to the category of the fluted Maximilian type; in place of fluting it only shows three radiating grooves at the back, and nothing of the kind on the visor, which is of the simplest order, having but two single slits, forming the ocularia, and a small mouth-like aperture in the base of the visor for breathing purposes. It is of the hybrid type. The comb of the skull-piece is broad and flat, slightly concave in its section—a very characteristic feature of the helmets of the earlier Maximilian type; the base of the helmet extends so that it lies flat over the gorget. The other helmet (Fig. 1176) is of the fluted order; but the channelling is arranged in groups of four, and the visor is of the shape met with upon helmets of the closing years of the XVth century. The comb of the skull-piece is most remarkable—very broad, fluted, and grooved. The least interesting and later form of the fluted Maximilian style is that in which the head-piece opens down the side, as in the case of an ordinary XVIth century helmet, and in which, added to the back of the skull-piece, there are three or four lames riveted on in the manner of gorget plates. We show a typical helmet of this type (Fig. 1177); it is possibly as late as the end of the second quarter of the XVIth century.
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Fig. 1177. Helmet
German, about 1540. National Germanic Museum, Nuremberg
When we come to consider Maximilian helmets of the kind that we have described as grotesque, it is hard to appreciate the really wonderful excellence of workmanship which produced such unnatural forms then considered as the appropriate decoration of plate armour. But these grotesque forms so often adopted by the armourers of the first half of the XVIth century only reflected, especially in Germany, the curiously bizarre taste of the age. Similarly the Japanese warrior of olden times, equipped in a suit which modern taste must condemn as eccentric and ludicrous in the extreme, must have been regarded by his contemporaries as presenting an appearance of a fine fighting hero. It was the wear of the time, and what persons expected to see. At least this is how we account for these oddities in Maximilian fashion that demanded that a great personage should occasionally hide himself in a suit bizarre and extraordinary in form. That splendidly made
