Beschreibung:

An Extremely Rare North Italian 'Export' Sallet Circa 1450-60 The rounded one-piece skull (slight damage to the brow) with low comb of rectangular section, pierced with a rectangular slot for a crest-holder, short pointed tail, and iron lining rivets with small spirally fluted heads, struck on the right a group of three marks of North Italian type, the visor with single vision-slit and cusped upper edge, the lower edge throughout with a thick, angular outward turn, the surfaces rust pitted throughout 9¼in. (23.5cm.) high Sallets of this kind were made in North Italy for export to Western and Northern Europe. Surviving examples are extremely rare, and this appears to be the only example in private hands, apart from what is perhaps the finest of all, in the famous Trapp armoury at Churburg The marks comprise three pairs of letters, those in the upper one (illegible) crowned, and those in the two below each apparently 'PR' ('BR'?) under a contraction mark. This combination does not seem to be recorded elsewhere, but a similar 'PR' mark is found by itself on helmets in the Glasgow Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and the Museo Civico L.Marzoli, Brescia See Claude Blair, European Armour , frontispiece and fig. 105; 'The Blithfield Sallet', The Archaeological Journal , CXI (1955), pp. 160-67; Trapp & Mann, The Armoury of the Castle of Churburg , 1929, No. 23; and, for the 'PR' mark, F. Rossi & N. di Carpegna, Armi Antiche dal Museo Civico L.Marzoli , Brescia, 1969, No.s 71 and 72; F. Rossi, Armi e Armaoli Bresciani del '400 , 1971, fig. 62, no. 68; and L.G. Boccia & J.A. Godoy, Museo Poldi Pezzoli. Armeria I , Milan, 1985, p. 85