An outstandingly scarce painted shield for horse tournament from Philip II period dating: 16th Century provenance: Spain Made of light leather; shaped as a kidney, ribbed at the centre, decorated with two engraved and pierced brass mounts, with eight ornamental grooves at the border and two polychromatic coat of arms at the centre; the internal surface lined with brown Moroccan leather, provided with a central cushion with two handles and decorated with floral imprints. Interesting and rare shield survived to fights on horseback, often practiced at the Spanish court; among them the “Juego de las cañas”, sport of Moorish tradition spread in Spain between the 16th and 17th century. Count of Valencia de Don Juan, in the Royal Armory of Madrid catalogue, quotes nearly twenty shields, among them a moorish one decorated with inscriptions in Arabic, and a New Spain one presented to Felipe II and decorated with a mosaic of feathers; the other shields were probably decorated with simpler patterns and linkable to the one described above. A similar shield can be found in the Royal Armory of Madrid (D. 86 adarga morisca siglo XV); more similar examples can be seen in the engraving 'The Battle of Clavijo' (in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, inv. B-14150) by the German engraver Martin Schongauer; the extremely realistic picturing of the soldiers' equipments is considered to be due to the fact that the artist visited Spain in the middle of the 15th Century, and therefore his works are considered the most reliable documents in this subject. This kind of shield can also be found in another painting attributed to Gerardo Stannina (a.k.a. 'Il Maestro del Bambino Vispo'), datable around 1425, showing a battle between groups of Moorish soldiers. The painting is kept in the Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg. Bibliography: Count of Valencia de Don Juan: “Catálogo de la Real Armería de Madrid” Madrid, 1898. dimensions 84 x 73 cm.