Helmet and Breastplate for the Gioco del Ponte
This armor was made for the gioco del ponte, a mock combat held sporadically from the Middle Ages until 1807 in the center of Pisa on a bridge over the Arno River. The armor was assembled and decorated in about 1800 from obsolete parts. Its form and type are typical for gioco armors, of which many examples survive. The painted decoration, however, is extremely rare; the only other fully painted examples are a helmet and cuirass in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, acquired in Pisa in 1807. Paint analysis on the Metropolitan’s helmet revealed that it was entirely repainted sometime in the early twentieth century, probably when the gioco was revived in the 1930s.
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