拍品专文
A spanner was an essential tool for every musketeer or hunter armed with a wheel-lock gun, whose complex spring-operated ignition mechanism needed to be wound –or spanned--like a clock in order to function. On this example, the spanner openings are of different sizes to account for the lack of standard gauges of the wheel spindle over which they fitted. Here the spanner is combined with ‘turnscrew', or screwdriver, another essential instrument for maintaining a gun. The transformation of this utilitarian object into a minor work of sculpture can be credited to an Italian craftsman, probably from Brescia, which was a renowned center for firearms manufacture and iron chiseling.
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