Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/54

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Fig. 347. Portrait of a Venetian nobleman

Attributed to Martino di Battista da Udine known as Pellegrino da San Daniele. Painted about 1490. Imperial Picture Gallery, Vienna

Mr. Seymour Lucas, R.A. The purchaser was told that it came originally from a mansion in the neighbourhood (Fig. 355). It is a curious salade, inclining to what we have termed the French or tailed variety. Fitting over the helmet itself is an outer covering of gilded copper, skilfully modelled and well chased to represent the scalp of a lion—the eyes of which are rendered in vitreous enamel. It has been suggested that this outer covering is work of the XVIIth century; but we have no hesitation in pronouncing it to be contemporary with the helmet. From its very close resemblance to that lion mask salade sculptured in the relief on the Alphonso of Aragon arch at Naples to which we have referred, we should think that the Lafontaine salade is of Italian origin; but, as the helmet is somewhat crudely fashioned, there is the possibility that it may be an English-made head-piece founded on an Italian model. The plausibility of this latter theory is somewhat strengthened by the circumstance that tradition