Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/289



From the so-called Bayard suit The Rotunda, Woolwich

Said to have been made for Count Eitel Friedrich von Zollern about 1503. It is of Italian fashion, but, according to the late Herr W. Boeheim, possibly the work of Israhel van Meckenem of Nuremberg. Imperial Armoury, Vienna

worn in the beginning of his reign. It was probably at Milan, during the first few years of the XVIth century, that parallel grooving was introduced, the channelling which took the place of the very varied nervures of the Gothic armour. Such armour is sometimes called Milanese. But in the armour of Milan the bottom of the grooving is always flat; whereas in the German type the bottom is nearly always concave. We give an illustration of this Italian type of fluting almost in an exaggerated form, as shown in that wonderfully complete harness preserved in the Imperial Armoury of Vienna (Fig. 1034), a harness made very early in the XVIth century for Count Eitel Friedrich von Zollern, but which, according to the late Herr Boeheim, is not Italian, but probably by Israhel van Meckenem, reputed to have worked at Nuremberg. Boeheim made this statement solely from the style of its ornamentation. Here the broad flattened grooving is almost too exaggerated to be pleasing in effect. The construction of the suit, however, presents several points of interest, among others the