Plastron de fantassin, Flandres vers 1510.... - Lot 175 - Pierre Bergé & Associés

Plastron de fantassin, Flandres vers 1510. An infantry breast-plate, Flemish circa 1510. Of strongly pronounced globose form with low medial ridge, waist flange, broad shallow neck formed with a strong hollow inwardly turned angular flange, the arm openings en suite, and fitted with skirt of three articulated lames. H. overall: 50 cm - W.: 34.5 cm - Wt.: 3500 g. This breast-plate belongs to a rare group of breast-plates constructed in one piece (without separate gussets for the armopenings) and which were in vogue in Western Europe in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Within this group an even smaller sub-group is characterised by having strongly prominent turns at the neck and arm-openings, such as those of the present example. Another example was formerly preserved in the ancestral armoury of the Tollemache family at Helmington Hall, Suffolk. Breast-plates of the wider group also enjoyed popularity in England and examples are recorded both in monumental church brasses and in the Warwick Pageant manuscript of circa 1483-90. Some examples bear marks that appear to be Flemish, one for instance being the child's cuirass made for Philip the Handsome, Duke of Burgundy in circa 1490, preserved in the former Imperial collection in Vienna (A 109a). Another is in the Royal Armouries, Leeds (Inv. No. III 71), possibly from the historic collection; another, in the Schweizerisches Landesmuseum Zurich (LM 4955) bears the mark of the workshop founded in 1495 by the future Emperor Maximilian I, at Arbois in Burgundy. See THOMAS, B. & GAMBER, O.: Katalog der Leibrüstkammer, I, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1976, p.127 and pl. 49. Also see DUFTY, A.R.: European Armour in The Tower of London, 1968, pls. XV and CX.; and LAKING, G.F.: A Record of European Armour and Arms, vol. I, 1920, p.207, fig. 241.