Cased Pair of Flintlock Pistols Presented to Captain Cayetano Valdés y Flores

This magnificent pair of pistols, complete with its cleaning and loading accessories, is one of a small group of specially designed silver-mounted firearms presented by the French government to Spanish sea captains in recognition of their actions in alliance with France against Great Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. The tooled-leather insert in the case lid states that this set was given by Napoleon as First Consul to Captain Cayetano Valdés y Flores (1767–1835), Commander of His Catholic Majesty’s ship Neptune in year X of the French Republic (1801–1802). The pistols are distinguished by barrels with blued and gilt decoration and stocks fitted with bold silver mounts cast and chased with naval imagery, such as ships, anchors, and dolphins.

The gunmaker Nicolas-Noël Boutet, who, as "Directeur-Artiste" of the national arms factory at Versailles, is credited with having transformed French arms design during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. Boutet created a wide variety of firearms and edged weapons whose novel forms and types of embellishment essentially abandoned the eighteenth-century styles fashionable during the Ancien Regime in favor of the prevailing Roman-inspired Empire taste. While the Versailles factory was charged with producing large numbers of regulation military weapons for the French armies, Boutet specialized in the creation of smaller numbers of "armes de luxe" for presentation to heads of state, diplomats, and officers who had given particularly distinguished service. Cast and finely chased mounts of silver or gold, and stock inlays of engraved silver or gold sheet, were standard features of these arms, the most magnificent made in Europe in the early nineteenth century.

The holdings of the Department of Arms and Armor include outstanding examples of Boutet’s work, notably two double-barreled flintlock shotguns, a rifled carbine, and a cased garniture comprising a rifle and two pistols, but no example of specifically documented presentation weapons. This cased set of pistols is thus of particular importance to The Met’s collection because the donor, recipient, and circumstances behind its presentation are known. The set’s high quality of execution and superb condition matches and complements the Boutet firearms already on display in Gallery 375.