Summary

This is how the placard at the Higgins Armory Museum read:

Folding Spetum, about 1550

Italian (perhaps Milan)

Steel, iron, gold, wood

Higgins Armory (1999.01)

"This extremely rare folding spetum was owned by the Rothschilds, Jewish financiers, whose art was seized in the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938. In 1945 the art was rescued by American troops and given to the Austrian government. The Rothschilds later recovered part of their collection, but only after giving this and other items to the Art History Museum in Vienna. In 1999 however, under international pressure to restore Holocaust victims’ property, Austria returned the art to the family, who then sold many of the pieces.

This weapon is possibly the Armory’s most important acquisition. It is the finest surviving spetum, with its intricate mechanism of folding blades and mountings bearing delicate gold arabesques on a background darkened for a brilliant contrast. Similar decoration appears on fine Milanese armors of the mid-sixteenth century, suggesting a possible origin and date. The weapon also retains its original wooden shaft with impressed and gilded motifs. Folding spetums were imperial-quality weapons because of their expensive construction and elaborate decoration. Their original purpose remains unclear, but it is possible they were carried by bodyguards of as splendid hunting weapons."

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