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拍品专文
From the dawn of the age of the firearm until the introduction of cartridge loading systems during the 19th century, many attempts were made to develop a repeating firearm. Loading powder, ball and generating ignition by a separate means for each shot was cumbersome and whilst the muzzle-loader enjoyed an active career spanning more than four hundred years the pursuit of a firearm capable of more than one shot inspired gunsmiths across the world. The Lorenzoni system is regarded as the finest repeating flintlock design, a testimony to this being the longevity of the system with examples found dating from the late 17th century to the early 19th century and production spanning continental Europe and England.
The system uses a series of internal magazines respectively housing the powder for the main charge, another the finer priming powder for the priming charge and the last housing the ball. The system is centered on the horizontally mounted rotating brass cylinder which is actuated by a lever on one side of the firearm. One complete back-and-forth rotation of the cylinder will collect and deposit in the required quantities a single ball and a single powder charge into the breech, collect a single priming charge and position ready for ignition, and cock the mechanism and close the frizzen making the firearm ready to fire. The system not only had to be robust enough to withstand recoil upon firing but engineered to tolerances that mitigate the chances of the combusting gunpowder inadvertently igniting the remaining powder stored in either of the powder magazines. The present pistols are regarded as a tour de force in this respect as with earlier examples of the Lorenzoni system both the magazine for the main powder charge and the reservoir for the balls were placed in the butt of a longarm or grip of a pistol meaning any resulting accidental detonation could be catastrophic for the person firing. By placing the main powder magazine in the fore-end of the pistol forward of the user’s hand, any accidental detonation would still render the pistol inoperable but considerably reduce the risk of causing serious harm to the user. The mechanism employed on this pair of pistols is regarded as the most developed variant of the Lorenzoni system.
Examples of Lorenzoni system firearms bearing Lorenzoni’s name are very rare and it was the opinion of Dr. Thomas T. Hoopes of the St. Louis City Art Museum that the present pair of pistols are the finest known repeating flintlock firearms. When sold in 1972 from the Renwick Collection the pair laid claim to setting a then world auction record for firearms.
MICHELE LORENZONI
Michele Lorenzoni (d. 1733) originally heralded from Siena and appears to have spent his entire working life in Florence. He was gunmaker to the court of Cosimo III de’ Medici (1642-1723) and his successor Gian Gastone de’ Medici with the first reference to him dating from 1684 and concerning a repeating gun he supplied to Elector Johann Georg III of Saxony that year. Whether Lorenzoni invented the system that bears his name or made significant improvements to an existing design has been the subject of debate amongst scholars for many years. The Bolognese and later Roman gunmaker Giacomo Berselli (active by the late 1660’s) and the German-born gunmaker Peter Kalthoff (d. 1672) are two names associated with the invention of this system or systems closely related to the Lorenzoni principle, but it is Michele Lorenzoni whose name is eponymous with this particular type of repeating flintlock.
COCCHI
The significance of this signature present on the fore-end of each pistol is unknown. Both Dr. Hoopes and the Sotheby’s catalogue entry from 1972 suggest that this is the signature of the silversmith who supplied the silver mounts for the pistols, possibly a descendant of Fabrizio Cocchi (1598/9-1677), a goldsmith who is recorded as working in Parma. The Cocchi family (Cocchi Donati from the early 17th century) were a Florentine family of some standing and the signature may denote the original owner or benefactor of the pistols. A palazzo owned by the Cocchi family still stands in Florence.
WILLIAM GOODWIN RENWICK
Born to a prosperous family in Davenport, Iowa, William Goodwin Renwick (1886-1971) spent his boyhood in Claremont, California and earned an L.L.B. at Harvard in 1913. He began amassing in the decades before the Second World War one of the premier firearms collections in modern history. The 1940 Bulletin of the City Art Museum of St. Louis report on its Renwick loan exhibition, which included the present pistols, notes that “Half of them are known to have been at one time the personal property of emperors, kings, members of the European nobility, or other notable personages… objects de luxe, created for the richest and most critical personages of their time by the most skillful contemporary artists and craftsmen.” The collection was not just an assemblage of individual masterpieces, but, in its whole, told the story of firearms development from the 14th to the 20th century. Renwick bequeathed a portion of the collection to the Smithsonian, where it was exhibited in 1975. The Renwick European firearms were offered for sale in a series of ten single-owner auction at Sotheby’s in London, held from 17 July 1972 through 17 June 1975 – landmark sales never equaled in the field of arms and armor.
