Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/72

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

elongated, though somewhat poorly constructed class of salade with movable visor that is to be found in many of the museums of Europe, was used by the archer.

There is an excellent specimen, representative of this type of salade, in the Wallace Collection (Fig. 375). It has the lifting visor. The skull-piece is without a comb, but becomes ridged at the tail, the lower edge being strongly curved so that the helmet could be thrown well back on the head when not in use. The hinged visor, coming to a flattened point at the top, is pierced with a narrow slit which forms the ocularium, below which it slightly projects. Around the border is a series of twin holes by which the lining is secured. This example came from the collection of the Comte de Nieuwerkerke, having previously been in the possession of M. Louis Carrand. The Baron de Cosson, describing an exactly similar salade in his own possession, remarks: "The small holes, in pairs, were for the purpose of sewing in a lining which covered the inside of the visor. . . . It is curious that this arrangement, which must have made the head-piece more comfortable, was not adopted in the heavier salades of knights; but it was perhaps thought more necessary in a light head-*piece like this, which would be driven against the face by a heavy blow and was probably worn without a bevor." M. Viollet-le-Duc gives an engraving of two archers from a manuscript of the Passages d'outre Mer, who are wearing this form of salade, and the front view shows no bevors being worn with them. These salades are also peculiar in the flattish tops of their crowns, which have no ridge whatever; they are remarkable, too, for their great length from front to back. M. Viollet-le-Duc describes and engraves the Wallace example. The knight in Dürer's engraving, "The Knight, Death and the Devil," and the brothers Stephen and Lucas Baumgärtner in the portraits of them painted by this master on the wings of the Baumgärtner altar-piece in the old Pinakothek at Munich, all wear salades of this type. There are two similar salades in the Tower; one, painted on the outside, from the castle of Ort, in Bavaria, the other purchased at the sale of the arms and armour of the Baron de Cosson in 1893.

Fig. 377. Salade for an archer

English, about 1480. Collection: Mr. Henry G. Keasby

Another salade, almost of the same type, though somewhat shorter,