Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/395

 the armourers of Munich which are closely allied in point of decoration to the so-called Swedish Charles IX harness. M. Plon doubtless refers to the suits at Dresden, said to have been made respectively for the Elector John-George I of Saxony (1611-1656) and for the Elector Christian II of Saxony (1591-1611), which on fairly conclusive evidence are said to have been made by Heinrich Knopf at Münster, to whom we shall shortly refer.

From the so-called Henri II suit (Fig. 1092). This shows the comparatively unfinished state of the lower part of the suit. Musée du Louvre

Despite, however, the delightful and scholarly argument of M. Maindron, which we have taken the liberty of quoting, we ourselves go no further than to admit that the Louvre suit was made in France; we cannot make up our minds as to the nationality of the armourers who worked on it. Our own argument in favour of its French provenance, strengthened as it is by the fact that it is unfinished, is based on the conviction of the Baron de Cosson that all the series of French armour of this period to which we shall allude, came from an armoury established at the Louvre under Francis I or Henri II. Now, a suit of armour ordered in Italy or Germany would only have been delivered when finished; but it is easy to understand that a suit made at the Louvre and not completed at the time of Henri's tragic death (if it could possibly be as early as that) would