Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/381

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

now remains; for the hilt and blade were re-made in Germany in the second half of the XVIth century. On the receipt of the gift, Duke Bogislaw deposited it in the church of St. Otto in his Pomeranian home; but at a later date moved it to the treasury of his castle. When this particular line of the Bogislaw family became extinct in 1638, the contents of the treasury were inherited by the Duchess Anna, widow of the Duke Ernest von Croy-Havre, and were sent to Stolp. After her death her son, Ernest Bogislaw von Croy, inherited this sword, and on his death in 1684 he left it by will to the Grand Elector of Prussia, who placed it in the Zeughaus of Berlin, where it remained until 1810, after which date it found its present home in the Hohenzollern Museum of the castle of Monbijou.

Fig. 718. The Kurbrandenburgische sword

Italian workmanship of about 1460. Since subjected to alterations

Crown Regalia of Prussia

When we enter upon the XVIth century we can mark a culminating point of all that is elaborate in the nature of design and of richness of material, as applied to sword mounting, by illustrating (Fig. 721) that most wonderful sword and sheath, of ceremony and pageant, preserved in the Royal Historical Museum of Dresden, presented to the Duke Maurice of Saxony by the Emperor Charles V at Augsburg on 24 February 1548 to mark the occasion of his being made Elector. Both the whole of the hilt and the scabbard are silver-gilt, embossed and surface-chased with emblematical figures, trophies of weapons and swages of fruit and flowers in the finest German renaissance taste. Little doubt now exists as to the identity of the artist-craftsman who produced this masterpiece of the silversmith's art. It has been recognized from the method of its workmanship, and from the maker's mark it bears, as being the production of the famous goldsmith Lorenz Trunck of Nuremberg (born about 1500, died 1574). The blade in the hilt is probably of Solingen make, and is deeply etched and gilt with