Hello,

I am back from my vacation to northern Italy where I visited some nice museums. Some of them contained arms and armour, some of them more or less interesting historical stuff.

First of all I will show some pictures from the armour collection of the castle of Brescia (Lombardia). The castle was founded in the 14th cent. and later on expanded to a big fortress in napolitanian times.
The collection I found more or less accidantially while browsing the tourguide where it was mentioned with opening times but without information on the size of the collection, so I was expecting nothing special.

But what I saw after accessing the gates was awsome. It was allowed to take pictures but I was there 30 min before closing, so you can imagine how hurried I was taking as much pictures as I could. I decided to focus on the armour although there were alot of swords and pistols from 16th cent and up.

Let me start with an unbiased view on the entrance gates. Showing me without any idea on what was waiting for me in the next 40 minutes ;)

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Where I had enough time to take a picture of the declaration it is for the previous picture, only in case of the two horse/rider armours I shot them afterwards, beause I recognised these too late.

Now I hope those pictures are interesting.

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Next batch of pics.

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nt

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This is the final picture from Brescia that I took. Next will be the pictures from Verona, I also took pictures of the statue of Mastino II. della Scala which was the successor of the reputable Cangrande I. della Scala and that I haven´t seen before, most illustrations show the latter only.

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Hello Felix,
The photo of the only gauntlet is very interesting for me because I make some rechearchs on italian fingered gauntlets
On the photo we don't see very good the museum description...have you another photo of the ensemble or of only the museum description?
I'm interested about the datation and the rpoduction style: is it a german gauntlet imported or a brescia's production?
Thank you in advance
Best regards
Fabien Laforge

I cannot tell you more than the description, unfortunately, there was no english or german catalogue. But the first pic on post 3 shows the description, object number C003, there it is stated as an incomplete german gauntlet from around 1500.

Felix,
Thank you very much for sharing these pictures. I for one am glad that you chose to focus on the armour as the collection contained some very interesting 16th Century harnesses

Daniel

Castle is from an earlier era (Visconti) It was built on top of roman buildings (a temple etc). This hill was inhabited in prehistorical times, the first settlement of Brescia.

Do not trust captions, they are often wrong ...

A lot of good stuff is kept in the vaults ...

Thank you for your answer Felix...
excuse me for my question...I don't speak spanish...
So thank you for your beautifull photos
Best regards
Fabien

Excuse me, I want to say: I don't speak italian...
Sorry^^

Felix;

Great pics in quality and QUANTITY considering the time pressure of doing all of it in 30 minutes. ;) :cool:

Some very nice pieces there like all the barbutes and the roncones ( Italian Bills ).

Some of the " scorpion " types are very different than most I've seen in my reference books although I seem to recognize one of them from various sources.

There are many pics here that could be the subject of new individual Topics like the great bascinet. :D

Very nice of you to share so many interesting images!!

Thank you for sharing all the pictures with us! I look forward to having the chance to tour European museums myself.

Yes Felix...........thank you very much for sharing those with us ! I agree with Jean, having been a commercial photographer for most of my life, I think you did a great job in the time restraint......I sure know what that feels like !
Now imagine, if you will, all the arms and armour tucked away in hundreds of obscure places dotted all over Europe, places that most of the public dont know about or seldom get to ! So much is not even published either which makes photos like these all the more valued......so thank you once again !

Cheers !