AN EXTREMELY FINE & IMPORTANT PAIR OF ITALIAN LORENZONI SYSTEM SILVER-MOUNTED BREECH-LOADING REPEATING FLINTLOCK PISTOLS BY MICHELE LORENZONI, FLORENCE, EARLY 18TH CENTURY

AN EXTREMELY FINE & IMPORTANT PAIR OF ITALIAN LORENZONI SYSTEM SILVER-MOUNTED BREECH-LOADING REPEATING FLINTLOCK PISTOLS
BY MICHELE LORENZONI, FLORENCE, EARLY 18TH CENTURY
With slightly tapering round barrels each with prominent silver front sight, raised sighting flat, chiseled in relief at the breech end with scrollwork and with elaborately turned girdle at the breech, the breech sections each housing a horizontally mounted rotating brass cylinder with cocking lever to left side, and with a chiseled sighting groove on the upper surface; the downturned rounded back-action lock-mechanisms each with chiseled hammer and frizzen, the former with retaining screw chiseled with a mask, and magazine for the priming-powder with hinged door, the priming pan forming part of the rotating brass cylinder; the highly figured walnut stocks each with cast and chased silver furniture and inlaid with silver wire scrollwork around the barrel tang, the spurred pommels each with pivoting mask cap covering the tubular ball-magazine drilled through the stock; the silver furniture extending to the fore-ends, each cast and chased with further scrollwork and incorporating a false ramrod with hinged trap cover forming the main powder magazine; the pistols respectively bear the signatures ‘LORENZONI’ and ‘FIRENZE’ to the brass cylinder, sighting flat on the barrel and to one side of the silver fore-end, the opposite side of each fore-end is signed ‘COCCHI’; the breech sections and fore-ends are each finely engraved with scrollwork and differing classical figures; the lock-mechanisms are finely engraved with differing scenes involving two armed combatants on horseback, in each scene one of the combatants has been shot by the other and is the process of falling from his horse; the pair are housed in a modern brass-cornered wooden close-fitted case lined with burgundy velvet, in the center of the case between the two pistols is a silver plaque engraved ‘Early 18th Century Repeating Pistols / by / MICHELE LORENZONI’
19 5/8 in. (50 cm.) overall, 11 3/8 in. (29 cm.) barrels

Provenance
The Imperial Russian Collection, formerly at the Hermitage.
William Goodwin Renwick; Sotheby’s, London, 17 July 1972, lot 17.