Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 1).djvu/284

 *ness we can find none of earlier date than the third quarter of the XVth century. This is the period to which we must assign one of the most beautiful suits of armour in existence, that made for Sigismund "the wealthy," Archduke of the Tyrol (1427-1496) (Fig. 244). Enthusiastic as we have been over the works of the Milanese armoursmiths of the XVth century, we are bound to confess that we have never examined a war harness that was so soundly constructed, or one that so plainly reveals the guidance of a master mind in every curve and contour of its outline. The form is exquisite, each plate appearing to caress and to cling to that part of the body it was intended to protect; while the surface is decorated with the most conceivably graceful arrangements of fluting, tracery also edging most of its principal plates. It is further enriched by applied borders of gilded latten or brass, known in Italy as ottone. By the courtesy of Dr. List, the Keeper of the Imperial Armoury of Vienna, we were privileged to dismount this splendid suit, and to make a prolonged examination of it piece by piece. The ingenuity shown in the construction of the minor plates of the rere and vambraces, and also of the pauldrons, is little short of marvellous: all possible and indeed impossible movements appear to be provided for. The suit possesses no tassets, and unless they were of the smallest proportions—made possibly to carry out the line of the taces—they may never have existed; for the decorated edging of brass we have mentioned, borders the lower edge of the lowest tace plate. The laminated extensions of the cuisses require notice: they reach almost to the line of the hip bone rendering the tassets as protection practically useless, and so confirming our view that they never existed on this suit. It appears that the back parts of the sollerets are missing. The latter show the detachable toe-caps drawn out to the most exaggerated point. In addition to the salade head-piece and bevor of which the suit can boast, it has an interchangeable helmet in the form of a chapel-de-fer or war hat (see Chapter XI, vol. ii). The late Herr Wendelin Boeheim, as we have said, one time Keeper of the Vienna Armoury, considered that this suit was finished for the Archduke about the year 1470, and though this splendid example of the armourer's craft is entirely unmarked, he suggests that it may well have come from the workshop of Hans Grünewalt of Nuremberg (1440-1503). Hans Grünewalt was the son of the famous bell caster, Heinrich Grünewalt. The mark he used is a little uncertain; but Herr Boeheim has no hesitation in ascribing to his hand the following examples in the Vienna Armoury: the breastplate of King Philip of Castile, the sword of the Emperor Maximilian I and the