Toledo Rapier Info

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

Thank you Fernando! That was the plate I was trying to print but couldn't get it to cooperate. In that article by Rodriguez Lorente in my post 29 I was trying to describe those circumstances, and what I was understanding was that perhaps the 'perrillo' on the earlier jinete blades was used on a specific form of blade by the Master. It seemed the author suggested they were not on all blades produced by Julian...

I wouldn't figure it that way Jim or, better saying, jinetas were the business of the time so, tese were the ones on which he would (first) apply his usual marks. Also taken into account is that, jineta blades could easily be (re)mounted in hilts of later style, those espadas de lazo, where the perrillo may be seen.
Nothwithstanding that Julian lived as long as to the following century and would have produced different blades for his Christian clients, in which he would have mark them in the same way ... admitedly with design variants of the same beast.
Remember that Lorente apparently wasn't yet aware of the 1549 Zaragoza document cited by Berainz, in which Julian's origins and faith were questioned, as in his paper he still raises the problem of the perrillo being a impure animal and so a matter of controversy for a man of Moor origins. But then this opens another problematic door, as there are voices that question the attribution of the zoomorphic figure to an actual doggy. Apparently it was Palomares that defined graphically the beast as being definitely a perrillo, potentially influenced by Cervantes citations. But nothing avoids that the animal depicted by Julian was a stylized jackal or similar, much more consonant with the inclinations of a Moor smith.
Lorents also discards the theory in that that the perrillo and the Passau wolf could be distinguished by the attitude of their tail (the one in the perrillo upwards), as the Paris example shows us an horizontal tail, confusing such theory.