X.—A Further Account of the Armour preserved in the Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie near Mantua

James G. Mann

doi:10.1017/S0261340900010572

X.—A Further Account of the Armour preserved in the Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie near Mantua

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2011

James G. Mann

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On the 27th February 1930 I gave to this Society a preliminary account of the armour which had for centuries passed unrecognized in the Sanctuary church of the Madonna delle Grazie near Mantua. My observations on that occasion were based on notes made from the top of a ladder, and the illustrations were from photographs of the figures taken in situ in the niches of the gallery which runs round the nave of the church. The true appearance of the armour was at that time concealed under a thick coating of paint and accumulated layers of dust. Component parts of individual suits were distributed among different figures, often quite incongruously and mixed with supplementary parts supplied in papier mâché. The neglected and shambling appearance of the figures went far to explain why the true character of the armour that clothed them had not previously been realized. In summing up I ventured to predict that ‘if the armour at Grazie were cleaned and well set up, it would present a very different appearance from what it does at present, and would almost certainly reveal some interesting armourers' marks. Nine of the seventeen suits include Gothic pieces, in some cases virtually complete’

Type: Research Article
Information: Archaeologia , Volume 87 , 1938 , pp. 311 - 351

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261340900010572 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1938

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^{page 311 note 1} Printed in Archaeologia, lxxx, 1930, pp. 117–42, ‘The Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie, with notes on Italian armour of the fifteenth century’.Google Scholar

^{page 312 note 1} It should be explained that the lighter bands along the edges of plates, as seen in several of the photographs, do not represent brass borders. They are the consequence of the armour having been painted black with yellow edges, and the yellow paint having proved to be a better preservative than the black.

^{page 313 note 1} Archaeologia, Ixxx, pl. xx. There were several of his armours listed in an inventory of the armoury of the castle at Mantua taken in 1542 after the death of his successor. One of these is now in the Ambras collection in Vienna. At the time the inventory was made most of the armour was probably already in situ in the church of the Sanctuary, and this suit cannot therefore be identified with one of those bearing his name in the inventory

^{page 313 note 2} See p. 322. Others are on the breasts of nos. 1, 2, and 4.

^{page 314 note 1} Modern writers have limited it to the armour of the forearm below the elbow in contradistinction to the rerebrace above the joint. But contemporary texts make it clear that the vambrace could be regarded as including the forearm, elbow, and part of the upper arm. The rerebrace covered the shoulder and upper part of the arm only. Similarly the words gardbrace or garde-bras were used in the fifteenth century as a variant for the pauldron, but modern writers, especially in France, have misused the term to denote an elbow-guard. Inconsistencies in terminology lead to much needless confusion.

^{page 315 note 1} The word poleyn is here used in preference to the later knee-cop as it was the term in use in England at this time. When Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, issued his challenge to all comers to meet him in the lists at Calais in 1414, he had painted a pavise with the emblem of ‘a lady sittyng in a gardeyn makeyng a Chappellet, and on her sleve a poleyn with a Rivet’ Pageant of the Birth, Life and Death of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, edited by Viscount Dillon and Sir W. St. John Hope, 1914, p. 53.

^{page 315 note 2} Shaw, J. Byam, Old Master Drawings, vol. vi (1931), no. 21, pl. 7.Google Scholar

^{page 315 note 3} See p. 335.

^{page 316 note 1} Archaeologia, lxxx, pl. XXII, 1

^{page 316 note 2} Trapp and Mann, The Armoury of the Castle of Churburg, 1929, no. 20. It is reproduced in Archaeologia, lxxx, pl. XXIII, 3, and is now in the collection of Mr. R. L. Scott.

^{page 316 note 3} Archaeologia, lxxx, pl. XXVIII, 3.

^{page 319 note 1} Archaeologia, lxxxiv, 73, fig. 1

^{page 320 note 1} The Recumbent Monumental Effigies in Northamptonshire, 1876, 32.

^{page 320 note 2} Trapp and Mann, The Armoury of the Castle of Churburg, 1929, pls. XX and XXIII.

^{page 321 note 1} Archaeologia, Ixxx, 124, fig. 4; Boutell, C., The Monumental Brasses of England, 1849.Google Scholar

^{page 321 note 2} Laking, Record, i, fig. 208; Boutell, op. cit.

