A fifteenth century handgun and a modern mystery

[Ed]

This is a ca. 1450 tiller gun probably German.

Barrel 28" (71.2cm) o/a 44" (111.5cm) Bore ~ .5"

The interesting thing is the inscription which is

CASTILLO de MONTJUIC
BERNAT de SARRIA
1329 A.D.
BARCELONA, SPAIN
# de 4378

Now, I am pretty sure of a couple of things, one is that the hero, Bernat, never held this weapon. Another is that anyone inscribing an "inventory" number for the collection at the Castillo would not <ahem> write "Spain".

Interesting stuff but not terribly noteworthy. It does get more interesting, however.

The last inscription is on a folding hand cannon of approximately the same era. It says what mine says except with a different "Inventory" (It's still "Spain" though.)

Now, it seems that my buddy Matchlock came across at least one other weapon with a similar inscription in Europe and I came across one here in the USA and have heard of at least one other one.

Matchlock and I sort of agreed that what probably happened was that some dealer in the 20's (?) inscribed a bunch of weapons to make them more salable, giving them a provenance as it were.

There is more though. The great Spanish Collector, Jose Estruch y Cumella, had his collection in Barcelona not terribly far from the Castillo. The collection was dispersed ... Jeez, the date escapes me and it's late, lets say early 1900's. An english dealer (who would, presumably, spell Spain ... well ... "Spain") handled at least some of the sales. Could it be from his collection? I managed to obtain a catalog of his collection from a dealer in Russia (don't ask). No signs of this piece or any of the other "marked" ones. Could this piece (and the others) have been legitimately deaccessioned from the Castillo? Who knows. I have been unable to find out if the Castillo's collection ever included very early firearms.

So there it stands. Anyone here familiar with the Castillo and it's collections?

Anyone have any ideas?

BTW, the authenticity of the pieces is not really an issue, what I find fasinating is the question of the provenance.

[Marc]

Fascinating, indeed...

I find somewhat hard to believe that the Castillo would have deaccessioned such a piece, but nothing is impossible.
Let's see... Bernat de Sarrià died in 1335, so the name and the date would go together as a supposed attribution that we do know... let's say "unlikely", to be polite.
The Castillo de Montjuich is now a (soon to be closed) military museum in Barcelona, but it was a military fortress with an active and bloody story up to the mid-19th c., when it started to be essentially used as a garrison, to be shortly after transformed into a military prison, a role that fulfilled until 1960, when it was donated to the City of Barcelona. It opened its doors as museum three years later, in 1963. The Estruch collection was auctioned in 1903, and acquired in almost its totality of 1300 pieces by the French collector Georges Pauilhac, who later on donated its own collection, including Estruch's, to the Musée de l'Armée, in Paris, when it can now be enjoyed by us all. So, I don't really think there's a connection between the Estruch collection and the Museum in the Castillo, although, again, it is not impossible.
My money goes, in short, also to the theory of a dealer trying to make a better sale by assigning a piece to an historical character and trying to substantiate such claim by pretending that it was in fact a museum from that character's place of origin who did in fact the assignation, "inventory number" included.
In any event, it could be interesting to contact the last director of the Military Museum in Castillo de Montjuich, Mr. J. L. Calvó, HERE, he may know something about this labels, if there's indeed a certain number of them.

[Ed]

Originally Posted by Marc

Fascinating, indeed...

I find somewhat hard to believe that the Castillo would have deaccessioned such a piece, but nothing is impossible.
Let's see... Bernat de Sarrià died in 1335, so the name and the date would go together as a supposed attribution that we do know... let's say "unlikely", to be polite.
The Castillo de Montjuich is now a (soon to be closed) military museum in Barcelona, but it was a military fortress with an active and bloody story up to the mid-19th c., when it started to be essentially used as a garrison, to be shortly after transformed into a military prison, a role that fulfilled until 1960, when it was donated to the City of Barcelona. It opened its doors as museum three years later, in 1963. The Estruch collection was auctioned in 1903, and acquired in almost its totality of 1300 pieces by the French collector Georges Pauilhac, who later on donated its own collection, including Estruch's, to the Musée de l'Armée, in Paris, when it can now be enjoyed by us all. So, I don't really think there's a connection between the Estruch collection and the Museum in the Castillo, although, again, it is not impossible.
My money goes, in short, also to the theory of a dealer trying to make a better sale by assigning a piece to an historical character and trying to substantiate such claim by pretending that it was in fact a museum from that character's place of origin who did in fact the assignation, "inventory number" included.
In any event, it could be interesting to contact the last director of the Military Museum in Castillo de Montjuich, Mr. J. L. Calvó, HERE, he may know something about this labels, if there's indeed a certain number of them.

Nothing would surprise me about the history of an object, really. We might have a thread at some point on the interesting activities of various curators and experts in the early 1900's. The Met and Royal Armouries have both, in the past, deaccessioned things that they now regret getting rid of. So I wouldn't dismiss the possibility of these marked pieces coming from some notable collection. Why Spanish though? The inscription, I contend, was made by an English speaker (Spain? ) for the English speaking market. Why "Spain"? It seems to me that some obscure noble collection in the wilds of Germany would somehow resonate more with a collector used to such a provenance. Who knows though.

I appreciate your observations and the contact information. I will send a note to the gentleman forthwith.

The Castillo is closing? Why? What is going on?

eta: just dropped a note. We shall see.