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A Silver-Mounted Estoc, or Thrusting Sword Made for the Elite Mounted Contingent of the Trabantenleibgarde of the Prince Electors of Saxony, c. 1590–1600
Dresden. Steel, silver, gold and wood 47½ x 10 in. / 120.6 x 26 cm PROVENANCE
The armoury of the Electors of Saxony, Dresden; transferred to the Historisches Museum, Dresden, about 1832; sold, Sotheby & Co., Highly Important Arms from the Saxon Royal Collections, London, 23 March, 1970, lot 33; collection of Karsten Klingbeil, Berlin
T
he late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century electors of Saxony, respectively Augustus I (1526–86), Christian I (1560–91) and Christian II (1583–1611),
were lavish in matters of ceremony and appearance. Enormous sums of money were spent to equip not only the participants in the era’s great state tournaments and hunts, but also those aristocratic members of the elite light cavalry troop of the
Trabantenleibgarde, the personal guard of the prince electors. This stylishly presented guard of loyal young Saxon aristocrats and noblemen were uniformed in black doublets and yellow trunk hose, and had available to them richly decorated armour, weapons and accessories, including etched and gilt comb-morions, inlaid pistols, ornate powder flasks, and decorated swords and daggers. The prince electors of Saxony enjoyed great wealth, in part derived from the mining and metalworking industries that had, since the twelfth century, underpinned the economy of their state. Within their borders, and in the region of the Erzgebirge, known as the Ore Mountains, iron, nickel, tin, cobalt, bismuth, copper, gold, salt and, above all, silver were found in sustaining quantity. In the sixteenth century investment in new mines allowed Saxony to remain one of Europe’s leading producers of silver. Appropriately, therefore, and presumably not altogether coincidentally, it is silver that decorates the present sword. An inventory made in 1606 of the Electoral Saxon armouries (unpublished, the document is retained in the archives of the Rüstkammer, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.) shows the amount of silver used to decorate such swords to have varied according to the rank of the particular recipient. A sword hilt of comparable construction and with a near full coverage of silver is preserved in the Rüstkammer, the armoury of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden (no. VI 85). Another, carried by the Prince Elector Christian II himself, has a similar hilt, but is quite naturally covered entirely in etched silver, as befitted
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