with hemispherical skull rising to a low medial ridge pierced at its centre and formed with a short projecting "tail" at the rear (brow and tail-plate missing, pitted, internally patched repairs, the edge chipped), 20.0 cm high

This sallet shows a preservation typical of pieces obtained from the armoury of the Knights of St John at Rhodes which fell to the Turks in 1522/3. It can be compared with sallets from that source now preserved in the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds (IV. 481), the Higgins Armoury Museum, Worcester, Mass. (880), and several private collections. See Karcheski & Richardson 2000, pp. 9 & 13-15).

Provenance

The Armoury of the Knights of St John, Rhodes

Louis Bachereau, Paris

Bashford Dean, New York, circa 1920

Howard M. Curtis (no. 44)

Literature

Howard M. Curtis, ‘2500 Years of European Helmets 800 B.C. - 1700 A.D.’, North Hollywood 1978, pp. 142-143 (incorrectly stated to be in Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Walter J. Karcheski Jr. and Thom Richardson, The Medieval Armor from Rhodes, Leeds 2000, p. xii (illustrated in Bachereau photograph) and p. 14, no. 1.18.