"very important assemblage of ancient armour and arms" was composed of nothing less than many of the extra pieces and pièces d'exchange of the famous suits of the Emperor Charles V and of Philip II. It is certainly no exaggeration to say that at the present rate of prices this two days' sale of armour and arms would certainly have realized not less than from £80,000 to £100,000. The baldness of the accounts given in the sale catalogue renders an attempt to recognize many of the objects therein described an almost hopeless task; for all that, it remains true that many of the historical pieces that shed lustre on some now famous private or public collection can be traced to this sale. Some of the pieces have even found their way back to the actual armoury from which they were stolen. Looking through the 1839 sale catalogue we find that many pairs of stirrups are recorded; but it is quite impossible now to say if any of them could have been those afterwards sold at the auction of the Warwick Collection, no description of them being given. The Warwick stirrups are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, to which institution they were bequeathed along with the remainder of the Salting Collection. The theft of the armour and weapons from Madrid took place many years of course before the Armoury was first arranged for public exhibition by Don Martinez de Romero.
Until quite recent years the signed Bartolommeo Campi suit was believed to be the only existing example of this goldsmith-armourer's work; but now, thanks to researches made in 1914 by the Baron de Cosson, there is little doubt that other armour from his hand has come to light. When we come to that section of this work which deals with the burgonet or open helmet of the XVIth century we shall discuss three pieces of Campi's which have recently been discovered—a helmet in the Museum of Tsarskoje-Selo, Petrograd (Fig. 1220), a breastplate and a single pauldron belonging to it in the Bargello Museum, Florence (Figs. 1221 and 1222), and a companion pauldron in the Riggs Collection, Metropolitan Museum of New York (Fig. 1223). But, as the panoply of which these are pieces is wholly grotesque, and is marked by no classicism in its design, we will make no allusion to it here. However, a companion breastplate to this same group in the Bargello arrests our attention, for it is the counterpart, or even the model, from which the "antique" Madrid harness is taken.
The Baron de Cosson, writing in L'Arte of Signor Adolfo Venturi,[1] reports on divers pieces of armour from the ancient armoury of the Medici
- ↑ C. A. de Cosson, Notizie su diversi pezzi d'armatura provenienti dall' antica armeria Medicae esistenti nel Museo Nazionale di Firenze. (L'Arte di Adolfo Venturi. Fasc. v, vi, Roma, 1914.)
