Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/332



Italian (Milanese), about 1540. Signed by Paolo Negroli Ex collection: Magniac. Now Riggs Collection, Metropolitan Museum, New York

. The breastplate is of large size and very massive, of an oval shape and very convex in the lower part, a fashion which was much affected during the second quarter of the XVIth century and which may be considered to have been founded on the shape of the bronze cuirasses of antiquity. It is entirely covered with bold arabesque scrollwork of the most admirable design, in unusually high relief. The principal motifs are, in the lower part, two terminal sirens with grotesque masks in profile,