^{page 321 note 3} Published by the Roxburghe Club, 1841 and 1844; extract reprinted in Trans. Essex Arch. Soc, vol. xxii (N.S.), pt. 2, 1939Google Scholar

^{page 321 note 4} Within little more than a century Lord Pembroke was paying £500 for his enriched Greenwich suit, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum at New York; in 1921 it changed hands for many times this amount.

^{page 321 note 5} Catalogue of an Exhibition of Helmets and Mail, Arch. Journal, Ixxx, 1880, p. 27. The etymology of the word is uncertain; cf. Victor Gay, Glossaire archéologique.Google Scholar

^{page 321 note 6} Laking, op. cit., ii, figs. 430 and 431.

^{page 322 note 1} Laking, Record, ii, fig. 440; Helen I. Gilchrist, Catalogue of the Severance Collection of Arms and Armor presented to the Cleveland Museum, 1924, pl. VII.

^{page 322 note 2} Laking, op. cit., ii, fig. 441.

^{page 322 note 3} The Howard household accounts record the purchase of 20,000 brigandine nails for11^s. 8^d.

^{page 322 note 4} Archaeologia, lxxx, pl. xx.

^{page 323 note 1} La Collection Spitzer, 1890, tome vi, no. 28, where it is wrongly represented inside the visor.

^{page 323 note 2} Laking, op. cit., i, figs. 225 and 226. Also on the panel representing his armour in his study in the castle at Urbino, Archaeologia, lxxx, pl. xxx, 2. This is the armet à la façon d'ltalie armé de sa grande bavière referred to by Olivier de la Marche in his account of the combat between Jacques d' Avranches and Jacques de Lalain in 1450.

^{page 323 note 3} Trapp and Mann, The Armoury of the Castle of Churburg, 1929, nos. 19 and 21.

^{page 323 note 4} Archaeologia, LXXX, pl. XXX, 2

^{page 324 note 1} Archaeologta, LXXX, pl. XXVIII, I.

^{page 325 note 1} Ibid., pl. XXIX, fig. 3; cf. also fig. 2.

^{page 325 note 2} Laking, Record, i, fig. 235; the details are more clearly apparent in Henry Shaw's Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages, 1843, pl. 59. page 325 note 3 The earlier type of pauldrons with rondels, c. 1435, is reproduced in Archaeologia, LXXX, pl. XXV; Laking, op. cit., i, figs. 219 and 220.

^{page 325 note 4} Archaeologia, LXXX, p. 124, brasses of Richard Fox, d. 1439, and Richard Dyxton, d. 1438.

^{page 325 note 5} Ibid., lxxxiv, 87, pl. XXVIII.

^{page 326 note 1} Charles ffoulkes, European Arms and Armour in the University of Oxford, 1912, pl. 1

^{page 327 note 1} Cf. that from Chalcis illustrated by Mr. C. J. ffoulkes in Archaeologia, lxii, pl. LV, and Sir Edward Barry's, Laking, Record, i, fig. 236; Laking wrongly describes the latter as being ‘of Italian form but German make’. Its form is typically Italian and it bears an Italian armourer's mark of a split cross, stamped twice.

^{page 327 note 2} ‘Façonnée presque en la façon d'un cœur.’ Comte de Belleval, Du costume militaire des français en 1446.

^{page 327 note 3} Archaeologia, lxxx, 124, fig. 4.

^{page 328 note 1} Mann, Arch. Journal, vol. xcv, pt. 2, 1938.Google Scholar

^{page 328 note 2} Archaeologia, lxxx, pl. xxx, 2.

^{page 328 note 3} Sotheby's, ‘Arms and Armour the property of a gentleman’, 20th June 1929, lot. 133, pl. VII; cf. Conde Valencia de Don Juan, Catálogo de la Real Armeria, Madrid, 1898, A 6, and the armour of Philip the Fair, ibid., A 11; also on a Spanish composite suit belonging to M. Pauilhac, Archaeologia, LXXXIX, pl. LXXXIX, 2.

^{page 329 note 1} Archaeologia, LXXX, pl. XXVI, fig. 5.

^{page 329 note 2} Cf. those found at Chalcis, Archaeologia, lxii, pl. LV, 3.

^{page 330 note 1} C. J. ffoulkes, ‘Armour in the Rotunda’, Archaeologia, lxxviii, pl. XIV.

