Part3_d
4/11/07
8:40 pm
Page 222
34. An Exceptional and Rare Model Armour for Man and Horse in Sixteenth-century Style by E. Granger, Paris, circa 1850 The man’s armour comprising a close helmet with a bellows visor attached to a single-lamed gorget with raised collar; the cuirass comprising a breast and back plate, the breast plate of peascod form with a fauld plate to which are attached tassets of seven simulated lames; the rump protected by a mail skirt; the seven-lamed pauldrons large and symmetrical, attached by turners to articulated vambraces complete with winged couters; the gauntlets with large, tapering cuffs, five metacarpal plates and a knuckle plate; the legs formed of cuisses integral with five-lamed, winged poleyns, greaves and broad-toed, ten-lamed sabatons; the main plates with roped edges and the whole armour decorated with etched bands of foliate scrollwork. The armour dressed on an articulated figure clothed in buff leather, with a gilded face visible through the visor. The horse armour comprising a shaffron with a main plate fluted with feathers to which are attached cupped brow and gutter-shaped ear defences, from which articulate side plates decorated with radiating gadrooning; the neck protected by a ten-lamed crinet, the chest by a peytral made of three plates, the sides by one-plate flanchards and the rump by a crupper consisting of nine plates and an additional tail-piece; the peytral, flanchards and crupper all having separate roped lower borders joined by rivets to the main plate at a cusped border. The wooden saddle covered with crimson velvet edged with gold brocade and protected by bow and cantle plates; from it are suspended stirrup leathers to which are attached wide, arched stirrups. The horse armour is decorated en suite with that of the man, with roped edges and panels of foliate scrollwork which, on the main vertical panels of the crupper, consist not only of running scrolls but also of formal symmetrical anthemion scrolls; the lower borders of the peytral, flanchards and crupper with bands of etched roping and beadwork above the separate roped edge; the main plates with decorative five-petalled floral washers to many of the major rivets; attached to the front plate of the peytral are three shields charged with heraldic devices. Mounted on a bronze horse with a natural horsehair tail, the whole further mounted upon a rectangular, ebony-veneered wooden base.
1
Height of base: 5 ⁄2 in
Overall height: 21 in Length of base: 16 in
Width of base: 7 1⁄4 in
Our model armour for man and horse is of exceptional quality. It is one of a small group made by the nineteenth-century Parisian artist-craftsman E. Granger, who is recorded in the mid 1840s as working at 70, Rue de Bondy (now Rue René Boulanger, a road running west from the north-east corner of the Place de la République). All Granger’s model armours thus far identified were based on the same armour for man and horse, one inspired by elements of mid-sixteenth-century armours, but mostly left undecorated; some of these, however, were individually decorated with slight variations in their embellishment. Where one armour was etched, another was etched and gilded; the positioning of the panels of etching were altered in places; the exact form of the foliate scrollwork in the panels was varied; some peytrals had applied shields, some did not; a lance rest could be added; the saddle coverings were altered and the weapons of the man were varied. In addition, there were a number of horse postures and base forms that could be used further to vary each model and give a prospective purchaser just what he wanted. Granger exhibited an example