of great importance, were preserved in Florence, and now form part of the collection in the National Museum at the Bargello. Gold and silver to the value of ten thousand lire were ruthlessly extracted from the damascening and incrustations of the remaining arms and armour and sent to the Mint, while those pieces, deprived of the precious metals which had adorned them, were sent to the hammer in the Hall of the Two Hundred in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, and sold for a few pence a pound as old iron! The pieces which remain from the Armoury of the Medici are consequently few—we may say very few—and of these I wish to illustrate some of the most important, supplying the few details which I have been able to gather from the researches I have carried out."
The first of these new discoveries in the Bargello to which Baron de Cosson alludes is the breastplate with its accompanying pauldron, the diverting history of which we shall discuss in the next volume (Figs. 1221 and 1222). It is, however, the third item that here concerns us, the classically fashioned breastplate which he goes on to describe as follows:
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Fig. 1055. Half suit of armour
Made for Antonio Martinengo III. Italian, Milanese(?), about 1560. C 11, Royal Armoury, Turin
"Breastplate of a cuirass imitated from the antique, embossed and engraved in relief at the throat with an imitation of chain mail. On the forefront is a head of Medusa, and at the base are two gilded griffins. This breastplate so closely resembles that of a suit of armour in the Roman style (Fig. 1051) which belonged to Charles V (now at Madrid) that I consider it confidently to be the work of Bartolommeo Campi and to have belonged, in all probability, to Guidobaldo II of Urbino.