^{page 331 note 1} J. G. Theodore Graesse, Guide de I'amateur d' objets d' art et de curiosité, ou Collection de monogrammes des principaux sculpteurs, armuriers, orfévres, Dresden, 1871; 2nd edition, 1877. It was dedicated to Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks. The crowned MY reproduced by him on p. 33 would appear to be taken from the jousting armour of Gasparo Fracasso at Vienna. Cf. also ibid., p. 47, for other Milanese marks.

^{page 331 note 2} Böheim, Jahrbuch der K. H. Sammlungen, ix, 1889, p. 384;Google Scholar Gelli and Moretti, Gli armaroli Milanesi, i Missaglia e la loro Casa, 1903, which gives plans and drawings of the house.

^{page 331 note 3} Compare the mark given in fig. 54 infra.

^{page 331 note 4} C. Buttin, Notes sur les armures à l' épreuve, Annecy, 1901.

^{page 332 note 1} In the Burlington Magazine of Nov. 1919, the late Mr. S. J. Camp followed Böheim in maintaining that these initials were MP, for Petraiolo Missaglia, the founder of the firm in the fourteenth century. In the correspondence that followed (ibid., Jan., Feb., and March, 1920), the Baron de Cosson gave it as his considered opinion that the letters are MY, and that Y, though not used in the Tuscan, has a place in the Lombardic alphabet. This is confirmed by the form of the Sacred Monogram YHS which is stamped as an armourer's mark on the sabatons of a fifteenth-century armour in the Wallace collection, no. 340. When P was intended it took another form, e.g. figs. 44, 50, 51, infra.

^{page 332 note 2} See pp. 334 and 336.

^{page 333 note 1} These were at one time combined with no. 3, but put back on no. 1 when it was lent to the Mostra delle Armi Antiche at Florence in 1938.

^{page 333 note 2} Trapp and Mann, The Armoury of the Castle of Churburg, 1929, no. 21.

^{page 333 note 3} Trapp and Mann, op. cit., no. 20; Archaeologia, lXXX, pl. XXVI, 5.

^{page 333 note 4} Arch. Journal, vol. xlviii, p. 25.

^{page 334 note 1} Helen Ives Gilchrist, Catalogue of the Severance Collection, 1924, no. B2.

^{page 335 note 1} Motta, Archivio Storico Lombardo, 1914, p. 223. Böheim wrongly transcribed as Negroli the name of the Jurisconsult Giacomo dei Negroni da Ello †1518 on his tomb in S. Satiro at Milan. Motta and the Baron de Cosson regarded the Negroni and Negroli as two distinct families. In an unpublished note the baron has stated that he could find no reliable documentary evidence of the Negroli earlier than 1492, though after that date their name occurs frequently. In 1919 L. Beltrami published a letter of 1467 relating to the ordering of a sallet from one Antonio Nroli del Missaglia, but the baron was disposed to regard this isolated instance as a clerical error. Nor did he accept as evidence the spelling of the name in a MS. genealogy of the Negroli (sic) and Missaglia family, printed by Angelucci, on the grounds that it had been compiled in the late sixteenth century, when the fame of the Negroli as armourers was still fresh in memory and would easily account for the alteration of a consonant. But it should be noted that the armour of Ulrich VI Matsch, who died in 1481, bears the cross-keys mark.

^{page 336 note 1} Rietstap, Armorial General, 2nd ed., 11, p. 302.

^{page 336 note 2} Trapp and Mann, op. cit., no. 19.

^{page 336 note 3} Conde Valencia de Don Juan, op. cit., 1896.

^{page 336 note 4} C. J. ffoulkes, ‘Armour from the Rotunda’, Archaeologia, lxx, p. 67, pl. XIII, 5.

^{page 336 note 5} Cat. Lenz, 1908, p. 165; Gille and Rockstuhl, Le Musée de Tzarskoe Selo, 1835–53, pl. 112.

^{page 336 note 6} Gilchrist, Catalogue of the Severance Collection, 1924, no. C3. page 337 note 1 Laking, Record, ii, fig. 438 c

^{page 338 note 1} Baron de Cosson, Le Cabinet d' Armes de … Talleyrand-Périgord, Due de Dino, no. A 1; Archaeologia, LXXX, pl.XXVI, 2.

^{page 338 note 2} Trapp and Mann, op. cit, no. 18.

