A Truly Sensational Seven Barrel Matchlock Arquebus, Brescia, ca. 1530, in Prague!

[Matchlock]

More of the Venice pistol and the barrels in Oxford.

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[Matchlock]

The remaining photos.

On two of the barrels the faint remains of an unidentified maker's mark can be seen; one barrel retaining its original sighting tube, the others missing from the small rear sights.

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[Matchlock]

Some more details of the three-barreled revolving arquebus introduced in post # 19.

Please note the finely carved and wide-flared buttstock shaped like the tail fin of a fish; this is one of the earliest instances of a fishtail butt on a gun which was to become very common as the 'Spanish-Netherlandish musket butt' in around 1560 and remained popular with Central European military matchlock and wheellock muskets until the later years of the Thirty Years War.

A well-known contemporary stylistic Early Renaissance equivalent is the flared shape of the pommel of the characteristic Katzbalger Landsknecht's sword.


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[fernando]

May i show this one in here?
An Indian four shot rotary barrel matchlock "clavina" from the XVII century, based on Portuguese technology.
(Collection Rainer Daehnhardt)


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[Matchlock]

Two similar five-barreled pieces are recorded:


the first 93 cm long, barrel length 35.5 cm; sold Wallis&Wallis, June 16, 1967.
Its general design was clearly based on that of German haqbuts and arquebuses of ca. 1500:
the buttstock pierced in the same manner (for suspension from the wooden rack in an armory), and the iron barrel retaining ring entwisted on the underside of the stock; the barrels are non-revolving and the back sight closely resembles that on German arquebuses of ca. 1530-40;

the second 76.2 cm long, barrel length 26.7 cm, bore 14 mm; Weller&Dufty, January 27, 1967 (not sold).



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