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Artwork Details
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Title:Wheellock Rifle
Date:ca. 1600
Culture:German or Eastern European
Medium:Steel, wood (walnut), staghorn
Dimensions:L. 52 7/8 in. (134.3 cm); L. of barrel 40 in. (101.6 cm); Cal. .48 in. (12.2 mm); Wt. 10 lb. 2 oz. (4592.6 g)
Classification:Firearms-Guns-Wheellock
Credit Line:Purchase, Pulitzer Bequest, 1952
Accession Number:52.188
London. Gothic Hall, Pall Mall. "A Grand Collection of Antient Arms and Armour," 1819.
Christie's, London. Important Collection of Armour and Arms. London, March 18– 26,1895. p. 83, no. 540, ill. (our gun).
Gothic Hall. Catalogue of a Splendid Collection of Military Antiquities, Comprising…Specimens of Arms and Armour from the Norman Conquest to the Latest Periods. 4th ed. London, 1819. p. 22, no. 143 (this gun? - said to come from King of Bavaria's collection).
Robins, George. Military Antiquities: Ancient Armour and Implements of War of Almost Every Nation, All the Specimens Formerly Exhibited in the Gothic Hall, Pall Mall…1833 June 10-11. London, June 10–11, 1833. p. 17, no. 111 (this gun? – said to come from King of Bavaria's collection).
Brett, Edwin J. A Pictorial and Descriptive Record of the Origin and Development of Arms and Armor: to which are Appended 133 Plates Specially Drawn from the Author's Collection at Oaklands, St. Peter's, Thanet, and Burleigh House, London. London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1894. no. 2, pl. XCVII (our gun, said to come from Mgowo Collection).
Thomas, Bruno. Eine Radschlossbüchse Sigmunds III. in Wien [= Livrustkammaren - Journal of the Royal Armoury Stockholm]. Vol. I. Stockholm: Royal Armouries, 1938. pp. 93–100 (description and illustrations of a wheellock gun which is en suite with 52.188).
Christie's, London. Important Collection of Arms and Armour: The Ledger Collection. London: Christie's, London, May 15, 1947. p. 17, no. 166 (our gun, sold to Bartel, for Hearst).
Parke-Bernet Galleries. European Arms & Armor of the XV-XIX Century. New York, December 4, 1952. lot no. 49.
Carpenter, Austin C. "A Seventeenth-Century Wheellock Sporting-Rifle." The Journal of the Arms and Armour Society (1966), pp. 328–29, pls. 55–57 (another Polish-Lithuanian wheellock rifle, the lock engraved with Orpheus and inscribed with reference to Ovid's Metamorphoses and the date 1637).
Thomas, Bruno, and Ortwin Gamber. "Die Polonica der Wiener Waffensammlung." Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 67, no. 224 pp. 81–83, figs. 73–75 (wheellock guns made for Sigismund III Wasa, King of Poland and Sweden, made en suite with ours; no mention of our gun).
Schedelmann, Hans. Die grossen Büchsenmacher: Leben, Werke, Marken vom 15. bis 19. Jahrhundert. Brunswick: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1972. p. 74 (related Vienna guns, stocks by master HLF).
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