Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 1).djvu/325

 photographs of these marvels of late XIVth century armourer's craft. Graf. Trapp zealously guards Schloss Churburg, permitting no visitors to approach, and refusing in recent years, at any rate, to answer even the politest of letters!

Mounted on a helmet of recent date

Bargello Museum, Florence

In the choir of the church of Wertheim

Concluding our survey of existing bascinets that we can assign to the closing years of the XIVth century, we have now to describe and to illustrate a truly wonderful bascinet crest of about this date—a unique example in gilded copper preserved in the Bargello Museum of Florence. The illustration we give of it (Fig. 297), shows this superbly modelled crest as it now appears, mounted on a practically modern skull-piece, to which absurd side wings have been adapted. It is much to be regretted that this splendid example of cresting should be shown associated with this fireman-like modern helmet; the simple grandeur of its modelling and its very fine workmanship are more than embarrassed by the vulgar additions. The eagle's head which constitutes this crest issues from an heraldic orle, and is executed in copper gilt embossed from fairly thin plate, and surface chased; two boldly outlined wings rise up at the back. Though solidly made, it is light in weight. That it was the crest of a bascinet and not of an armet or even later helmet we are satisfied from the fact that the interior is so made as to fit over the acute conical skull-piece of a late XIVth century helmet, i.e., a bascinet. We have little hesitation in pronouncing it to be Italian, though nothing of its provenance is known. Though in this instance we have an example of a bascinet crest made of