Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/87

Fig. 398. Short bevor

About 1470-80. Collection: Mr. S. J. Whawell

Fig. 398a. Tall Bevor

Collection: Mr. W. H. Riggs, Metropolitan Museum, New York. Ex collection: Baron de Cosson

XVth century the association of the bevor with the salade was practically unknown. It would have been useless in conjunction with the early German Schalern, and almost as impracticable with the salade of the Italian Celata order. It was not until the "tailed" or French type of salade had obtained an established reputation as a head-piece that attention was paid to the necessity of finding some form of protection for the lower part of the face. It would appear that the high standard of chain mail fashioned as a collar standing rigidly up round the neck, though popular throughout the XVth century, was not considered of sufficient protective power; with the result that plates of metal were added to a plate gorget to give full protection to the lower half of the face. In this way was the bevor evolved. The bevor of closely linked chain mail that can be seen in the Zeughaus of Berlin may perhaps be a transitional type (see page 183, Fig. 522). It is rarely that these defences figure on effigies or on contemporary carving; for in actual wear, covering as they do the lower part of the face, they would preclude any attempt at portraiture. Pictorial art, however, furnishes an admirable representation of a bevor. In a fresco in the chapel of S. Giovanni in the Duomo of Siena, painted in the first or second year of the XVIth century, Alberto Aringhieri is depicted fully armed in the fashion of about 1470 (Fig. 397). He is represented kneeling in prayer. His salade, very like the one of French origin we have illustrated on page 30 (Fig. 373) and his gauntlets are on the ground in front of him; whilst his bevor is in position round his chin. In this instance the lowest gorget plate of the bevor has a border of chain mail with a vandyked edge. In some of