Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/354

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(Fig. 1068). It is probable that this suit found its way to England at the same time as many other pieces preserved in the great European collections, and was without doubt armour stolen from the Royal Spanish Armoury during the Carlist War. We have alluded many times to the great number of individual pieces of armour which came from Madrid and were sold by auction at Christie's in 1839; but this suit of armour we are about to describe does not figure in the catalogue. An examination of the various suits of armour of the same type in Madrid and Vienna enables us to fix the date of this harness almost exactly. In the form of all its parts, as well as in its workmanship and ornamentation, it shows the greatest resemblance to a half suit made in Germany in 1549 for Philip II when Infante. This particular Madrid suit came without doubt from the workshops of Desiderius Kolman of Augsburg, and is the one in which Titian represented the Prince in 1549 or 1550 in the portrait which is to be seen in the Museum of the Prado, Madrid. It is also the identical suit worn by Philip II in the posthumous equestrian portrait of him—also in the Prado—painted by Rubens thirty years after Philip's death. The suit is also represented on a medallion by Jacopo da Trezza, dated 1555; while about a century later Velasquez made use of the same armour to clothe Don Antonio Alonso de Pimentel, Count de Benevente, when he painted his portrait which is also in the Museum of the Prado. It was therefore towards the end of the reign of Charles V that the suit now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York was made, and probably by Desiderius Kolman of Augsburg. It is engraved in the sale catalogue of Bernal (1855), and by Fairholt in the Miscellanea Graphica, which was published in London at Lord Londesborough's expense in 1857. The ornamentation of the armour consists of bands and edgings, etched and gilt, the principal features of the design being accentuated by light embossed work. In order not to afford any hold to the lance, this embossing, which is identical in style with that found on the K.D. armour of the Emperor Charles V (Fig. 1062), is absent from the reinforcing pieces for the joust which are too thick to receive it; but it is to be seen on the lighter pieces of the war cuirass.

The manteau d'armes for jousting is decorated with a latticed etching which imitates an iron lattice. In each lozenge formed by the lattice is a leopard's head, langued, engraved and gilt. This same head, which was probably the blazon of the owner of the armour, is found on the lower part of the jousting chin-piece, on the upper part of the jousting breastplate, on the elbow-cop and the tilting gauntlet, on the escutcheon of the demi-chanfron,