Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 4).djvu/120

 We illustrate also two other fluted helmets constructed on the same principle, both chosen from the National Bavarian Museum of Munich (Figs. 1171 and 1172), with visors of both types. In the Wallace Collection are two fluted helmets, Nos. 259 and 254 in the catalogue, both with bellows visors. The first example depicted (Fig. 1173) calls for no particular comment; but the next one shown (Fig. 1174), though perhaps belonging to the end of the first quarter of the XVIth century, affords a remarkable example of the armourer's skill in the forging of the triple comb of the skull-piece. As a specimen of cabling or roping, the quality of the workmanship could not be surpassed; and it is as fine, if not a finer, test of skill in the use of the hammer to emboss from the same piece of metal the skull-piece with the fluting and the elaborate triple roping, here represented, as to forge the high combed Italian morions that belong to the end of the XVIth century.

German, about 1525. Burges bequest, British Museum

There are in the Metropolitan Museum of New York two close helmets magnificent in their simplicity, and undoubtedly anterior in date to those we have already mentioned—both coming well within the first quarter of the XVIth century. The earlier of the two (Fig. 1175) can hardly claim to belong