Giuseppe Agazzi
Guiseppe Agazzi
Pair of Italian Silver-Mounted Flintlock Traveling Pistols by Guiseppe Agazzi, Fourth quarter 18th-century
6-inch round barrels with silver-inlaid floral designs at either end of engraved silver-inlaid sighting-planes, the breeches inlaid with silver banding, gold-lined touch-holes, breech tangs set with two silver-inlaid panels engraved with floral sprigs; rounded lockplates inscribed GIUSEPPE AGAZZI and mounted with floral engraved cocks and frizzens; the inside struck with an unrecorded mark "Z" under a pellet within an oval; burl-walnut stocks mounted with faceted ramrod pipes, floral engraved triggerguards and stirrup gripcaps, and profusely inlaid with silver scrolls surrounding grotesque faces beneath breech tangs, crowns and ornate vacant escutcheon plates, rounded silver counter plate floral engraving, fore-ends set with horn tips and each side of fore-end adorned with floral scrolls of silver inlay-work, ramrod with horn tip.
Note: The only documents mentioning the Agazzi family are those published by DeVita [1970, page 33] and those refer only to two swordsmiths working in Rome during the first half of the 17th-century. Nolfo di Carpegna's Brescian Firearms list only one "surviving specimen bearing this signature." That flintlock is in a private collection in Switzerland.
