Kress of Kressestein, an ancient patrician family of that town. This sword was brought from Germany in 1861 by M. Tross, aîné. With it came other arms from the castle of Kressenstein. Two other existing swords known to the present writer are much like it. One is in the Imperial Armoury of Vienna; the other, formerly in the Basilewski Collection, is now in the Hermitage, Petrograd. This latter was formerly in the Meyrick Collection, and is described in Skelton's famous catalogue of that collection (vol. ii, fig. 6). These same riband pattern quillons, though in a more exaggerated form, are found on a beautiful little sword in the Ressman Collection in the Bargello Museum, Florence (Fig. 657), the chief attraction of the weapon being the superb quality of the blade enrichment. The field of the blade is darkly blued, and the decoration here takes the form of an elongated cartouche containing a figure subject executed in gold azziminia damascening; while the modelling of the figures is cleverly rendered by exaggerating the high lights and leaving the darkened side of the subject somewhat to the imagination. This little sword belongs to the last years of the XVth century.
The tendency of the flamboyant Renaissance to grotesque forms, which to modern taste appear perhaps rather unsuitable for the enrichment of arms and armour, made itself very apparent at the close of the XVth century. There is in the Louvre a curved sword of large proportions, the bronze hilt of which is a striking instance of this feeling (Fig. 658). It has been accepted as being based on a design by Andrea Briosco, known as Riccio, the famous Florentine sculptor of the latter part of the XVth century. Bearded masks in profile constitute the contour of its pommel and the ends to the recurved quillons; while designs of satyrs, masks, trophies of arms, and fruit enrich the scabbard mounts. The true proportions of the hilt are, however, now some-*what obscured by the unsuitable modern grip attached to it. A pommel from just such another sword is in the Salting Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum. If space permitted, we could describe and illustrate quite a large number of fine Italian weapons showing the divers themes employed by the great artists of the early Renaissance in their efforts to elaborate sword hilts. Suffice it to say that the splendid armouries of Vienna, Madrid, Turin, Dresden, and Paris possess fine examples; while in the collections of Mr. W. Riggs, of Mr. Reubell, and of the late M. Édmond Foulc of Paris, of Prince Ladislaus Odescalchi of Rome, and of Major Dreger of Berlin, there are individual swords of this period that will repay the closest scrutiny. The vagaries of form which the Italian bronze sword pommels of these times assumed can be seen in the accompanying illustration (Fig. 659)
