Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/127



Late XVIth century date Wallace Collection

actual one referred to by Hentzner, but one of later date, substituted in the early years of the XVIIth century, when the original was no longer to be found. In the XVIIth century the bourdonnasses figure constantly, and many instances of their use are illustrated in Pluvinel, chiefly in connection with tilting at the ring and quintain, in which exercises they were known as lances de carrière. Early in the XIVth century a circular plate of metal was added to the lance immediately above the hanste, which was known in England as the "vamplate," a corruption of avant-*plat, and in France as rondelle or ronde de la lance. Vamplates occur in the inventory of the Castle of Wigmore, taken in 1322. In its earliest form in England and France, as we see it pictured upon the lids and sides of jewel caskets and upon mirror-cases of the first quarter of the XIVth century, the vamplate seems to have been flat or but slightly concave towards the hand, and about five inches in diameter. But in Germany, if the evidence of illuminated MSS. is to be trusted, somewhat larger vamplates, almost hemi-*spherical in shape, were in use quite early in the century. Early in the XVth century we find a distinction drawn between vamplates for war and for the joust; miniatures of the period show us that the difference lay in the fact that while those intended for war retained the old flat form, those for the joust were considerably larger and were conical in shape. A fine example of the first order is in the Wallace Collection (Fig. 867). In Sandro Botticelli's panel of Mars and Venus, painted for Lorenzo the Magnificent, and now in the National Gallery (Fig. 868), a lance with flat war vamplate is shown borne by an infant satyr, whose head is hidden in the god's helmet, a superb salade. For the German Scharfrennen of the late XVth and early XVIth centuries we find a plate of peculiar construction and outline employed.