The fecundity of Bavaria in great armour-smiths about this time proves the truth of the adage that, given a Mæcenas, Maros will not be wanting. Perhaps the most magnificent suit in the whole armoury is No. A. 270, interesting doubly as having been made for that darling of romance, Dom Sebastian of Portugal, by the gifted craftsman, Anton Peffenhauser of Augsburg.
Boeheim has brought to light several details of this great artificer’s life. Born at Munich in 1525, he was working twenty-two years later in Augsburg, where he married, first Regine Meixner, and secondly twenty years later, Regine Eitler (probably the sister of Susanne Eitler, who married “Helmschmied” in 1565). His skill, and possibly his connection with the Patriarch of the craft, procured Peffenhauser many exalted patrons. In 1566 he was at work on a blackened harness for Kaiser Maximilian II., and ten years later we find him attached to the electoral court of Saxony. Specimens of his work are to be seen at Dresden, Vienna, and St Petersburg. The present suit was made about 1576. A medal preserved at Prague portrays Peffenhauser as a man of mature years, stern and dignified in countenance, with a pronouncedly aquiline nose and full beard.
Dom Sebastian’s armour, says the Count of Valencia, is Peffenhauser’s masterpiece, and places him on a level with, if not above, the greatest German armourers of his time. True, he falls into the mistake of over-ornamentation, and his figures are incorrectly designed, but the composition and embossing are bolder than Colman’s, and, above all, his chiselling is of inimitable precision and clearness. As to the style of decoration, on comparing the capricious combinations of figures, scrolls, and other devices, with the designs published by Hefner Altenech, we are inclined to believe that it was the work of Hans Mielich of Munich (born 1516, died 1573), or some other German artist of the same date and equal ability.
The suit consists of burgonet, breastplates, and backplates, gorget, pauldrons, rere and vambraces, coudes, gauntlets, taces, lobster-tail tassets, genouillères, and jambs. The nails, clasps, and plume-holder are gilded. The burgonet, wrought in one piece, is beautifully embossed with allegorical and mythological figures and with a battle-scene in which elephants are introduced--an allusion, doubtless, to the Portuguese conquests in the Indies. Mythological compositions also adorn the longitudinal bands traversing the suit from neck to ankle. The pauldrons, or shoulder-plates, display a bewildering and marvellous profusion of ornamented work. The elbow-guards are adorned with reliefs of the Cardinal Virtues, the knee-plates with beautiful emblematic groups. Thinking of this suit when still brightly burnished and gilded, one fancies that it was thus arrayed that Milton’s archangels went forth to battle for the lordship of the heavens.