Cleveland Museum of Art

Left-Handed Dagger or "Main Gauche"

Date

c. 1650

Medium

steel, pierced and chiseled

Culture

Spain or Italy, Naples

Department

Medieval Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

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. The main-gauche (French for "left hand") was used mainly to assist in defense by parrying enemy thrusts, while the dominant hand wielded a rapier.

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