Peter Paul Rubens, one of the most important Old Masters, and his works of art are an inspiration for Peter Hofer a master of gunsmith craftmanship.

A big game double barrel rifle was to be built and then brought to perfection with an expressive engraving of big game scenes. The technical construction phase of this double barrel rifle took 2.5 years, so Peter Hofer and his engraver, Barbara Krondorfer had time to reflect on a suitable engraving. After giving it some thought, the notion crystallized that they could hardly find more powerful images of big game hunting than in the paintings “The Hippopotamus Hunt” and “The Lion Hunt”, both by Peter Paul Rubens.

“The Hippopotamus Hunt” was the first of four paintings of hunting scenes ordered by Maximilian, the first Prince Elector of Bavaria. It was made in 1615-1616, “The Lion Hunt” followed 1617-1618.

The paintings measure 2.5x3.2 meters and 2.48x3.77 meters. During the Napoleonic War the paintings were robbed and taken off to France. Only “The Hippopotamus Hunt” was returned to Germany and the original now hangs in Munich in the Alte Pinakothek. “The Lion Hunt” was destroyed by a fire in Versailles.

FIRST OFF, IT MUST BE MENTIONED THAT WITH THIS PROJECT THE PAINTINGS BY PETER PAUL RUBENS WERE NOT JUST COPIED. WE REINTERPRETED THE WORKS USING A TOTALLY DIFFERENT TECHNIQUE, THE BUTTINI ENGRAVING, TO CREATE A NEW AND COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT WORK OF ART.

Rubens paid special attention to the mixing techniques to achieve the brilliant colors which remain unique in these works paintings, for these monumental paintings his brushstrokes also had to be expansive. We planned to transpose paintings of almost 10 square meters, which are 10 million square millimeter, onto an area of just 36x60 millimeters.

We used the finest engraving technique there is, the Buttini technique, but with such fine dots and lines such as had never been done in an engraving before this project. The scenes were engraved under a 40power stereo microscope in such a high level of detail that one could almost say that the degree of detail is even higher than in the paintings (which of course were painted with brushes).

The fineness of the lines of the engraving reached over 90,000 lines or dots per 2.5 square millimeters. The scenes were reinterpreted onto an area of just 36x60 millimeters, this almost superhuman achievement is illustrated by the fact that the engraving would fit into the oil painting 3,510 times.

It is known when Rubens made the paintings, “The Hippopotamus Hunt” in 1615-1616 and “The Lion Hunt” in 1617-1618. However no one can say how many hours he spent painting them, of course it’s irrelevant how long it took, we are just grateful that these masterpieces were painted. Still, we would like to mention here how much time we spent in creating the Rubens double barrel rifle: a total of 16,500 hours.

A small side note: In 2002 the Rubens painting “The Massacre of the Innocents” was sold by Sotheby’s at auction for EUR 76.7 million, it was the most expensive Old Master ever sold.

This Peter Hofer Megarifle (that’s what Peter Hofer calls his weapons that take over 10,000 manhours to build) is unique and only one person will ever own it. A rifle like this will never be offered or built again. Peter Hofer hopes that the owner will bequeath this valuable work of art to the next generation in his family or even sell it to a museum so that it can bear witness to his and Peter Paul Rubens’ art in the future.