Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 4).djvu/230

 bordering is of fine strapwork with masks above and below, and at the sides seated figures of captives. On the comb, deeply engraved, is a row of long oval cartouches, each framing a military trophy; while scrolls and trophies of armour are represented on the brim. The whole surface is now, through the patina of age, a fine, even black colour; there are, however, no traces of gilding.

As the XVIth century draws to a close there is visible a tendency to exaggerate the height of the comb of the skull-piece almost to the point of grotesqueness. There is a note in the 1611 inventory of the Tower of London which, after enumerating certain "combe murryons," runs to the effect: "These combe murryons are said by the armourers to bee very good stuffes and would bee translated into Spanish murryons for that otherwise they are oute of fashion and very unfitt for service." No. 411 in the Wallace Collection has a comb of remarkable height (Fig. 1276). Like the morion just described, it was formerly in the Meyrick Collection, and is pictured in Skelton's "Engraved Illustrations" of that collection. There it is stated to be of Italian manufacture; but from the bad and decadent style of its surface enrichment, of its embossing, and of its azzimina damascening, we prefer to place it among those German armaments in which the borrowed classical enrichment of the Renaissance had become so hackneyed as to have practically lost its original significance. Apart, however, from its meretricious decoration, there is a clever piece of workmanship in this morion, and that is the admirable way in which the comb is drawn out to the height of 4-3/4 inches from the actual skull-piece. To forge such a helmet out of one single piece of steel was the work of a highly skilled armourer. This morion must have been copied from an Italian model; for the Italians were particularly celebrated for the manufacture of the high comb. Brantôme says that the French "leur faisoient la crête par trop haute." The engraved morions gilt with ormolu which Strozzi got from Italy for his soldiers cost 14 crowns each. Finding this price too high he caused his morions to be bought at Milan, engraved but without gilding, and then gave them to a French armourer to be gilded; they thus only cost him 8 or 9 crowns each. The same author tells that "à une revue de Monsieur" (afterwards Henri III) "10,000 morions gravez et dorez" were worn.

It would appear from contemporary portraits that even on fine pageant morions the medium of deep etching was often a more popular and direct method of enriching the field of such helmets, inasmuch as it did not interfere with the actual contour of the skull-piece and comb. We give