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Left-Handed Dagger or "Main Gauche"
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
For parrying, rapiers were often made with accompanying daggers as a matched set, although the rapier shown here (1916.1810) does not originally belong to this dagger. Daggers such as this one have been misleadingly called "left-handed daggers" even though they could be held in either hand. The guard is richly decorated with chiseled and pierced arabesques, an ornamental design consisting of intertwined flowing lines.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineLeft-Handed Dagger or "Main Gauche", c. 1650. Spain or Italy, Naples. Steel, pierced and chiseled; overall: 57.2 cm (22 1/2 in.); blade: 44.4 cm (17 1/2 in.); quillions: 25.4 cm (10 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Severance, 1916.699
