A Gothic Breast-Plate, ‘alla Tedesca’ dating: about 1480 provenance: Brescia, In two pieces. Smooth upper part with raised neckline and gussets. Under the neck a still clearly visible mark with two towers. A riveted loop in the center, for fixing an additional piece for the joust, further down a pivot; lance-rest on the right side. Two restored buckles above. Lower plate sharpened at the end, chiselled at the borders and with floral engravings at the edge, with central raiser and with two grooves, embossed on sides, two cusps on each side of the upper border. Gothic breast-plates rarely appear on the international market. Similar specimens are usually found only in museums and first-class private collections. See a breast-plate on an armour from the same period in the Wallace Collection (Vol. I, plate 3 No. A 20). Another breast-plate in the collection of the Royal Armory of Turin, illustrated in 'L'Armeria Reale di Torino' by Franco Massini, Ill. No. 3. The Odescalchi collection hosts five breast-plates of this type (see the catalogue, numbers 103-107), all in two pieces, two with a lance-rest, but all, a part number 107, of a simpler manufacture than the one presented by us.PROVENANCE:The historic armour collection of the Zeughaus in Solothurn, SwitzerlandRoselius House Museum, Bremen. Sotheby’s Olympia London, 30 June 2004, lot 93Private collectionLITERATURE: Mario Scallini, The Armoury of the Castle of Churburg, Udine 1996, pp. 72, 89, pl. 29 height 34 cm.