CHAPTER XXXII
THE BURGONET OR OPEN CASQUE
A SHORT REVIEW OF BURGONETS OF ITALIAN ORIGIN, 1510-1600
If we use the term casque de parade as a synonym for the burgonet,
we must not be supposed to suggest that in its initial stage the
open helmet was not a thoroughly useful piece of personal defence.
Owing to the increasing and increasingly effective use of firearms,
some new kind of helmet had to be invented for the fighter which
would give him a defence that had lightness and allow him unhampered
vision; so to follow the fashion of the Greek and Roman form, made
popular by the Renaissance, the open helmet or casque built on the lines of
the classical head defence was adopted. This helmet, which was in general
use throughout the XVIth century and until the final disuse of armour in
the third quarter of the XVIIth century, was fashioned under the influence
of antique forms; but for all that it was to a certain extent an inevitable
development from the salade and the chapel-de-fer. We see it in its first
stages as early as about 1510-30 among those bizarre head-pieces figuring
in the splendid Italian sculpture of the Renaissance. Michael Angelo utilized
such a head-piece on his world-famous statue on the tomb of Lorenzo de'
Medici, in the New Sacristy of San Lorenzo, Florence (Fig. 1210); while
the helmet of the famous Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini, in the Loggia de'
Lanzi, Florence, cast in 1545, but not completed till 1554, is an open casque
of the most elaborate type (Fig. 1211). Sir Samuel Meyrick uses the term
"burgonet" to describe an entirely closed helmet which has its lower edge
grooved to fit the top rim of the gorget, as can be seen in the illustrations of
the helmets illustrated in Figs. 1169 and 1204. It would appear that Sir
Samuel—as also Planché—adopted this nomenclature on the authority of
President Fauchet's Origine des Chevaliers Armories et Heraux, Paris,
1600 and 1606; but in the opinion of the present writer the Baron de
