Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/319

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Fig. 1051. Classically fashioned suit of armour

Presented to the Emperor Charles V by Guidobaldo II, Duke of Urbino, in 1546. Made and signed by Bartolommeo Campi of Pesaro in 1546. A 188, Royal Armoury, Madrid

military panoplies known. It was made by the celebrated Bartolommeo Campi, and, according to well-founded tradition, was presented to the Emperor Charles V by Guidobaldo II, Duke of Urbino, in 1546. In his fine Catalogue of the Armoury, its learned Curator, the late Count de Valencia, expresses his unqualified belief in the authenticity of this tradition; and so clearly does he set forth his argument that we refer to it at length. He goes on to say that in his opinion this beautiful work of art belonged to the Emperor, though he has not found it so recorded in any authoritative document nor in any drawing in that Inventario from which he so often quotes. Very naturally he has no faith in the theory of the old catalogue that it was presented to the conqueror by the magistrates of Monza in 1529, for the very simple reason that it was made sixteen years later, as he shows by the date it bears. But he holds that various circumstances, well worthy of consideration, lend credence to the tradition, never disproved, that the armour now under consideration belonged to Charles V and was presented to him by Duke Guidobaldo II. In addition to the evidence obtainable from the inscriptions on two of the plates of the suit, i.e., that Campi made it in Pesaro, the biography of Bartolommeo Campi gives us the further information that this goldsmith, afterwards the Duke of Alva's right-hand man, in the capacity of military