The following are plates from the 1459 Talhoffer fechtbuch. In the armored section, these harnesses are being worn. I was wondering if anyone knew of any actual examples of these helmets, or had any information about them? The style appears to be a sallet, but I have never seen this type of visor outside of pictures, except for on later period helms.

Also, any ideas as to whether there is a horizontal eyeslot above the visor, or if it's only the vertical ones? One picture appears to only have the vertical slots, one looks like it may possibly have the horizontal one as well.

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a late example of a sallet with a puff-and-slash visor with either a tall segmented bevor or a short siege buffe?

To my knowledge, that style of helm only exists in literature/art.

Robert W. Reed Jr. is writing a paper as we speak on early sallets (1410-1460) with unusual visors that will be published under the Armour Research Society.

I am not sure if he is covering this style of open visor, but some of his sources show a similar falling bevor in conjunction with what appears to be rounded and pig-nosed bascinet-style visors.

Brian, I'm glad you posted that, as I was wondering why I was having such difficulty finding an example.

Thanks Brian!

Brian W. Rainey wrote:

One thing to keep in mind is that the reference is a manual for sword play, not armour... so there was probably more attention paid to other aspects, from the artists perspective.

This is an interesting point for us as modern interpreters to keep in mind. I overall agree, though I do think most of these manuals are surprisingly accurate on a general scale. Both weapons, armor and clothing all show a good amount of detail. Talhoffer, for instance, depicts combatants with both rondel daggers as well as ballock daggers, showing that attention was paid to the diversity of weapons.

It's the minor details, however, where you tend to find artistic interpretations. I've seen more than a few manuals that show armored combatants standing in ways that aren't actually possible for the style of armor they are wearing (unless the armor were made of rubber!), and this is probably for the sake of making the intentions of the actions clearer. So, just as Brian says, we do need to keep in mind what the artist was trying to do and balance that out what we know before making our interpretations.