Help on mark on Italian sword ca. 1580

[Philip]

Originally Posted by fernando

So interesting; to the point in that, the term storta (twisted, unstraight) possibly an allusion to this sword guard, made a career in dictionaries, as nowadays attributed to a scimitar or a cutlass.

Nando, that is an interesting explanation and yes, many of the examples you see in person and in publications have a characteristic S shape to the quillons. But Gotti's book which I referred to previously, contains several examples of storte which have D shaped knucklebows with crab claws below; one even incorporates a shell guard for good measure.

If one translation of storta is "unstraight", or perhaps bent, could that refer to the distinct curvature of the single-edged blades, or at least the increasing arc of the edge as it goes into the "bowie-knife-type" tip? Consider that these weapons first appeared in a culture which throughout the Middle Ages and at the dawn of the Renaissance was pretty much wedded to the notion of a straight blade -- even the single edged backsword shape (mezza spada) had a point that was more or less in-line to the central axis of the blade itself.