Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/369

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with bands of ornament, it has a wholly blue-black surface free from gilding, the latter alone appearing on the rivet heads and on its accompanying buckler. It is certainly a monument to the craftsmanship of Peffenhauser, and a suit which we certainly may say almost places his productions on an equality with those of the foremost Italian armourers of this somewhat decadent period of the craft. True, like Picinino in his later productions, Peffenhauser panders to the taste of the day in over-elaborating the ornament; his modelling of the figures, too, is weak and nerveless; but, on the other hand, his general composition is more virile, and his embossing is in bolder relief than even Kolman's. Herr Hefner-Alteneck takes, however, a little from Peffenhauser's credit by suggesting that he was doubtless assisted in the decoration of this particular suit by the inventive genius of Hans Mielich, the artist of Munich. There are no details in the construction of the suit particularly worthy of note; in general shape it is reminiscent of one of slightly earlier date, save that the pauldrons are full after the fashion of the suits of the last quarter of the XVIth century. On the upper edge of the breast- and backplates are stamped a tripod and the guild mark of Augsburg, emblems which Herr Boeheim identifies as the marks of Anton Peffenhauser.

We will terminate our very general survey of these suits, the shape and fashion of which were almost entirely influenced by the productions made for the Spanish Court by the Negroli, the Kolman, and the Wolf families, with the description of a suit of armour, most probably the work of Wolf of Landshut, a suit decorated in that armourer's usual fashion, but showing strangely in its general form the late XVth century Italian influence. We refer to the suit of armour mounted on a horse that now stands in the middle of the principal gallery of the Arsenal of Venice (Fig. 1081). For nearly two hundred years this suit was believed to have belonged to Erasmo da Narni, surnamed Gattamelata, the famous XVth century general in the service of the Venetian Republic; but it is hardly necessary to remark that a suit which at its earliest is a production of about 1540, could not have belonged to a general who died in 1443. It would be interesting to know when and why this suit was originally placed in the Arsenal of Venice, and to whom it originally belonged. No clue to its ownership can be gleaned from the harness itself; for beyond a lion's mask flanked by hounds' heads upon the saddle steel and knee-cops it is free from any emblematic ornamentation.

As far back as the 1611 inventory of the Arsenal the armour is attributed to Gattamelata in the following entry:

(Translation) "The armour of Gattamella, white and gold, with its arm-