- tration taken from an actual suit of armour, a harness which, as far as we
know, ranks as the oldest complete suit of European armour extant (Fig. 212). Up to the period dealt with we have given representations of head-pieces, of individual armaments, and of weapons of many centuries of anterior date; and it is only with the arrival of the opening years of the second half of the XVth century that we are in a position to place before our readers a real complete suit of armour, plate belonging to plate throughout. The suit referred to is the magnificent suit preserved in the Imperial Armoury of Vienna, a suit made for Frederick the Victorious, Count Palatine of the Rhine, by the most famous of all Milanese armourers, Tomaso da Missaglia, son of Petrajolo. The suit came, with much of the other armour now at Vienna, from the Castle of Ambras, near Innsbruck; but by some curious oversight it is not mentioned in the oldest of the inventories of that collection, the inventory made between 1583 and 1596. It is, however, faithfully represented in Jacob von Schrenck's large engraved work, Armamentarium Heroicum, etc. (begun in 1582 and published in 1601), fol. xx. Frederick the Victorious, Der Böse Fritz, for whom this suit of armour was made, was the son of Ludwig the Bearded, and was born in 1425. He was made Prince Elector in 1449, was a prominent heroic figure in the unhappy Bavarian-Brandenburg feud of 1450-62, and died in 1476. Allowance then being made for its fashion, we may take it that this suit is the work of Tomaso da Missaglia, produced about 1450-60. In many places are impressed upon it the mark employed with slight variation by the Missaglia family from the days of the founder, Petrajolo, to those of his grandson Antonio.
It is the plainest of suits without decoration of any kind whatsoever. The helmet is the "great" bascinet. The breastplate is of stalwart proportions, having that curious heaviness in its lower globoseness that we have noted only in the work of Tomaso of that family. It is in the fashion of the time, composed of the main plate and of the superimposed placate. The taces are of five lames, which from their great depth lend to this part of the suit almost the appearance of a skirt or tonnelet. To the lowest tace-plate are attached the tuille-like tassets. But the most remarkable features of this archaic suit are the smaller subsidiary tuilles which are suspended at the sides and back from the lowest plate of the garde de rein. Although this feature can be seen in the effigies of the second quarter of the XVth century, notably on the few effigies we have just described, we know of only three extant suits which possess them; the suit under discussion, a suit in the Royal Armoury of Turin, and the suit in the Museum of Berne. The arm