^{page 338 note 3} Catàlogo Valencia, 1898, no. D 8.

^{page 339 note 1} Sold, Sotheby's, 10th-11th November 1920, lot 71

^{page 339 note 2} Cat. by E. A. Gessler and J. Meyer-Schneider, N.D., no. 1

^{page 339 note 3} S. J. Camp, Catalogue of Arms and Armour, 2nd edition, 1924, part 1, no. 85

^{page 339 note 4} Archaeologia, lxxx, 298, fig. 4.

^{page 340 note 1} Kienbusch and Grancsay, no. 5; cf. also crowned YA, ibid., no. 2. page 340 note 2 Illustrated on pl. XIX of the catalogue of the Mostra delle Armi Antiche at Florence, 1938. In this case the castle is on one side of the skull, and the split cross and P on the other.

^{page 340 note 3} Cat. R. Wegeli, Zeughaus zu Solothurn, 1911, no. 1

^{page 340 note 4} E. Motta, ‘Armaiuoli Milanesi nel periodo Visconteo-Sforzesco’, in Archivio Storico Lombardo, 1914, pp. 67, 94; J. G. Mann, Archaeologia, lxxx, p. 141

^{page 341 note 1} Baron de Cosson, Le Cabinet d' Armes.. du Due de Dino, 1901, no. A 2; Laking, Record, i, fig. 240.

^{page 342 note 1} Cat. Kienbusch and Grancsay, no. 3.

^{page 342 note 2} Archaeologia, LXXX, pl. XXIX, 4.

^{page 342 note 3} Gessler and Meyer-Schneider, no. 1.

^{page 343 note 1} Archaeologia, LXXX, pls. XXII, 1; XXII, 2

^{page 344 note 1} Archaeologia, lxxvii, 229

^{page 344 note 2} Ibid., lxxx, 87. In 1480 two Milanese armourers were permitted by the duke to make armour in the German style ‘more theutonico fabricata’ (Motta).

^{page 345 note 1} Archaeologia,-lxxix, 223–8. Pl. LXXI, 2, reproduces a breast and tassets at Dresden very similar to no. 9 in the Sanctuary.

^{oage 345 note 2} These two saints, together with the B.V.M., occur on similar breasts at Churburg (no. 70), Solothurn (no. 2), and the diamanté armour in the Bargello (Laking, iv, fig. 1214). St. Sebastian, in company with other saints, occurs on those at Churburg (no. 69), Solothurn (no. 3), Bologna, Tower of London, Sion (Supersaxo armour), and Dean collection, New York. St. Barbara, in company with other saints, occurs on those in the Museo Stibbert (no. 3146), and Musée de l'Armée (no. 98). I have to thank Don Erminio Carra of the Sanctuary for identifying the panel of St. Barbara on no. 9.

^{page 345 note 3} Cf. nos. 10 and 11, infra. There are many backplates of this kind in the armoury of the duke of Medinaceli.

^{page 346 note 1} Cf. Archaeologia, lxxix, pl. LXXVI, I, painting by Sodoma, and Churburg, no. 71, ibid., pl. LXXVI, 3.

^{page 346 note 2} P. 322, supra.

^{page 347 note 1} Archaeologia, lxxix, pl. XXIII, 3.

‘Il fulmine scorreva a me vicino

Ma tratto fui da morte e da periglio

Perché Maria lui fè torcer cammino.’

^{page 347 note 3} The arms formerly associated with this were the much later ‘Pisan’ pair described below on pp. 350–1.

^{page 347 note 4} The inscription beneath it read:

‘Nella guerra cindel mi fu troncato

L'un de' membri che al corpo era sostegno

Quando Maria chiamai fui risanato’

^{page 351 note 1} Described and illustrated by the writer in Archaeologia, lxxxiv, 87, and pl. XXVIII.

^{page 351 note 2} This list does not include composite armours made up of pieces brought together from diverse sources in modern times. Like the suit at Turin, the armour of Petermann Feer at Lucerne is only partially Italian of the fifteenth century.

^{page 351 note 3} Printed in Miscellaneous State Papers from 1501 to 1726,, London, 1788, i, 85. This precedes Donesmondi's account of the Sanctuary by nearly fifty years, and was written when the redecoration of the church was still comparatively new.

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X.—A Further Account of the Armour preserved in the Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie near Mantua

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