Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/42

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
There was a problem when proofreading this page.

EUROPEAN ARMOUR AND ARMS

from Greek and Etruscan bronze helmets of antiquity and which figured almost throughout the XVth century as the chief head-piece of the Italian knight. The development of the bascinet helmet into such a salade would have been a very easy step: it necessitated but the introduction of a stronger form of keel to the crest of the skull-piece, the depressing of its pointed apex, and finally the giving of a slight outward curl to its lower edge. From the earliest mention of the salade in England in the opening years of the XVth century one has to wait till about the years 1470-80 before it is first seen represented on any English effigy, when an example appears, of what we shall very broadly term the French or tailed type, on an effigy of a member of the Neville family in Brancepeth Church, Durham (Fig. 330). On the continent, however, a variety of forms of the Greek hoplite type are to be noted in Avanzi's frescoes in the chapel of St. George at Padua,

Fig. 330. From an effigy of the Neville family
Possibly Ralph, second Earl of Westmorland, about 1470-80. Brancepeth Church, Durham (After Stothard)

painted as early as 1385; while there are existing Italian salades which may safely be assigned to the middle of the XVth century, and of these we are able to present many illustrations.

Contemporary with the early Italian salades were those German forms which were half war hats and half salades. These were far less graceful in their outline than the Italian type of the same period; but existing specimens are nowadays much rarer. The German Schallern was an open helmet with a slight ridge and apex to the skull-piece and a brim that projected uniformly all round. It was large enough to cover the whole face, and the deep brim had a slit cut in it for the ocularium. We are unacquainted with any perfect specimen now existing in our English collections; although a portion of such a salade is in the collection of Sir Edward Barry at Ockwells Manor. There was formerly an example in the Londesborough collection, which is engraved in Fairholt's Miscellanea Graphica. In the Musée d'Artillerie of Paris there is an admirable example, H 46 (Fig. 331), together with a painted picière,

2