Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/53

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This oriental enrichment may have been the means of strengthening the belief that the salade was made for and worn by Boabdil, the last Moorish King of Granada; for this is its tradition recorded in the 1849 catalogue of the Madrid Armoury. That may or may not be true, but the fact remains however that this salade was in the armoury of the Emperor Charles V.

Fig. 346. From the triumphal arch of Alphonso of Aragon

Erected at the Castel Nuovo, Naples, in 1470

Though salades of the Italian form are of considerable rarity, many are to be seen in the armouries of the Continent—in Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Munich, and Nuremberg. From the last-named collection we illustrate three (Fig. 354 a, b, c). The Poldi-Pezzoli Collection at Milan, and the Museo Civico and the Arsenal at Venice, contain examples. The Royal Armoury of Turin also possesses many specimens; indeed, it would be safe to say that most of the National Museums abroad possess salades of the Italian type. As to examples appearing in painting, almost every cassone of the end of the XVth century has a panel depicting them as head-pieces of the Italian knights.

There are but two other salades of the Italian Celata type to which we shall refer: they both represent somewhat different head-pieces from those we have already described and illustrated. One of the two helmets was formerly in the collection of Mr. A. C. Lafontaine, who purchased it in a shop near the Cattle Market, Oxford, on the advice of