Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 4).djvu/238

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shield belonging to it, the art of the armourer-sculptor in its most luxuriant form. Both shield and helmet are now to be seen in the Galerie d'Apollon. This helmet, as well as the shield, which is also in the Louvre, were purchased by the French government in 1793 at the sale of the collection of Antoine César, Duc de Choiseul. Fashioned of pure gold, the surface embossed and chased, and further enriched with opaque and translucent enamels, and complete even to its ear-pieces, this morion looks like a production of but yesterday, so wonderful is its state of preservation. As in the case of the shield, a battle scene occupies almost the entire sides of the skull-piece; the comb is high and embossed in the centre with a grotesque horned mask. On the brim is the characteristic guilloche pattern which to our mind at once proclaims it to be the work of that unknown but recognized French armourer on whose productions we have speculated in vol. iii, pp. 346 et seqq., and ante, pp. 183 et seqq.

Fig. 1286. Morion-cabasset

Italian, Pisan school, about 1580. Collection: Mr. W. J. Pavyer

Like the morion, the cabasset was evolved from the chapel-de-fer. All the helmets which are classed as "peaked" morions, but which we call cabassets, belong, strictly speaking, to the cabasset class, whether they have the flat brim or not, the term morion being properly reserved for what are usually termed combed morions. Perhaps such a cabasset as is to be seen in the collection of Mr. W. J. Pavyer, a North Italian example of unusual beauty