Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/78



North Italian, about 1500 No. 80, Wallace Collection

North Italian, about 1500. School of Missaglia No. 62, Wallace Collection

Odescalchi, at Rome, in the Royal Armoury of Turin, and in the Poldi-Pezzoli Collection, Milan; while in the collection of Signor S. Bardini of Florence and in the Wallace Collection (No. 62) are shown specimens of this type of salade etched and gilded in the Missaglia manner, which have lost their visors. The Wallace salade (Fig. 387), a finely decorated specimen, has a slightly ridged skull-piece with a single tail-plate, the lower edge of which is finished by being turned inwards on a wire. A plate, 1-3/4 inches wide, runs across the forehead. For beauty of outline and of decoration, however, no extant Italian salade of the Missaglia school can bear comparison with that splendid example which, formerly the property of the Grand Duke Michael Paulowitch, passed, at his death in 1866, into the Tsarskoe Selo of Petrograd (Fig. 388). The skull-piece is somewhat high with a strongly defined but slightly flattened comb. Secured by rivets at the sides are three laminated tail-plates which, like the very beautifully modelled plate that reinforces the forehead, are furnished with rosette-headed washers. This latter plate is gracefully fluted into grooves radiating from the centre to the upper edge, which is shaped in bat's-wing fashion. The foliage design with which the whole of the plate is finely etched introduces on its dexter side a shield with thirteen points, and on the sinister side the armorial bearings of the Bentivoglio family; while above them are smaller shields etched respectively with an eagle, surmounted by a ribbon inscribed (nunc mihi) and a bull with a lily between its horns. There is a tradition that this fine head-piece was made for Ercole Bentivoglio of Bologna (1459-1507), a tradition which probably has some foundation, for the eagle