circles and cruciform devices. Viewed as a whole it is a majestically proportioned weapon, and from the artistic standpoint certainly holds its own with the other famous contemporary swords we have mentioned.
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Fig. 124. Sword, probably Scandinavian
First half of XIIIth century
Bargello Museum, Florence, ex Signor Ressman Collection
That wonderfully complete sword now in the Hermitage, Petrograd, formerly in the San Donato, and before that in the Basilewski Collection, has a hilt that in form is a combination of both the St. Maurice sword of Turin and the ceremonial sword in the Imperial Treasury of Vienna, having the drooping quillons with the expanding ends of the former, and the wheel pommel of the latter, but which in this case appears to be the original. Monsieur de Labanoff, in whose collection we find the sword first recorded, bought it at Moscow in 1817 for 4,000 roubles from an Armenian engaged in the Turkish wars of 1810-1811, and by whom it was originally discovered in a Turkish fortress, but where it is not recorded. The whole of the hilt is encased with silver-gilt, splendidly engraved and decorated with