The system uses a series of internal magazines respectively housing the powder for the main charge, another the finer priming powder for the priming charge and the last housing the ball. The system is centered on the horizontally mounted rotating brass cylinder which is actuated by a lever on one side of the firearm. One complete back-and-forth rotation of the cylinder will collect and deposit in the required quantities a single ball and a single powder charge into the breech, collect a single priming charge and position ready for ignition, and cock the mechanism and close the frizzen making the firearm ready to fire. The system not only had to be robust enough to withstand recoil upon firing but engineered to tolerances that mitigate the chances of the combusting gunpowder inadvertently igniting the remaining powder stored in either of the powder magazines. The present pistols are regarded as a tour de force in this respect as with earlier examples of the Lorenzoni system both the magazine for the main powder charge and the reservoir for the balls were placed in the butt of a longarm or grip of a pistol meaning any resulting accidental detonation could be catastrophic for the person firing. By placing the main powder magazine in the fore-end of the pistol forward of the user’s hand, any accidental detonation would still render the pistol inoperable but considerably reduce the risk of causing serious harm to the user. The mechanism employed on this pair of pistols is regarded as the most developed variant of the Lorenzoni system.
Examples of Lorenzoni system firearms bearing Lorenzoni’s name are very rare and it was the opinion of Dr. Thomas T. Hoopes of the St. Louis City Art Museum that the present pair of pistols are the finest known repeating flintlock firearms. When sold in 1972 from the Renwick Collection the pair laid claim to setting a then world auction record for firearms.
MICHELE LORENZONI
Michele Lorenzoni (d. 1733) originally heralded from Siena and appears to have spent his entire working life in Florence. He was gunmaker to the court of Cosimo III de’ Medici (1642-1723) and his successor Gian Gastone de’ Medici with the first reference to him dating from 1684 and concerning a repeating gun he supplied to Elector Johann Georg III of Saxony that year. Whether Lorenzoni invented the system that bears his name or made significant improvements to an existing design has been the subject of debate amongst scholars for many years. The Bolognese and later Roman gunmaker Giacomo Berselli (active by the late 1660’s) and the German-born gunmaker Peter Kalthoff (d. 1672) are two names associated with the invention of this system or systems closely related to the Lorenzoni principle, but it is Michele Lorenzoni whose name is eponymous with this particular type of repeating flintlock.
COCCHI
The significance of this signature present on the fore-end of each pistol is unknown. Both Dr. Hoopes and the Sotheby’s catalogue entry from 1972 suggest that this is the signature of the silversmith who supplied the silver mounts for the pistols, possibly a descendant of Fabrizio Cocchi (1598/9-1677), a goldsmith who is recorded as working in Parma. The Cocchi family (Cocchi Donati from the early 17th century) were a Florentine family of some standing and the signature may denote the original owner or benefactor of the pistols. A palazzo owned by the Cocchi family still stands in Florence.
WILLIAM GOODWIN RENWICK
Born to a prosperous family in Davenport, Iowa, William Goodwin Renwick (1886-1971) spent his boyhood in Claremont, California and earned an L.L.B. at Harvard in 1913. He began amassing in the decades before the Second World War one of the premier firearms collections in modern history. The 1940 Bulletin of the City Art Museum of St. Louis report on its Renwick loan exhibition, which included the present pistols, notes that “Half of them are known to have been at one time the personal property of emperors, kings, members of the European nobility, or other notable personages… objects de luxe, created for the richest and most critical personages of their time by the most skillful contemporary artists and craftsmen.” The collection was not just an assemblage of individual masterpieces, but, in its whole, told the story of firearms development from the 14th to the 20th century. Renwick bequeathed a portion of the collection to the Smithsonian, where it was exhibited in 1975. The Renwick European firearms were offered for sale in a series of ten single-owner auction at Sotheby’s in London, held from 17 July 1972 through 17 June 1975 – landmark sales never equaled in the field of arms and armor.