A COMPOSITE NORTH ITALIAN CAP-A-PIE ARMOUR WITH LATER ETCHED AND GILT DECORATION, LATE 16TH CENTURY comprising deep reinforcing bevor (restored) formed in two pieces with circular ventilation-holes at the right, earlier gorget of three lames front and rear, breastplate of peascod fashion with holes for a lance-rest and reinforce, and fitted with movable gussets at the arm-openings and a skirt of two lames supporting a pair of pendent tassets each of four lames(restored), earlier German backplate with culet of three lames divisible beneath the first, large asymmetrical pauldrons, the left with threaded holes for a reinforce, each attached by a turning-pin to a vambrace comprising turner (upper lames in each case lacking), and tubular upper and lower cannons articulated by small bracelet couters of three lames (the right couter and lower cannon each patched and the latter lacking its lower edge), and cuisses of four lames connected by winged poleyns of four lames to ankle-length tubular greaves each pieced around their lower edges with holes for the attachment of mail shoes, all parts decorated at their main edges with roped inward turns and on their surfaces with bands and borders of running foliage enclosed in the case of former by bold engrailing, now worn in part; mounted on a blackened wooden stand with rectangular base and fitted with a mail breech Provenance Countess of Craven, Sotheby & Co., 6 December 1965, lot 41 (armour) Hew Kennedy (reinforcing bevor) It has been suggested that this armour was that worn by the William Craven 2nd Earl of Craven in Eglinton Tournament of 1837, although an armour supposedly worn by him on that occasion was exhibited in the Gothic Exhibition of 1840. The decoration of the armour closely resembles that found on a partly restored harness acquired by the Duke of Westminster for his collection at Eaton Hall, Cheshire, from the London dealer Samuel Luke Pratt in the mid-19th century, and subsequently transferred to the Royal Armouries in 1953. A further armour bearing the same design, also from Pratt, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Decoration of a similar kind is to be recorded, moreover, on additional detached pieces in the Royal Armouries, Leeds, the Real Armeria, Turin, and the Higgins Armoury Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts.