just referred to, and which no doubt may have given the idea for the suit made later for Guidobaldo for presentation to Charles V. Now in the armour ascribed to Bartolommeo Campi there are certain curious features in the form and technique that are more easily explained if the work be regarded as that of a gold- and silversmith rather than of a professional armourer. As then all these characteristics are present in an accentuated form on the breast-*plate in the Bargello, its theme of ornamentation, Burne-Jones-like in its treatment, consisting of dragons' wings studded with human eyes (Fig. 1221), a species of fauna described in the first canto of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, we have no hesitation in saying that Bartolommeo Campi was its designer and maker. As, too, there exists at Vienna a portrait of Guidobaldo II, Duke of Urbino, wearing this breastplate and the Petrograd casque, there can be no doubt that the casque is also the work of Campi; for in this again can be seen wonderful sculptural designs, designs which are grotesque and spirited, but which are difficult to accept as the appropriate decoration of a head-piece. The mask of some horned marine monster constitutes the skull-piece of the casque, the crest of which is formed by the body of a dolphin, whose head lies snug between the horns of the former beast. Above the ear-pieces are reptile-like wings.
In the Imperial Armoury of Vienna is a parade shield with an accompanying burgonet-casque (Fig. 1224), which is almost as grotesque as the last piece described. They belonged to the Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, and, according to the late Wendelin Boeheim, are the work of an armourer, Giovanni Battista Serabaglio, in whose actual existence we have no faith (see vol. iii, page 294). Though in outline the casque is of the more usually accepted "antique" form, a great monster constitutes its crest. On either side of the skull-piece are figures of Neptune and Hercules. Upon the umbril is a splendidly embossed grotesque mask of a marine monster. The whole is enriched with plates of gold and silver, and very richly damascened with gold. The element of the grotesque is here shown in a somewhat later form. The date of this casque is about 1560-70. Perhaps a little earlier in manner, and certainly more robust in its workmanship, is that most beautiful casque which from the point of design is the finest example of the armourer's art of its kind (Fig. 1225, No. 108 in the Wallace Collection), a casque which must surely come from the workshop of some sculptor in bronze rather than from that of an armourer. The difficult medium of stubborn iron has so little affected the treatment of its boldly rendered ornament that the freeness of execution is only to be matched in a cire perdue bronze of the latter part
