Beschreibung:

A SOUTH GERMAN FINGERED GAUNTLET FOR THE RIGHT HAND, NUREMBERG, LATE 16TH CENTURY formed of a long flared and pointed cuff with a short fixed separate inner plate, both plates decorated at their upper edges with a file-roped inward turns accompanied by recessed borders, and the outer plate decorated over the ulna with a small almond-shaped boss, five metacarpal-plates each decorated at the centre of its upper edge with a V-shaped nick, a knuckle-plate decorated with a file-roped transverse rib, a shaped finger-plate, four scaled finger-defences and a laterally-hinged thumb-defence of four scales, the outer plate struck externally with the crested helmet mark of its maker and the quality-control-mark of the City of Nuremberg, and internally with a reversed N in a circle, also of that city 41.0 cm; 16¼ in Provenance Possibly from the collections of the Dukes of Brunswick, at Wolfenbuttel, Lower Saxony Anon. sold Christie's, London, 9 April 1975, lot 63 It has been suggested that the gauntlet is the pair to the one for the left hand formerly in the collections of the Dukes of Brunswick which was shown as part of a composite armour in the Exhibition of Arms, Armour and Militaria lent by H.R.H. The Duke of Brunswick at the Tower of London April 10th -October 31st 1952, cat. no.20, pp. 8-9. It is of the same form as the latter and bears the same marks as it, both internally and externally. These same marks are found, however, on other pieces of armour in the former collections of the Dukes of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in the Wartburg, Thuringia (Diener von Scönberg 1812, cat. Nos 48-9) Gauntlets of this length were for wear without vambraces.