Property from the Estate of Patrick Kelly A FINE NORTH ITALIAN CLOSE-HELMET FOR FIELD USE WITH ETCHE

Property from the Estate of Patrick Kelly A FINE NORTH ITALIAN CLOSE-HELMET FOR FIELD USE WITH ETCHED DECORATION, CIRCA 1555-60, PROBABLY MILANESE with rounded one-piece skull rising to a high boldly roped medial comb, fitted at the nape beneath an elaborate escutcheon with a tubular plume-holder, and at the front with a visor, upper bevor and lower bevor attached by common pivots having radially-incised low-domed heads, the forward-sloping visor with a stepped centrally-divided vision-slit pierced at the right of its lower edge with a hole to receive a missing lifting-peg, and the prow-shaped upper bevor cut at the right of its upper edge with a U-shaped notch to accommodate the lifting-peg, pierced at the same side with nine small circular ventilation-holes in rosette-formation and fitted at its lower edge with a pierced stud to accommodate a swivel-hook formerly attached at the right of the chin of the lower bevor (hook missing), the lower edges of the skull and bevor each flanged outwards to receive articulated gorget-plates of which only the upper rear one survives, the surface of the helmet etched at the brow, around the ventilation holes of the upper bevor, in a medial band, in its borders and at each side of its comb with running foliate scrolls, involving at each side of the comb a bird of prey, executed partly in line and partly in shallow relief on a blackened and stippled ground (worn and moderately patinated overall) 29.5 cm; 11 5/8 in overall Provenance The Chichester family, Hall, Barnstaple, Devon, sold Sotheby~s, 11th November 1996, lot 601. The helmet resembles both in form and decoration one in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Kienbusch Collection, no. 7), forming part of a half-armour made for William Herbert, First Earl of Pembroke (1501-70), which an inventory of the Earl~s armoury drawn up at Wilton House, Wiltshire, on 7 December 1558 described as |a millayne demilaunce graven and gilt|. See Hayward 1964, p. 226 & 228, fig. 7. A helmet of similar fashion forms part of an Italian heavy field armour in the Wallace Collection, London. See Mann 1962, pp. 62-3, pl. 31.