Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 4).djvu/186



By Lucio Picinino. Made by order of the Emperor Charles V for presentation to Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, between 1551 and 1552 Imperial Armoury, Vienna

By Lucio Picinino, about 1560 Ex Dino Collection. Metropolitan Museum, New York

form and outline, which was justly considered to be of paramount importance, as to create contrasts and thereby to increase the effect of the chasing and embossing. It will also be noticed that the decorative scheme of the earlier armourers was always on a larger scale than that of those of the second half of the XVIth century, whose chief anxiety seems to have been to enrich the entire surface with designs in luxurious confusion, thereby weakening the general appearance of the work. But the first two Picinino casques which we illustrate reveal these defects in a far less pronounced fashion; for they are in the armourer's earliest manner and were consequently produced a little later than the first half of the XVIth century. Our first picture of a Picinino casque shows (Fig. 1237) a head-piece from the Imperial Armoury, Vienna, which, together with the famous shield (post, page 222, Fig. 1298), was, according to the late Herr Boeheim, made by order of the Emperor Charles V for the Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, and presented to him on the occasion of one of his visits to Innsbruck in 1551 or 1552. The monogram of Lucio Picinino is on the shield in question, while an inscription on this helmet connects it with the shield and so with the gift. The Archduke was the founder of the collection of armour and arms formerly preserved in the Castle of Ambras, near Innsbruck. Several portraits exist showing him wearing this head-piece, which is de