Thomas Del Mar Ltd
Lot 240
A FINE AND RARE GERMAN ETCHED, BLUED AND GILT COMB MORION OF THE TRABANTENLEIBGARDE OF THE PRINCE ELECTORS OF SAXONY, NUREMBERG, CIRCA 1580, with tall skull formed in one piece and rising to a roped comb, the base encircled with a row of fifteen gilt-brass lion masks over lining-rivets, each with a ring in its mouth (one ring missing, one boss an early replacement), narrow brim rising to a point at the front and rear, decorated at its edges with a roped inward turn (the right side showing two short cracks), struck with Nuremberg mark and a small serial mark at the front (the points each with a small hole, plume -holder missing), the skull decorated with etched and gilt bands of interlaced foliate scrollwork encircling the figure of Mutius Scaevola before Porsena on one side and Marcus Curtius leaping into the gulf on the other, the comb with further etched and gilt bands of running foliage and a central-cabled medallion framing, on the respective faces, the arms of the Dukes of Saxony and the Archmarshallship of the Holy Roman Empire, the brim decorated with etched and gilt bands of running scrolls, and retaining much original gilding and early blued finish throughout (the bluing largely oxidised), 30cm; 11 3/4in high, Provenance, The Saxon Electoral Armoury, Dresden, Rutherford Stuyvesant, Important Austrian Art, sold Christie's London, 1993, lot number 113, Literature, The Arms and Armour Collection of Rutherford Stuyevesant, 1914, cat. No. 26. This helmet belongs to a distinctive group which was first made for the Trabantenleibgarde of the Elector August I of Saxony (1553-86) and continued to be used, and possibly added to, in the time of his successors Christian I (1586-91) and Christian II (1601-11). Originally this would have matched the black doublets and yellow trunk hoses of the uniform of the guards. A large number of helmets from this group, which may have included the present example, were removed from the Electoral armoury in the 1830s and sent to the State Opera House in Dresden for theatrical use, many of which were seen there by Bashford Dean in 1912. See H. Nickel 1989, pp.117-21 and I. Eaves 2002, pp. 149-150.
