Wheel-Lock Hunting Rifle (mid-1600s): Art, History and Details

Wheel-Lock Hunting Rifle (mid-1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Hans Schmidt (Austrian, 1669).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The barrel of this hunting piece is marked with the letters "GS" within a shield, the likely initials of the owner, who was probably a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece as indicated by the escutcheon on the stock.

Object facts

• Title: Wheel-Lock Hunting Rifle
• Date: mid-1600s
• Creator attribution: Hans Schmidt (Austrian, 1669)
• Culture: Austria, Ferlach, mid 17th Century
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: steel, varnished wood (walnut) stock decorated with inlaid silver wire and appliqués
• Dimensions: Overall: 110.2 cm (43 3/8 in.); Butt: 8.6 cm (3 3/8 in.); Barrel: 83.2 cm (32 3/4 in.); Bore: 1.3 cm (1/2 in.)
• Collection: MED - Arms & Armor
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1959.127

A detail from the museum

A similar rifle made for another member of the Order of the Golden Fleece, Graf Sigmund von Dietrichstein, is preserved in Vienna.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis R. Schilling

Further reading listed by the museum

• S. E. L. "Year in Review." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 46, no. 10 (1959).
• Fliegel, Stephen N. Arms and Armor: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: The Museum, 1998.
• Fliegel, Stephen N. Arms & Armor: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2007.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.