Hirschfänger

This hunting sword is a masterpiece of late Gothic blade smithery. We can attribute it to Hanns Sumersperger, a swordsmith active in Hall, a town east of Innsbruck, in the late fifteenth century. Both the attribution to him and dating the sword to around 1496 reflect the marked similarities between this weapon and the ceremonial sword of Emperor Maximilian I (Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, Imperial Treasury, inv. WS XIV 4), which is signed by Sumersperger and dated 1496. A number of other swords by the master-craftsman have survived, among them a short sword now in Copenhagen.

This hunting sword has a pommel made of cast gilt brass engraved with the inscription, in Gothic minuscules, Maria hilf uns aus der Not (‘Virgin Mary aid us in our distress’). The obverse of the handle is decorated with wood and bone pendentives flanking a small, central, carved mother-of-pearl plate depicting a female saint, probably Catherine or Barbara. The sides are framed with narrow ledges cast in silver with three-dimensional garlands. The spiral crossguard is straight and ends in dogs’ heads.

The facetted blade is mostly single-edged. Its first third features a fire-gilt Woman of the Apocalypse on a blued ground below the inscription, in Gothic majuscules, MARIA HILLF VN/NS AVS NOTTG (‘Virgin Mary, aid us in our distress’). On the reverse is St Sebastian with the inscription HIILLF SANNDT/
SEWASTTIANN (‘Aid [us] St Sebastian’). A richly embellished black leather scabbard made for this hunting sword has also survived, together with two small hunting knives and a pricker. The sword was formerly in the imperial gun room (Hofgewehrkammer) in Vienna (cat. 495).

Hunting swords were used in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to kill boars and bears from horseback or on foot. This was very dangerous and therefore considered an act of courage.