pommel, formed with a pair of straight quillons with opposing tightly curled "fishtail" terminals, symmetrical cup-like guard involving a pair of large up-turned rings each filled with a fire-gilt sprung-in plate pierced with rows of small stars and circles, carried by a pair of arms together with additional pairs of bars looped above the rings carrying the plates, and these in turn merging centrally with a pair of D-shaped horizontal upper rings, stopper-shaped pommel with flat edges and near-flat sides, the grip bound with boldly patterned iron wire, and the hilt retaining original silvering and gilding throughout. L. overall: 110.3 cm - L. blade: 94 cm. A sword of related type is said to have been used by Gustavus Adolphus when he was killed at the Battle of Lützen in 1632. The sword is preserved in The Royal Armoury Stockholm (Inv. No. 11661). In his published study of rapier hilts Norman classifies this specific hilt type as type 81, as a variant of the example in Stockholm. He states that the only example of this type which he had found in contemporary portraiture (by 1980) was a hilt in a painting of King Louis XIII of France, circa 1630, probably by Ferdinand Elle I, and hanging in Chiswick House, West London. King Gust