A Very Rare Nuremberg Arquebus 'Bronze'/Brass Barrel, ca. 1500-10

[Swordfish]

Its on Flickr, search Nicolaikirche Kalkar.

Best

[Matchlock]

It sadly does not show up on Mozilla Firefox, just carvings ...

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[Swordfish]

Its still there! Don`t search in the thumbnails, they are hardly recognisable.
Bildgrösse Anzeigen: nicht Klein, sondern Mittel.

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[Matchlock]

Thanks again!

Up to now all I had of this was a 30 year-old old post card, not bad, just a bit dark. Anyway, I posted it in an earlier thread here.

Now we even recognize the bluing on the iron parts, the blued iron ramrod finial and both the right-hand serpentine and the figured back sight (both close ups attached).

The fact that the stock is painted red is by no means coincidental. As I remarked several times before, the basic Gothic colors were red and green. This of course does not mean that all period works of art actually showed these basic colors; they were typical and 'ideal' of the 15th/early 16th c. 'feeling for art' - and therefore preferred by artisans who were required to represent the 'ideal' Late Gothic taste to their contemporaries.

Also attached are a general view of the Kalkar altar piece and two self portraits of the artist Jan Joest, who was born ca. 1455 and died after 1519.

Apart from a left-hand stocked arquebus in the Vienna Imperial collection (the lock mechanism parts poor reconstructions), and a highly interesting piece formerly in the Renwick collection, the stock painted with the coat-of-arms of the Emperor Maximilian I when still king (1500-07), its present whereabouts unknown since the 1980's, no similar complete small arquebuses of that type are known to me. The latter two feature brass barrels and snap tinder locks while the Jan Joest arquebus is equipped with a wrought-iron barrel.

Best,
Michael

[Matchlock]

Another, similar Landsknecht arquebus but of plainer and somewhat earlier type, not yet fitted with a lock mechanism and the stock left unvarnished but mounted with a brass barrel, together with a thick length of match cord, a powder horn and a priming flask, is depicted as part of the Herrenberg Altarpiece, by Jörg Ratgeb, 1518-9.

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[Matchlock]

An arquebus, similar to the one illustrated by Jörg Ratgeb, mounted with a brass barrel, the snap-tinderlock serpentine inaptly depicted to be attached on the right-hand side of the barrel (!), from the earliest Maximilian armory inventory, by Bartholomäus Freysleben, ca. 1495-1500, cod. icon. 222, fol. 181v.

It is labeled as messing hanndtpüchse (brass-barreled arquebus).

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[Matchlock]

Another brass arquebus barrel, of comparable dimensions but with socket for a (replaced) tiller stock, the pan with no provision for a cover, with early-style bell-mouthed muzzle, ca. 1490-1500, from the former arsenal of the Princes of Schwarzburg, now in the museum in Rudolstadt, Thuringia; author's photos, 2000.

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