**AN ITALIAN CLOSE HELMET WITH ETCHED DECORATION, CIRCA 1560
with one-piece skull rising to a high boldly roped comb fitted at its apex with a small loop, perhaps for tying up a plume (patched and holed around and beneath the latter) and pierced to either side of the nape with a pair of holes for the attachment of a plume-holder, visor, upper bevor and lower bevor attached to the skull by modern pivots fitted beneath their small round heads with large rosette washers, the restored visor formed with a stepped and centrally-divided vision-slit and the restored upper bevor of blunt prow-shaped form pierced at each side with nine circular ventilation-holes in rosette-formation, and two short articulated gorget-plates front and rear (the front ones restored), the main edges of the helmet formed with roped inwards turns generally accompanied by recessed borders, and the subsidiary edges of the gorget-plates decorated with pairs of incised lines, each side of the comb and the main borders etched with running foliage enclosed to the inside by delicate interlacing filigree-like vine-leaves, the etching bearing traces of later gilding and the intervening spaces later painted black (the whole showing extensive wear throughout)
32 cm; 12 1/2 in high

Provenance
Sumner Healey, New York, 21 May 1937

JWHA Inv. No. 2364

For similarly decorated Italian armours of the same period as the helmet, see Karen Watts, 'The Armour of the Knights of St John, Malta', Royal Armouries Year Book, Vol. 3, 1998, pp. 29-36, figs 1-11

£2000-3000