Brocas helm
The Brocas helm is a jousting helm on display at the Rotunda as part of the Tower of London armoury collection. It was commissioned by an English knight from an Italian armourer.[1]
It is named after the Anglo-Norman Brocas family of Beaurepaire, Hampshire descending from the knight Sir Barnard Brocas (1330–1395). The collection of the family was auctioned after the death of a later Barnard Brocas, as the "Brocas Sale" in 1834.[2][3]
References[edit]
- ^ Dufty, Arthur Richard (1968). European Armour in the Tower of London. H.M. Stationery Office, Ministry of Public Building and Works. p. 12.
... the headpieces were two of outstanding quality and importance: the Brocas helm and the close helmet now numbered IV. 412. The Brocas helm, an English jousting helm, named after an erstwhile owner, helped to fill a serious gap in the collection; to this day it and the Stowe helm are the only defences of their kind in the Armouries, other than the grotesque forgeries bought in the middle of the last century.
- ^ The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Vol. 9. London: Charles Knight. March 7, 1840. p. 96.
Only two of the visored bascinets of this period are known to exist, one in the Meyrick collection, the other in the Tower of London. The latter was added to the National Collection in the year 1834.
- ^ Pyhrr, Stuart W.; Godoy, José (1998). Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance – Filippo Negroli and His Contemporaries. New York, N.Y.: Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 184. ISBN 0-87099-872-2.
The earliest reference to this helmet occurs in the sale catalogue of the Brocas collection in 1834, in which the inscription on the brow plate is cited.4 The helmet was subsequently acquired by the eighth duke of Luynes, who formed in the second quarter of the nineteenth century a small but important collection of arms and armor at his château in Dampierre (Île de France).