Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/46

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EUROPEAN ARMOUR AND ARMS

head-piece, though of sounder construction, has the peculiarity of having its right cheek-piece hinged, in all probability to enable the wearer more readily to bend the head on one side when taking aim. These two salades belong to the third quarter of the XVth century.

This is a fitting opportunity to refer to a "find" of North Italian salades which took place a few years ago. They must all have come from the arsenal, of some Italian castle, in the region of Padua; but, though we have made the most assiduous inquiries, we have up to the present been unable to ascertain positively the name of the place where they were discovered, a circumstance

Fig. 337. Salade probably worn by an archer
Italian, about 1470. No. 53, Wallace Collection

due, doubtless, to the secrecy in which the dealers who first came upon them determined to involve the whole affair. From this group the first example was sold in Florence (Fig. 338, a and b). It is perhaps as grand a specimen as any known. Of great depth, its ocularia and face-opening are of T-shape form. At the back of the skull-piece is a Milanese mark of about 1470, three times repeated; while on the right-hand corner of the cheek-piece is a counter-*mark, resembling the fore-part of the Lion of St. Mark seen full face. This salade is now in the collection of the Baron de Cosson. The next of the salades to appear in the market (Fig. 339) is in the same condition and is marked in precisely the same manner as the first example. It is a little shorter from the

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