Burgonet

Parade armour was highly decorated armour worn at tournaments and triumphal processions. It could also be adapted for field use.

Caremolo Modrone originally came from Milan, but was working as Ducal Armourer for the Gonzaga court in Mantua by 1521. He became a Mantuan citizen and operated a workshop making swords, staff-weapons and armour for many of the Duke's friends, relatives and allies as well as for other European aristocrats, often as gifts from the Duke. From 1528 on, Modrone made several pieces of arms and armour for Charles V, personally delivering some to various places in Italy and Spain. In a letter of 1534, the Mantuan ambassador in Spain reported that Charles had praised Modrone's work as more valuable than a city, and deemed it of a perfect fit. Modrone did not sign his work making attribution difficult (Pyhrr and Godoy, 1998, pp. 249-251).

The burgonet is illustrated in a record made of the Spanish Royal Armoury around 1544 alongside a suit of field-armour still in the Real Armería, Madrid (no. A.144). It is described in a slightly later inventory as being a gift from the Duke of Mantua, and may be identifiable with the arms delivered by Modrone to Charles in Palencia, Spain, in 1534. However, the burgonet differs in style from the rest of the armour and may have entered the Armoury at a different time. The decoration does though accord with other examples known to have been made for the Gonzaga court, supporting the attribution to Modrone (Blair, 1974, pp. 26-7; Pyhrr and Godoy, 1998, pp. 250-251).

From the second half of the fifteenth century, Italian armourers began to produce more and more elaborately decorated armour based on antique precedents. Ancient Greek and Roman armourers were skilled at the art of embossing, where decoration is hammered out in relief from behind. Decoration such as the leaf scrolls and mascarons on this helmet were considered to be the epitomy of antique style. Renaissance rulers liked to be represented wearing antique-style armour as it connected them with the great ancient leaders, as well as demonstrating their wealth and status.

The background to embossed decoration was often coloured by heating the steel to a very high temperature and then quenching it in water, originally the case with this burgonet. It was probably shined bright sometime after 1892, when it was found languishing in a kitchen cupboard covered in dark paint. Once cleaned, the renowned armour expert the Baron de Cosson, identified it as the burgonet illustrated in the 'Inventario Iluminado' (Blair, 1974, p. 22).

Phillippa Plock, 2012

Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)

245 x 315 x 180; weight 1389g.

Provenance

• Originally made for Emperor Charles V (b. 1500, d.1558) possibly as a gift from Federico II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua (b.1519, d.1540) and recorded in the inventory of the Real Armería, Madrid around 1544; kept there until a fire in 1838; shipped to London by a firm of Spanish solicitors for auction, January 1839; sold at the mixed sale, 'Ancient Armour and Arms Recently Arrived from Spain' Christie's, London, 23 -24 January 1839, lot 74 as 'a Roman helmet, with masks and foliages, embossed and gilt on a brown ground', reserve £25, sold for £13.13.0; subsequently passed into the collection of Hollingworth Magniac (b. 1786, d.1867); by descent to his son Charles Magniac (b.1827, d.1891), although not in sale of 2-15 July 1892; acquired by Sir Guy Francis Laking (b.1875, d.1919), around 1892 after it was sold at a minor auction and cleaned; ceded to Charles Alexander, Baron de Cosson (b.1846, d.1929); re-acquired by Sir Guy Laking after 1900; acquired by Miss Alice de Rothschild (b.1847, d. 1922), probably around 1908, who bequeathed it to Sir Guy Laking, but who pre-deceased her, casuing the legacy to lapse; inherited by her great-nephew James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957); bequeathed to Waddesdon (National Trust) in 1957.

Exhibition history

• Burlington Fine Arts Club, "Exhibition of Chased and Embossed Steel and Iron Work of European Origin", London, 1900, case H1, lent by the Baron de Cosson
• Tower Armouries, London, 1947-1957

Collection

• Waddesdon (National Trust)
• Bequest of James de Rothschild, 1957

Bibliography

• Inventario Iluminado [Real Armería, Madrid, N 18]; c 1544; in watercolour.
• Antonio Bertolotti; Le arti minori alla corte di Mantova nei secoli XV, XVI e XVII; Milan; Bortolotti di Giuseppe Prato; 1889; pp. 144-52.
• Real Armería de Madrid; Catálogo Histórico-Descriptivo de la Real Armería de Madrid, por el Conde v.do de Valencia de Don Juan; Madrid; Fototipias de Hauser y Menet; 1898; no. A.114.
• Conde Valencia de Don Juan, Bilderinventar der Waffen, Rüstungen, Gewänder and Standarten Karl V. in der Armería Real zu Madrid, Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, 10-11, 1889-1890, 353-399, 242-323; pp.145-6, pl. 30.
• Sir Guy Laking; A Record of European Armour and Arms through Seven Centuries; 5 vols; London; G Bell & Sons; 1920-1922; vol. 4, pp. 131-32, fig. 1218; as 'English private collection'.
• James Mann, The Lost Armoury of the Gonzagas, The Archaeological Journal, 95, 1939, 239-386; pp. 243-4, 250, 262-3, 266-7, 310-11, pls 18, 27, B.; see also Pt. III, published London, 1945, pp. 27, 29, 48-49, 94-7.
• James Mann, New Exhibits at the Tower Armouries, Country Life, 28 March 1947, 557; p. 557.
• Francis Henry Cripps-Day; An Inventory of the Armour of Charles V; Frome; Francis Henry Cripps-Day; 1951; pp. 28-31.
• Bruno Thomas, L'Arte Milanese dell'Armatura, Storia di Milano, vol. 9, 1958, 697-841; Ortwin Gamber; pp. 759-60.
• Lionello G Boccia, Eduardo T Coelho; L'Arte dell'Armatura in Italia; Milan; Bramante; 1967; pp. 328-9, no. 249/51.
• Claude Blair, Anthony Blunt; The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor: Arms, Armour and Base-Metalwork; Fribourg; Office du Livre; 1974; pp. 21-27, cat. no. 1, ill.
• Claude Blair; A Morion by Caremolo Modron of Mantua; Arms & Armour at the Dorchester Hotel, London, The Dorchester Hotel Ltd.,, November 1983; 10-18; pp. 10-11, fig. 1.
• John Hayward, Filippo Orsoni, Designer, and Caremolo Modrone, Armourer, of Mantua, Waffen- und Kostümkunde, 24, 1982, 1-16, 87-102; pp. 1-16.
• ♦; Stuart W Pyhrr, José-A. Godoy; Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaisance: Filippo Negroli and His Contemporaries; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 8 October 1998 - 17 January 1999; New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; 1998; pp. 249-51, fig. 68.
• Pauline Prevost-Marcilhacy, Juliette Trey, Laura de Fuccia; "De la sphère publique à la sphère privée". Actualité de la recherche du programme "Les collections Rothschild dans les institutions publiques françaises; Paris; INHA; 2019; p. 337, fig.6

Subjects

• Decorative Motifs & Patterns/Figural or Animal Motifs
• Decorative Motifs & Patterns/Leaf Motifs/Acanthus Motifs
• Decorative Motifs & Patterns/Flower Motifs
• Decorative Motifs & Patterns/Sun, Moon or Star Motifs
• Decorative Motifs & Patterns/Moulded & Edging Patterns (e.g. beading)
• Decorative Motifs & Patterns/Scroll Motifs