could be more splendid than its colour effect. Like some of the finest work of the Negroli, the actual surface of the steel is of a bronze-black colour, showing that slight indication of the hammer mark that renders it such a satisfactory field upon which to apply ornamentation. The main theme of the decoration is carried out in fine scrollwork and in applied ornaments in gilded bronze, such as masks, rays of Jupiter, bucrania, unicorns, and other analogous figures. Beside this, the purest gold and silver damascening enriches many of the principal plates, introducing a profusion of vine-like tendrils and other incrustations of gold and silver. Applied round the skull-piece of the casque is a triumphal crown of oak leaves in gilt bronze.
We cannot now determine what under-garments the Emperor would have worn when he was caparisoned in this armour. As now set up in the Madrid Armoury, the skilfully modelled figure is clad in slashed sleeves and trunk hose. In an early XVIIth century picture formerly in the collection of the late Sir Charles Robinson (Fig. 1052), which used to be attributed to Velasquez, but is more probably the work of Jacinto Geronimo de Espinosa—a picture representing the Biblical subject of "Jael and Sisera"—Sisera, who is lying prone on the ground, with the nail driven through his temples, can be seen wearing armour which is a careful copy of the Campi suit we are discussing. In this case, simple red trunk hose cover the exposed portions of the legs, and a long-sleeved hauberk of chain mail appears beneath the body armour. Possibly this was the original complete costume worn with the Campi suit; for when the picture was painted, the suit was hardly ninety years old, and the costume worn with it may have been in the Royal Armoury, where the study for it must have been made.
Before finishing our description of this suit, we must record the comparatively recent discovery of the stirrups that appear to have formed part of the original panoply. In 1896, at the sale of the Earl of Warwick's Collection, great was the astonishment when a pair of stirrups realized the sum of £1,491. The stirrups were purchased at the sale by the late Mr. Charles Davis, who almost immediately ceded them to the late Mr. George Salting (Fig. 1053). The author was responsible for the long description of them given in the sale catalogue, and also for their attribution to the hand of Caradosso, who it was known had occasionally turned from his usual medium of gold, silver, and bronze, and the like, to work in the more stubborn material of iron, and had also on occasions produced weapons and armour, though such works of his, if in existence to-day, pass unrecognized. Upon the Warwick stirrups, as described in the sale catalogue, are the initials that fitted most conveniently
