The wheellock rifle from the Gatchina Palace and Estate Museum was made in Vienna in the 1710-1720s by the famous gunsmith Caspar Zellner. At some point the rifle was kept in the collection of weapons of Russian Emperor Peter III — the Oranienbaum Rüstkammer. In 1777 Catherine II allowed Count Grigory Orlov to take it to his estate in Gatchina. The barrel is made of forged iron and is octagonal in section. All its surface is blued except for the tang of the breech and the muzzle face. The decoration of the barrel matches the finish of the lock and the dark wood of the stock. At the breech end the barrel is decorated with gilded curls and on its upper plane there is the gilded signature of the gunsmith: ‘Caspar Zelner’. On the tang of the breech plug among the curls there is the engraved figure ‘1’. It means that the rifle has a ‘twin’ — another rifle made in the same style but with the figure ‘2’ on the tang. In 1777 the second rifle remained in Oranienbaum and in 1810 it was transferred to the Armoury Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin where it is kept now. The lock has a flint and a wheel. The surface of the lock plate is decorated with an in relief and engraved image depicting a scene from the Bible — the story of Susanna and the Elders. The story is told in 64 verses in Chapter 13 of the Book of Daniel. A beautiful half-naked woman sits by the pool in her garden and two elders spy on her over the fence. The artist managed to reproduce the composition from the etching of Annibale Carracci, the Italian painter of the 16th century, and added to it a depiction of the Baroque garden. The dog and its brace are decorated in the same technique: the dog — with an image of Judith with the head of Holofernes and the brace — with a basket of flowers. The stock of the rifle is made of nut wood. It is decorated with carved curls on the upper right plane of the buttstock, by the front end of the cheek piece, by the tang of the breech, in front of the trigger guard and by the lower ramrod pipe. Some parts of the stock are inlaid with fancy-shaped gilded brass plates depicting hunting scenes in relief surrounded by curls. The patch box lid has an inlaid frame with images of a gentleman and a lady playing musical instruments. The butt plate is decorated with an engraved image of a lady’s bust surrounded by curls, and the upper part of the plate is fixed to the stock by a protecting screw with a spherical head. The rifle is fitted with a hair trigger — a mechanism which allows to release the trigger with the slightest pressure.