Très rare grand bacinet de joute, probablement... - Lot 36 - Pierre Bergé & Associés

Très rare grand bacinet de joute, probablement Bruges ou Bruxelles vers 1490-1500, remanié en emblème funéraire. Very rare tilting Great Helm, probably Bruges or Brussels, circa 1490-1500, adapted for a funerary achievement. In the heavily patinated condition consistent with armour preserved in churches, with tall finely formed skull rising to a low medial ridge extending rearwards to the base of the nape, the base drawn out in a blunt point over the top of the spine, studded with domed lining rivets, pierced for visor pivots, and pierced for a crest, now carrying a hook for funerary suspension, the visor of heavy guage construction now riveted static, the front formed with a blunt prow, full length medial ridge, basal flange, the lower edge of the sight projecting forward of the upper edge, and cut with a single rectangular ventilation port on the right. H: 35 cm - L: 28 cm - W.: 23 cm - Wt.: 4650 g. Provenance: Sotheby's London, 21 May 1974, lot 186 (illustrated). A similar Great Helm was displayed over the tomb of John Darell, dead in 1438, in Little Chart church, Kent. Another in St. Botolph's church at Lullingstone, Kent, is almost certainly that of Sir John Pechy, dead in 1522. On the basis of a comparable etched armet for the field made in the Royal Armoury at Greenwich, Sir James Mann concluded that this helm, as well as all others of this type, was of English manufacture. More recently, an armourer's mark struck twice, a crowned H, was noticed on Sir John Pechy's helm. Claude Blair suggested that it could be the mark of "Han" or "Hans" Jehan Watt of Brussels, chief supplier of armour between 1495 and 1508, according to the Burgundian Treasurer's accounts. This mark is also found on an armour for the Joust Royal, made around 1500 either for the Emperor Maximilian I or for his son Philip, and on a cuirass made for Philip IV (The Handsome), Duke of Burgundy, each preserved in the Imperial Armoury at the Kunsthistorishes Museum, Vienna (No. S.II and A109a). A t