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J.D. Crawford
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 Posted: Thu 19 Mar, 2015 7:21 am Post subject: Baptist Sword in Gospels of Otto III: original art? |
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There is an interesting sword drawn in Figure 49 of Oakeshott's Sword in the Age of Chivalry (see below). It is said to be drawn from original art in 'The Gospels of Otto III' and depict the beheading of John the Baptist. Does anyone have the original image?
Its interesting to me because of:
- the two piece pommel - maybe intentionally anachronistic to look like 'biblical times' (the original art dates to 998).
- otherwise the long Ia cross and wide blade are consistent with other swords drawn in the book
- except, the fuller is drawn to be very narrow, which could make this an early depiction of a type XIa (assuming the drawing is accurate to the original art and the original art is an accurate depiction of a real weapon, which seems to be the case for other art in the book).
Again, would be nice to see the original art but I can't find it on-line.
-JD
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Mart Shearer
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Luka Borscak
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| Posted: Thu 19 Mar, 2015 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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In my opinion, the artist wanted to picture a type Y sword. It is the right period for them and the looks are right, he maybe just missed a bit of the concavity of the pommel... They even have the line separating "upper guard" and pommel. Maybe some of them are even two piece.
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J.D. Crawford
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| Posted: Fri 20 Mar, 2015 10:06 am Post subject: |
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| Luka Borscak wrote: | | In my opinion, the artist wanted to picture a type Y sword. It is the right period for them and the looks are right, he maybe just missed a bit of the concavity of the pommel... They even have the line separating "upper guard" and pommel. Maybe some of them are even two piece. |
I was thinking something similar Luka; Oakeshott called it an N, which would have been a century out of date, but a Y could have been drawn from life. Would be nice to see the original to see how ambiguous it was or was not.
By the way, have you seen the Michael Pikula version of your first pictured sword, owned by Tim Lison? That's a classic.
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This is a standard topic