AN ENGLISH ELECTROTYPE COPY, CIRCA 1880, OF A NORTH ITALIAN BURGONET FOR PARADE USE WITH EMBOSSED DECORATION, MILANESE, CIRCA 1560 formed in one piece rising at its rear to a medial crest formed as a recumbent sphinx (its wings missing) with a tubular plume-holder straddling its tail, projecting forwards to a slightly down-turned, obtusely-pointed integral peak, at its rear to an outward-flanged neck-guard, also obtusely pointed, and formed around its main edge with a boldly roped turn, it surfaces embossed in high relief with scrolling acanthus foliage and fruits involving at the front a classical warrior and a Medusa's head, at each side male nudes and putti, and at the rear, herons grasping snakes in their beaks and a lion's mask (worn in parts), and fitted internally over the left ear with the oval seal of the Elkington company bearing at its centre the royal cipher VR 29 cm; 11 1/2 in high Provenance The South Kensington (now the Victoria and Albert) Museum, London John Wigington, sold Parke-Bernet Galleries Inc., New York, 4 October 1951, lot 292 JWHA Inv. No. 2922 The electrotype was made by Elkington and Co Ltd of Birmingham from an original helmet that was at that time in the imperial collections of of the Tsarkoe Selo near St Petersburg and is now in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Acc. No, 3. 3420 (Gille & Rockstuhl 1835-53, pt. 7, pl. XXXIV; and Godoy 2003, No. 16, pp. 100-1 & 421). Its inspiration appears to have been the slightly earlier work of the celebrated Negroli family of armour-embossers