[Illustration: FIG. 42. Puffed suit, sixteenth century. Vienna.[33]]
[Illustration: FIG. 43. Casque after Negroli, sixteenth century. Paris.]
The engraved and inlaid suits of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although they offend the craftsman's eye as does the decorated bicycle of the Oriental potentate to-day, do not transgress that important law, on which so much stress has been laid, of offering a glancing surface to the opposing weapon. It is when we come to the embossed suits with their hollows and projections that we find the true character of armour lost and the metal used only as a material for exhibiting the dexterity of the workman without any consideration for its use or construction. This interference with the glancing surface is noticeable in the suit illustrated in Fig. 42, but even here there is some excuse, in that the designer had reason for his embossing of the metal--if the imitation of the puffed suit was to be carefully portrayed. The same, however, cannot be urged for those suits which are simply covered with ornament with no purpose, little meaning, and less composition or design. If we set aside our opinions as to the suitability of the ornament, we are compelled to admire the wonderful technical skill which produced such pieces as the suit made for King Sebastian of Portugal by Anton Pfeffenhauser of Augsburg, and now in the Madrid Armoury. Here every deity of Olympus, the allegorical figures of Justice, Strength, and the Cardinal Virtues, crowd together with Navigation, Peace, and Victory; Roman warriors fighting with elephants are found among Amorini, Satyrs, and Tritons; while every inch of the metal not devoted to this encyclopaedia of history and legend is crowded with foliage and scroll-work of that debased and unnatural form which has become the branding mark of this period of the Renaissance.
[Illustration: FIG. 44. Pageant shield, sixteenth century. Vienna.]
It will be sufficient to give one example of this prostitution of art and craftsmanship. This helmet after Negroli (Fig. 43), and a similar example, signed by Negroli, at Madrid, show how the canons of the armourer's craft were ignored at this period. It is true that the casque still provides a metal covering for the head, and that the comb gives an additional protection to the skull, but when we examine the embossed figures at the side--and marvellously good the embossing is--we find lodgements for the sword or spear which would most certainly help to detach the helmet from its wearer. As to the comb, it may fairly be cited as an example of all that is artistically worst in the late Renaissance. Its technical merits only emphasize this. The warrior is laid on his back to suit the required shape of the helmet, and to give point to his position his hair is held by two figures whose attributes seem to suggest that intercrossing of birds, beasts, and fishes which delighted the decadent mind of the period. The figures are human to the waist and end in a dolphin's tail. Angels' wings spring from their shoulders and leopards' claws from the junction of tail and waist. Not content with this outrage to the dignity of art, the craftsman ends his warrior in an architectural base which has not even the slight merit of probability which the tail of the merman might offer. In short it is an example of technical skill at its highest, and artistic perception at its lowest point. The shield from the Vienna collection (Fig. 44) is another example, like King Sebastian's suit, of meaningless decoration. The strap work does not in any way follow the lines of the shield, and the female figures seem to be introduced only to show that the craftsman could portray the human form in steel as easily as he could the more conventional ornament.