Close Helm - Variations

Variations

Beginning at around 1500 armour, including helmets, became more immediately influenced by fashion, especially in civilian clothing. As a result close helmets came in a huge variety of forms. The earliest close helmets resembled contemporary armets. In Italy, England and France in the period 1510-25 helmets were rounded with visors of the 'sparrow's beak' form, whearas in Germany the fluted 'Maximillian' style of armour produced distinctive types of helmet. The skulls of these helmets were globular with a low crest, many were decorated with fluting but some were plain. Two types of visor were produced, the Nuremberg form which had a 'bellows' shape, and the Augsburg form which was more projecting and is commonly called a 'monkey face'.

From the 1520s a new, almost universal, variety of close helmet was developed. The previous forms of one-piece visor were replaced by a more complex system of face covering. The visor was split, below the eye-slits, into two independently pivoting parts. The lower half, called the ventail or upper bevor, was projecting and shaped like the prow of a modern ship. The upper visor, when closed, fitted within the upper edge of the ventail; it could be raised independently of the ventail by the provision of a projecting lifting peg. At the same time, on most helmets, the base of the bevor and the lower edge of the skull had laminated gorget plates attached. Crests, running from front to back tended to become taller in the course of the 16th century, becoming particularly exaggerated in some Italian-made examples, before becoming reduced in size at the century's close.

There are many helmets surviving with 'grotesque' visors. These are thought to have been used as part of a 'costume armour' worn at parades and during festivities. Some of these masks portrayed the heads of animals or demons, whilst others were evidently for comic effect, being caricatures of the faces of their owners.